One of Pop, electronic or experimental music’s most important characteristics is to create new hybrid musical forms from the myriad influences of different cultures. Individual appropriation, idiosyncratic readings, misunderstandings, or (mis)interpretations informed by different cultural perceptions play a large role, and can be inspiring as well as limiting. Reductive cultural clichés are a distinctive feature and essential marketing tool for the largely western, but so-called "global" Pop and media industry, which also does little to promote more equal opportunities for richer and poorer countries regarding access to cultural resources, production and distribution. Certain state-funded institutions do make a contribution in this respect, yet their very nature distances them from certain aspects of production, and from the places where things actually happen. They need to cooperate with independent initiatives and projects. Artistic encounters and cooperation across cultural and continental borders, beyond stereotypes, unfiltered by the culture industry’s vested interests, and on an equal footing therefore remains very much the task of small-scale initiatives and labels, and of promoters and artists themselves. Since the early seventies independent structures have opened up the music market in Europe and Noth America. Is such experience a relevant model for the interlacing of South and North Americas’ music scenes and those of Western and Eastern Europe and beyond? Can festivals and independent organizations be forums for an exchange of information or – especially if they can acquire public funding – a link in the communication chain? All participants in tonight’s panel – planned also as a working session – are involved in projects aimed at these kinds of goals.
> see also > INTERLACE II and > INTERLACE III
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