gespräch mit sounds now: believed resolved, still pending

Roberto Beseler Maxwell:
Could you elaborate on how Sounds Now came to exist?

Anne Appathurai:
Most of the members of the network have known each other for a very long time in a professional capacity and found that they have similar values and concerns with contemporary music. They had an informal network among themselves, where they got together and talked about these issues. They then decided to formalize it and apply for support from Europe, to try to achieve some concrete goals and make a bigger impact. Sounds Now in particular is concerned with how curation in contemporary classical music or sound art reproduces the same patterns of power and exclusion that are dominant at all levels of our societies. It felt even more urgent to these partners because in contemporary music, we’re working to promote progressive agendas. I also think that one of the problems with inclusion and diversity is that people feel very often that the problem is resolved. It actually really depends on where you’re positioned to think this is either true or not at all true. So the goal of Sounds Now currently is to actively stimulate diversity and inclusion within the professional field and open up the possibility for different voices, perspectives and experiences to define the sonic art that reaches audiences today. As part of that, and this is something that I think absolutely everyone in music is always thinking about, is the question about how to grow, engage and retain audiences. We are obviously thinking about this and pursuing the objective of greater diversity and inclusion in the contemporary music audience as well, as it is not very diverse.

RBM
What role do you play?

AA
I’m the project manager for Sounds Now. I was hired at the beginning of the project to ensure that the actions are all implemented on time and within budget. I’ve been involved in other European projects before. I actually have a background in film, and have worked in a similar capacity in this field at European level. I then slowly made the move into music. Right now I’m coordinating Sounds Now as well as a second large-scale European cooperation project called Ulysses, where we help young professionals in music – instrumentalists, conductors and composers – make the jump from formal education to earning a living. Sounds Now is quite a complex project because it’s such a huge topic and challenge that when we were developing the project, and thinking about how we could best address the issue, we felt that we had to come at it from many different angles. There isn’t just one response to this issue: we needed to have a multi-layered, multi-entry project to be able to move the needle a little. That’s why we do a wide variety of actions: artistic productions, participatory »Open Space« activities, curating labs, symposia, publications, research, a curating course… There’s a lot to keep on track!

RBM
Could you talk about your activities and projects?

AA
When thinking about the lack of diversity and inclusion in contemporary music, we found several reasons why this situation exists, and tried to address them (or some of them). One reason is that the entry points into contemporary music are fairly closed-off. Very often people make their way into this profession through personal connections. It’s a little opaque and hard to access if you’re not already close to that world, or you don’t have a contact opening the door. One of the things we do about that is to reach out to people who are not necessarily in contemporary music, but who maybe are already curating themselves, and say: »What you’re doing is curating, let’s talk about how to go further. Let’s talk about how you could approach festivals with your ideas, how you could receive funding, what kinds of things to consider ethically, financially, politically.« It’s important to provide practical connections and training, not only for people who have the opportunity and means to attend a music school.

About our activities: We have done Curating Labs. These are workshops where we explore practical questions such as: how do you get funding or write a grant application? What do you have to do in production? The labs generally lead to a concrete outcome, such as an experience curating a short section in one of our partner festivals. We also commission and present artistic productions where we try to support artists from under-represented backgrounds. We organise annual symposia that explore themes around curation and diversity in contemporary music. Those have taken different forms, partly because of COVID-19, which made us do the first two online or in a hybrid fashion. Their purpose is to grow awareness of these issues within the professional music community. We also do workshops for the Sounds Now partners at regular intervals, where we work on their own approach to inclusion with the help of external consultants.

RBM
But you also organize what you call Curating Courses?

AA
Yes, on one hand we have curating labs that deliver more pragmatic, concrete training or information, and on the other hand we have curating courses. One of the reasons for this split is because in the visual arts, curating has been a subject of study for years and years. They have a good fifty years advance on music in terms of the formal study of curating. On the other hand in music, there are very few places today where people can get together and explore curating as a theoretical concept, and debate the social and political responsibilities involved in curating specifically in this field. We wanted to provide a space for people that offered a pragmatic approach but also a more theoretical and conceptual level, as both are important. The outcome of the courses has been really wonderful because as a secondary effect, the participating curators around Europe have stayed in touch professionally and have even developed new initiatives together. Building this community of music curators, who actively think about their responsibilities with regards to inclusion, diversity and equality, was another one of our goals in the project.

RBM
Something I personally know the least about in Sounds Now are the productions you put on. Could you give an insight into how you determine what productions you do and what artists you engage?

AA
That’s a good question, and it’s actually been the subject of a lot of ongoing discussion within the partnership. We started out by determining three pillars of diversity, because diversity is a huge word and it felt unrealistic to take on everything that it represents. The three pillars are gender/gender identity, socioeconomic background and ethnic background. But in truth we weren’t strict about that at all, because the important thing was to support artists who face greater obstacles than most due to the structural issues such as racism, sexism etc. Those issues, which some people still think are resolved, are in fact far from being resolved ^{1 2}. Recently someone told me about overhearing an audience member leaving an evening programme this year at Donaueschingen because the programme had too many women in it and therefore wasn’t interesting for them. It’s really astonishing to still hear this.

