The 2nd Conference of the International Council for Traditions of Music and Dance (ICTMD) NORDIC-BALTIC NETWORK, dedicated to “Cultural Self-Determination: Construction and Representation of Music and Dance Practices in Public Domain Performances”, will take place from Monday 26 to Thursday 29 May 2025, in Riga, Latvia, and will be hosted by the Jāzeps Vītols Latvian Academy of Music.
This conference is intended as a platform for the elaboration of practice models of music and dance performances that strengthen the cultural self-determination rearticulated as part of a sustainable, community-based process rather than solely as narrowly constructed political or legal entitlements. The three needs of the self-determination theory are basic to this discussion: autonomy, competence and relatedness. Self-determination is furthermore a condition that is asserted and acted upon. From this perspective, initiatives based on the potential of partnerships between academia and society in the field of cultural self-determination become significant for the issue of stewardship rather than ownership and also of resilience as a strategy to help sustain a community’s expressive culture. Thus, the construction and representation of music and dance practices in public domain performances take on particular significance within the cultural self-determination processes.
We are very glad to have Ignazio Macchiarella, from the University of Cagliari in Sardinia, Italy, as a keynote speaker. Full programme of the conference here.
“It is hard to imagine an ethnomusicology conference without the presence of music and dance. Thus we are very grateful to the Otaņķi ethnographic ensemble, to Liepāja Children and Youth Centre's folklore group "Ķocis", Suiti singers and bagpipe players, who will represent the local traditions of Nīca and Suiti cultural space to the attendees,” says the organiser of the conference, professor Anda Beitāne, the Liasson Officer of ICTMD in Latvia. It was her initiative to create the ICTMD NORDIC-BALTIC NETWORK, which held their first meeting in 2024 in Helsinki, Finland. More on ICTMD here.
Conference “Cultural Self-Determination: Construction and Representation of Music and Dance Practices in Public Domain Performances” is a part of the project “Cultural and Creative Ecosystem of Latvia as a Resource of Resilience and Sustainability”/CERS (No. VPP-MM-LKRVA-2023/1-0001) funded by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Latvia in the framework of the State Research Programme “Latvian Culture – a Resource for National Development” (2023–2026). It is co-organized by five partner institutions involved in the project – the Latvian Academy of Culture, the Jāzeps Vītols Latvian Academy of Music, the Art Academy of Latvia, the National Library of Latvia and the Institute of Literature, Folklore and Art of the University of Latvia. The State Research Programme is administered by the Latvian Council of Science.
