Womex 2018, held in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain on 24-28 October, recently announced their multifaceted Conference Program. Finnish music research expertise is present in two sessions, with Senior Lecturer Vilma Timonen chairing the session focusing on Nepali-Finnish collaboration.

Acknowledged kantele artist and Senior Lecturer at Sibelius Academy, Vilma Timonen will be chairing the session “Equal Accessibility through International Capacity Building” along with Nepalese musician and educator Riju Tuladhar and Tunisian Habib Achour. Tuladhar and Timonen will share the ways of working that they have experienced in their collaboration, which has started in 2013. They will also discuss the potential of collaborative musician-teacher partnerships in opening opportunities to a wider range of student-musicians.

With the title “Collection and Presentation of Authentic Folk Music – different methodologies”, the session is dedicated to discovering, recording and archiving authentic music. The chair for the session is Hungarian artist and researcher Miklós Both. Through his work in Ukraine and Maari Kallberg’s work in Finland and Russia, the session will explore different approaches to collecting and presenting authentic folk music.

Behind the extensive programme of WOMEX World Music Expo are the Seven Samurais, as the jury is called. Again this year, there is Finnish knowhow in the jury: one of the Samurais is Riitta Huttunen, a versatile music professional, entrepreneur and lecturer at Sibelius Academy.

Stay tuned for more news on Womex 2018 coming soon.