Our goal is also to give artists total artistic freedom. Not to have expectations of content based on someone’s background, for example a black artist being commissioned to write about slavery. This still happens much too often. Nor do we do »spotlight concerts«, for example presenting only women, or composers of a specific ethnic background. For us, that’s simply another way of differentiating them from a norm to which they do not belong, and would equate accepting that norm. There was a lot of discussion also about new voices versus established artists. We’ve done a mix of both.

RBM
What approach does Sounds Now take compared to the broad landscape of European festivals?

AA
Well, as you know, inclusion and diversity are words that are on everyone’s lips now. They are most often part of organisations’ internal regulations. But in reality, and this is something that artists are often quite bitter about, it’s just lip service: checking a box. That’s something that we want to avoid. Sounds Now is a really difficult project, but at the same time such an interesting one because when you talk about diversity and inclusion you’re talking about people, you’re talking about a fundamental aspect about their identity and the emotions run very deep. I think that a lot of organizations are thinking about inclusion and diversity but not really doing the hard work required. They’re just doing business as usual and sticking minorities on the programme. Sounds Now is really trying to do something different by taking these questions seriously, always questioning ourselves, admitting our failures. The way we work is by having a holistic approach. It shouldn’t just be about putting artists on stage and then we’re done. We also need to tackle these issues through courses, labs, symposia, workshops and publications to provide new entry points, incorporate different musical perspectives, and grow awareness.

RBM
Do you see a problem that you are maybe touching young people that are not or not yet in positions of power, because they’re still young or at the beginning of their careers and that teaching them is obviously something very sustainable in the long run, but maybe not in the near future because these people are obviously not owning the positions of power?

AA
Good question. I think I see the timeline differently from you.  The issue of inclusion is so vast. Indeed, right from the start of the project we asked ourselves: how much can we really achieve in a few years? How much we push the needle in contemporary music? The curators participating in the courses are in their late twenties to early thirties, they are the people in power tomorrow. We try to reach the current power positions differently, for example through our symposia, which bring in people who are directors of important festivals of contemporary music, or through our publications in magazines like Glissando or TURBA. Our activities don’t only target young people or emerging professionals.

RBM
How do you evaluate your activities?

AA
We have two ways of evaluating our projects. One is via external researchers that we hired. Their role is primarily to research our topics, but also to provide an objective external viewpoint on our activities, with recommendations for improvements. That’s been helpful. It’s very hard for the partners to have an outside view of what they do, and a comparison with other initiatives in Europe. To have an external point of view is very important to us, for objectivity. The second way is via partner meetings. There we present to each other the various activities that have taken place. As we do a lot of experimental formats and try new things, we have to be allowed to fail. Therefore, we talk about what worked, what didn’t work and what we could have done better. We also try to obtain statistics. One reason for this is because we need them for our final report. The EU wants to see how we have succeeded or not. I must say it’s been extremely difficult to obtain statistics, not perhaps relating to the participants and artists we work with, but concerning our audiences. They are a big part of our project goals, as we strive to widen and broaden them. I would say that this level of evaluation has had to be quite informal and represents our weakest point.

RBM
What struck me is that there’s not a single German festival participating in Sounds Now. Is there a specific reason for this?

AA
Often in these European projects, you have one organization who has a good idea or an issue they want to address, and then they sort of compose their partnership. Sounds Now is a little different, because the majority of the partners knew each other already and were already discussing these issues. They then decided to formalize it as a European project. That’s why originally there was no German partner, as the partnership developed out of an entity that was, to a certain extent, already formed. We’re actually in the process of creating a new application, as the project officially ends December 2024. We had hoped to reapply as large-scale and thus had contacted new partners, one of whom was Hellerau, to join our partnership. The current partnership was really enthusiastic about the opportunity to collaborate with Hellerau. Unfortunately the EU announced there would be no large-scale projects next year, so we had to let that go.

RBM
Could you elaborate on the future of Sounds Now?

AA
There’s no guarantee we’ll receive further funding right now, but if our application is successful, we would like to focus more on social and political urgency. It allows us to touch on many of the issues that we already deal with. Right now, women’s rights have been rolled back in some countries, there is an unprecedented amount of violence against LGBTQ people, nationalism is on the rise and of course there’s war, with artists at risk in exile. There is a lot of stuff going on in the world, and we would like to deal with the same issues as in the project’s first edition, but in a much more focused and urgent way.

We’ll probably do it for a shorter period of two years, to really be able to focus on this particular moment in time. We feel that as curators in contemporary music, you need to reflect on the time you’re living in. In today’s increasingly polarized society, we need different approaches to how we interact and relate to each other and the communities around us. Our project’s active support of inclusion, openness, diversity and intercultural exchange aims to be an artistic response (Sounds) to the current situation (Now).

This article is brought to you as part of the EM GUIDE project – an initiative dedicated to empowering independent music magazines and strengthen the underground music scene in Europe. Read more about the project at emgui.de

Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.