The conference is jointly organised by the Fondazione Giorgio Cini’s Intercultural Institute of Comparative Music Studies and several Berlin institutions:
Humboldt Universität, Stiftung Humboldt Forum, Ethnologisches Museum; Staatliches Institut für Musikforschung and the Universität der Künste.
The conference aims to explore the role of music at the time of the division of Berlin and Europe during the Cold War. In particular, it intends to bring together scholars and witnesses of that time to assess how, across the divide, both blocs pursued a cosmopolitan perspective and how the dissemination of various world musics influenced the cultural and political dynamics of the day.
The International Institute for Traditional Music (IITM), active from 1963 to 1994 (the dates considered by the conference), played an important
role in those years. The foundation of the IITM – sister institute of the Venetian Intercultural Institute of Comparative Music Studies – by the Indologist and music researcher Alain Daniélou with funds from the Ford Foundation took place in a political-cultural context characterised by the East-West conflict. This context will be the subject of reflection, focusing on the particular situation in Berlin and assessing how music constituted as much an element of division as of connection, contributing to the construction of original and sometimes shared paths in a period of deep divisions, reconsidering their cultural legacy.
The event, which also includes performances, is an ideal follow-up to the conference organised at the Fondazione Giorgio Cini in 2019, in collaboration
with the Stiftung Humboldt Forum, on the same themes.