1. Activities 2007-2009

The year 2007 was dominated by organisational work as Programme Chair for the 39th World conference of the International Council for Traditional Music (ICTM) in Vienna, 4-11 July 2007. It was the largest conference ever in the history if the ICTM, with about 400 presentations. At this conference I presented the preliminary version of my film about the Baduy minority group "Baduy life and music 1976-2003: Temptations for ascetics in West Java, Indonesia".

Further, I retired from teaching at Leiden University and attended conferences discussing issues concerning the 2003 UNESCO Convention for the safeguarding of the intangible cultural heritage in Delhi and Budapest. On 6-7 December 2007 I participated in the Expert Meeting on Intangible Cultural Heritage keywords, UNESCO Headquarters, Paris. See list of participants. I did the final editing of these Keywords in July 2008.

In February-March 2008 I travelled to Australia for the meeting of the Executive Board of the ICTM in Canberra, followed by the Memory of the World conference of UNESCO. On 18 February 2008 I presented the Australian National University (ANU) public lecture that was also the opening for the UNESCO Memory of the World conference. On 28 February I gave a lecture at Monash University about the music of the Baduy minority group of West Java and on 1 March showed my provisional film about this minority group for the Paguyuban Jawa at Margaret and Dris Kartomi's house in Melbourne.

In December 2008 my wife and I visited Malawi again, for the first time after 1971. I presented a digital copy of my music recordings from 1969-1971 in southern Malawi and a preliminary digital version of the documentation with it to the Department of Fine and Performing Arts, Chancellor College, University of Malawi in Zomba. On 10 December I gave a lecture about these music recordings and to my surprise it was attended by about 130 people.

In January and March 2009 I gave presentations about UNESCO policies regarding the 2003 convention. The first one was at the conference Sharing Intangible Cultural Heritage: Narratives and Representations in Oaxaca, Mexico, 22-24 January 2009. The second one was at the international symposium Mughamat/makamat and traditional modal music in the contemporary world, Baku, Azerbajian, 17-20 March 2009 (see photographs below). As there were many members of the International Council for Traditional Music (ICTM) I was also asked to give an opening address. Text. After the symposium I was one of the international jury members in the Space of Mugam - International contest of Mugam performers in which 20 groups took part, from Azerbaijan, Egypt, Germany/Iran, Iran, Iraq/USA, Kazakhstan, Morocco, Syria, Tajikistan, Turkey and Uzbekistan.

The international jury meeting of the 2nd Contest for better practices in community's ICH revitalization took part in Kyoto, Japan, 17-18 February 2009. The contest was organised by ACCU, the Asia/Pacific Cultural Centre for UNESCO. Apart from me, the jury members were Harriet DEACON (South Africa), Cherif Mohamed KHAZNADAR (France), KONO Toshiyuki (Japan), KIKUCHI Kensaku (Japan), Rieks SMEETS (Netherlands), SATO Kunio (Japan). In the ICTM Bulletin of April 2009 (see below) I wrote: "ACCU is one of the NGOs that set a very good example in developing safeguarding strategies to the member states of the 2003 UNESCO convention. It is a shame that its programme, for the greater part subsidised by the Japanese government, is now under threat of being closed down because of serious budget cuts."