Mondomix turns a corner

Some will call it the seven year itch. Others might claim it is a dangerous jump into the unknown. But, for the small yet dedicated team behind Mondomix, October 2004 is marked in red as a coming of age. Seven years after the French internet company set out on its quest to provide world music fans with keys to this genre, this month sees the welcome return of its free magazine (out every two months), the release of its first commercial DVD, and the start of an ambitious world music project for TV5, featuring 100 top world music artists.
It is unquestionably the music magazine that is the most energy-consuming and ambitious project. The first half of last year saw six issues of the free publication reach over two million French readers who read hundreds of reviews on the latest world music releases and the musicians behind them. The experiment proved a success, but needed to be firmed up to better reach its target audience of urban and cosmopolitan music lovers, aged between 18 and 45. The new, leaner 48-page version features interviews or portraits of the likes of Khaled, Mory Kanté, Sizzla, Taranta Power, Nahawa Doumbia, Seu Jorge and Rachid Taha. There is also a one-page spread on the latest "....via Kaboul" project uniting forty of Central Asia's best artists for an October tour in Europe.
Simultaneously, Mondomix brings out its inaugural commercial DVD on one of Paris' central concert venues for traditional and world classical music, the Théatre de la Ville. Since 1968, the elegant building on Chatelet square has hosted groups from India, Indonesia, Latin America and beyond, in traditional, but high-quality concerts that the 180 minute film reflects. The documentary relays the ideals that the management has set itself over the past four decades and seeks to explain how music that is often totally alien to local French culture continues to captivate large and varied Parisian audiences.
This phenomenon is likely to be re-enforced by the 100 portraits that are being finalised in the Mondomix studios for France's international TV5 station. These are punchy, two-minute exchanges with musicians from the four corners of the earth. For decades, they have galvanised local and international audiences with music that combines their cultural heritage with new, mainly urban, musical expressions. The mini-films draw on the rich archives Mondomix has accumulated since 2000 and, from January onwards, are to be broadcast daily throughout the French-speaking world.
Not to be forgotten, however, is the www.mondomix.com website in French and English that has been the motor behind the company's success. It has accumulated 10,000 pages, 2,000 videos and several more thousand audio interviews, and is visited by 50,000 music fans every month. All for a total of 10 million connections monthly! But the time has arrived to revamp the graphics and the radio contributions by British music specialists, Charlie Gillett and Ian Anderson. And we are also to introduce a new weekly feature, the Mondomix Album of the Week. This, in answer to the dozens of new CDs that arrive every day at our office perched above the small Cité Paradis cul-de-sac in the Paris city centre.
Proof, if need be, of a burgeoning world music market that is recognised as the fastest-expanding genre in the music business. Such a phenomenon will be debated at the end of the month in the context of the 2004 Womex in Essen, Germany. For five days, Mondomix will cover this annual gathering in English and French, as professionals and world music artists provide pointers to the tendencies and musicians likely to break through in 2005. Don't leave this page...

Daniel Brown, October 2004.

• article submitted by: Daniel Brown, Mondomix Media