For the third and, until further notice, final year the Roskilde Festival will present the World Music Award (RFWMA) to a fortunate recipient at WOMEX.
The winner of this year's Award is El Mastaba Center for Egyptian Folk Music
The board of the RFWMA has chosen the El Mastaba Center for Egyptian Folk Music as this year's recipient of the Award worth €30,000. The El Mastaba Center for Egyptian Folk Music aims to spread knowledge and to document, preserve and develop a range of traditional Egyptian music genres. The centre receives its Award particularly for its effort to introduce traditional Egyptian music to youth and children.
The Award will be presented to representatives from the centre by the Director of the Oslo World Music Festival, Alexandra Archetti Stølen, on Sunday morning, 30 October 2011, at the Award Ceremony accompanied by a WOMEX Networking Breakfast, both open to WOMEX delegates only.
The El Mastaba Center for Egyptian Folk Music was founded in July 2000. Steen Jørgensen,
chairman of the Roskilde Festival Charity Society, explains why the El Mastaba
Center for Egyptian Folk Music was chosen as this year's recipient: "It is important to
us that we support the Egyptian and other Arabic populations in these times.
Music and its surrounding culture has and will always be a strong medium and
source of inspiration for people wanting a free life. We wish to
help the El Mastaba Center to ensure their continued work with preserving and
developing traditional Egyptian music for all generations."
Peter Hvalkof, world music booker at Roskilde Festival, is happy that the RFWMA in 2011 is given to the El Mastaba Center: "The kind of work that the El Mastaba Center does to ensure a basis for traditional Egyptian music needs to be recognised for its inspirational value to the entire scene for world music. It makes really good sense to be able to follow-up on an outstanding concert with Rango of the El Mastaba Center at this year's Roskilde Festival in awarding the Centre the RFWMA."
Upon receiving the good news, founder and Director of the El Mastaba Center for Folk Music, Zakaria Ibrahim, stated: "We are very honoured to receive this award and delighted to join our peers in Zanzibar and Mali whom we understand share similar motivations in developing cultural projects and preserving traditions. I am also very happy I had the opportunity to visit Roskilde Festival in the summer for a performance with our Rango musicians on the new Gloria stage."
The RFWMA was founded to support development through education in traditional as well as contemporary local music forms in order to ensure a cultural stepping stone in the developing countries with particular regard to children and youth.
Roskilde Festival Charity Society would like to thank WOMEX and EFWMF (The European Forum of Worldwide Music Festivals) for their support and help in finding the recipients of the RFWMA.
Photo: El Tanbura at the Barbican, London, by Mark Allan
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