In this conversation with Ultima composers and performers, we explore different ways folk can reinvent itself and inspire new creative approaches to music and other art forms. We also consider the problematic relationships between innovation and tradition,authenticity and experimentalism, nostalgia and thirst for the new.
Composer Eivind Buene is intrigued by a tendency amongst Norwegian new music composers today which he identifies as ‘neofolklorism’, in other words, the combination of folk music with newer techniques, languages and technologies. This will be the starting point of a discussion of the role of folk in the contemporary musical imagination, with London based Japanese vocalist/composer Hatis Noit and folk improviser and author Benedicte Maurseth.
Moderator Rob Young is the author of Electric Eden, a wide-ranging history of the idea of folk in British 20th century music, from classical to folk rock and experimental music.
The talk is in English.