Berlin, Germany - The WOMEX organization has announced the list of conferences that will take place at the 2005 meeting. The Worldwide Music Expo >WOMEX is the largest international gathering for world music professionals. It is a great networking point exclusively dedicated to world, roots, folk, ethnic, traditional and local music of all kinds.

List of Conference Sessions:

Simon Broughton
Editor of Songlines
Session title: World Music DVDs. Do they deliver?
Session abstract:
Television is the ideal medium for a colorful genre like world music and the DVD market is growing rapidly. You can go deep into the heart of a performance, or witness the context in places you could never go. Good direction can convey the dynamism and energy of a great live performance. But is there any sense in filming world music on European stages? And who wants to watch a documentary more than once? Can DVDs make commercial sense? A session that shows the best and worst of recent DVDs and encourages opinions to be aired.

Alberto Cottica
The Hub
session title: Music as a development policy tool in Europe.
session subtitle: Can the music industry be an agent of economic development?
session abstract:
Recent economic literature emphasises the role of local culture to foster innovation and development. The general idea is that regions or cities, to be successful, need to attract and keep happy the people that come up with new things, and this entails attaching a positive ethical value to things like individualism, will to take risks, being “fringe”. Music is an excellent area in which you can promote “creative ethos”. It commands enormous motivation; it requires a great dose of entrepreneurship; it has almost no capital requirements.

Ninder Johal
Session title: Bhangramusic is it here to stay?
Session subtitle: History, Present & Future of Bhangra!
Session abstract:
The session will look at the history of Bhangra. It will discuss the main labels and artists. Discussions will also include marketing, distributions and political problems. The role of the asian culture will also be discussed. We will discuss the success of Panjabi MC, its implications on the Bhangra movement and the future of the industry. We will look at the difficulties placed on the industry and the misconceptions regarding Bhangra industry and the confusion between Bollywood and Bhangria.

Aki Nawaz
Nation Records
Session title: Has Britain failed its communities
Session subtitle: How the communities make Britain Funky
Session abstract:
Bobby Friction Radio 1 DJ- John Pandit from ADF-Nitin Sawney- and Bhangra artists to discuss the evolution of the contribution of Asian musicians in the UK to the bigger movement and how it stands today, politically, socially and culturally. We can discuss the movement in terms of global appeal yet why has it not become an absolute part of British society especially in terms of timeline.

Robert Plant
Musician
Session title: Robert Plant: Meet the artists
Session subtitle: World Music- the rock musician's perspective
Session abstract:
Robert Plant's interest in world music, and particularly the music of West Africa, is well known, and he featured in the film of The Festival of the Desert in Northern Mali. In this conference session he will explore how his interest in African music developed, and talk about the musicians who have played a key role in this process.

Renata Rosa
Company Outro Brasil/Musician
Session title: Musical Scene in Recife and it´s traditional influences
Session subtitle: Relations between traditional music and the new productions
Session abstract:
Recife is booming. Manny eyes are watching out to see what is happening musically in Recife nowadays. Traditional fiddles, indigenous poliphonies, big drums, improvised poetry are day by day taking part in the urban musical scene while different clubs open their spaces to traditional groups from the countryside. What are people in Recife doing with their roots music? Which are the principal musical traditions involved in this process? Why so many interesting and different ensembles are coming out everyday? How is the record market working with all the alternative production? And what about the radios, the TVs? These questions and others will be answered in the lecture.

Alexander Schischlik
UNESCO/Global Alliance for Cultural Diversity/Division of Arts and Cultural Enterprise
Session title: Fine tuning music festivals
Session subtitle: Catalysts for creativity: making music festivals professionally sustainable'
Session abstract:
The Global Alliance for Cultural Diversity brokers new partnerships between public and private actors to support local cultural industries - such as music, film and publishing - in developing countries. It works to increase the availability of diverse, affordable cultural products worldwide, to prevent piracy and to encourage respect for international copyright regulations. In the framework of the Global Alliance, UNESCO aims to foster links between music festivals from developing countries so as to facilitate knowledge sharing through mentoring and training schemes.