The Future Sounds Of Folk

The Future Sounds Of Folk

“The Future Sounds Of Folk is not ethnomusicology for the faint-hearted; rather it is a journey to experience and rediscover the history and tradition of folk, not as the past, but one with a future, and one that would appear well worth waiting for.” – The Wire (#318)

Imagining the sounds of the post-folk. The Future Sounds Of Folk attempts to use the diverse musical traditions of Indonesia as a starting point for the development of new and emerging amalgams of experimental/contemporary music.

This project is a collaborative work between The UnifiedField and Steim, it was conceptualize in April 2008 by Marc Chia and fieldwork in Indonesia commenced on 01/01/2010 and was carried out by Marc Chia and Marta Moreno with the support of Steim.

Goals Of The Project

- Explore different ways of interpreting the past musical heritage of Indonesia with a contemporary vision.
- Preservation and diffusion of declining and/or lesser known musical forms in the Indonesian archipelago. - Facilitating the creation of new artistic works.
- Introducing to a wide and diverse set of international audiences the emerging amalgams of traditional and experimental, left-field music from Indonesia.

Methodology

This process is broken down into various stages:
- initial field research in Indonesia (in collaboration with artists, musicologists, anthropologists, ecologists, and practitioners from other fields who engage with fringe cultures).
- documentation and creation of a database of the musicians/performances in the form of audio, video, photo and a website.
- organizing The Future Sounds Of Folk Festival with the selected Indonesian musicians at STEIM (Netherlands).
- production of a small 30 page The Future Sounds Of Folk book with accompanying CD.