This theme was touched upon briefly in a public session. Six speakers showed video fragments of what they perceived as striking examples of musical (and cultural) encounters. The videos and stories varied greatly, from colonials in the thirties to a personal account of meeting music. The common outcome was that cultures that encountered each other seemingly on equal footing, often turned out to be a confusing or confused mixture of values – not seldom with a suggestion of western superiority.

Huib Schippers (Rotterdam Conservatory) showed a fragment of the Johnsons, an English couple that travelled into Central Africa in the 1930s. Among the film footage they brought home, there is fragment in which Mrs. Johnson is teaching jazz music and dance to the Pygmies in an unforgivably silly and superior way. The irony of a white couple stiffly teaching music with black roots to Africans came across very wells. The image of the phonograph positioned on top of an African drum served as a perfect metaphor to capture the cultural implications of this encounter.

Keith Howard (School of Oriental and African Studies, London) had brought with him examples of Korean music in various situations and contexts, ranging from English students playing parade music to performance in a Korean village or music and dance at an English football match. New context clearly generated new meaning in each of the examples, but sometime made it seem oddly out of place.

Dennis Winter (Dunya, world music festival) played the music of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. His encounter with this music made him realise that music can be interesting and worthwhile as music ‘an sich’, unburdened by cultural context, ownership or prejudice (in this way Sufi music from the Indian subcontinent). In his work as a festival programmer this is an important notion.

Rob Boonzajer Flaes (QRA Cultural consultant, Netherlands Arts Council) showed a piece of his own documentary about polka. This musical tradition travelled with the colonist from Austria to the other end of the world, where it took root in Mexico. Here the polka was changed from a high-brow musical form to dance music for the lower classes – a change that also the way the music was played. In his documentary, Dr. Boonzajer Flaes confronts exponents of both forms of the same music with each other through recordings and playing with musicians in Austria and Mexico.

Trevor Wiggins (Dartington College of Arts) is involved with music of West Africa. In Ghana western music –and its education systems- were adopted. Currently there are many programmes to bring back African musical heritage to children in schools. Dr. Wiggins showed examples of how the music is taught in different situations (village, school) and how it is brought to a new context.

Bart Gruson (Rotterdam Conservatory) used his video fragments to illustrate the development of bossanova dance. Bossanova was developed in Rio de Janeiro as a musical style, without dance. However, people in New York and other cities in the United States requested a dance – so soon afterwards a number of bossanova dance classes could be followed. The dance was presented as ‘authentic’ with the music.