A Non-Governmental Organization in Formal Consultative Relations with UNESCO
A new issue of the Bulletin of the ICTM (Volume 146, April 2021) is available for download, directly from the following links:
As always, both editions are completely identical as content is concerned. The only difference resides in the quality of the inline images. The Bulletin is formatted as a PDF document, so please make sure your device has an updated PDF reader installed, or you may experience difficulties while reading and/or printing it. If you are unsure, you can try downloading Adobe Reader, one of the most popular PDF-reading software, directly from this link.
Below you will find the Message from the Secretary General, written by Ursula Hemetek, as included on page 2 of the issue.
This is probably one of the most exiting Bulletins to have been published during my service as Secretary General. ICTM is discussing a change to its name, after exactly 40 years! Whereas in the past such decisions were taken by the Executive Board, now for the first time the membership will be able to vote on three options (see section “Changes to ICTM Statutes” on pages 6–9). There are other changes to the Statutes suggested as well, such as limiting the periods of service of ICTM officers. Please make sure that you are a member in good standing in 2021 so you can vote at the General Assembly, which will be a crucial one for the future of the Council. The 45th General Assembly of ICTM members will be held online on 24 July 2021 at 14:00 Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). Registration links will be sent to all members in good standing in due course.
Democracy and transparency have definitely improved in our Council, and this was certainly on my agenda when I started to serve as Secretary General, almost four years ago. The General Surveys of ICTM Members, conducted for the first time in 2018 and repeated in 2020, added to that process as well. We learned a lot from them, and I hope that will continue. The election process has also been improved, by being conducted exclusively online and handled by a third party platform (i.e., without the involvement of any ICTM authorities). There was an increase of participation in the elections, and I hope this trend will continue this year. There are very strong candidates for the Executive Board, as announced on page 11 of this Bulletin, and I am grateful to the Nomination Committee for their work in finding these, and to the candidates willing to stand for election. The elections will start on 1 May and again, only members in good standing will be eligible to vote.
The 46th ICTM World Conference will be held in Lisbon in 2022, as you know already, with a deadline for abstracts of 15 September 2021. Please note that the 47th World Conference will be held in July 2023, resuming the scheduling in odd-numbered years. More details can be found on page 5, including the names of the Programme Co-Chairs. You can start submitting your ideas for themes for that World Conference, which will be announced, along with the conference’s host institution, at the General Assembly in July 2021. Please do so in order to participate in designing the meeting.
We publish these dates now to make it easier for Study Groups to plan their symposia. In spite of the pandemic, Study Groups are active and very creative in finding new formats for meetings. You can read some of their reports and announcements in the pages of this Bulletin.
There are new representatives in our World Network, whom I want to welcome: the new Liaison Officer (LO) for Kazakhstan, Zakiya Sapenova, who succeeds Saule Utegalieva (who was LO for 26 years), and the new Chair of the National Committee for Brazil, Marilia Raquel Albornoz Stein, who succeeds Suzel Reily. My heartfelt thanks go to the outgoing representatives; thank you Saule and Suzel for your hard work and your dedication to ICTM!
An organization like ICTM lives only through its members. I have always felt that the position of Secretary General is an important link between the membership and the Executive Board. It is important to know about the ideas of the many colleagues that make up the Council. Therefore, I tried to listen on many occasions, like World Conferences and Study Group Symposia. Communication, listening, and understanding is very much dependent on a face-to-face environment. This possibility stopped more than a year ago, and nearly half of my time as Secretary General was affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. All personal meetings had to stop, no more on-site conferences, cancellations of symposia, the postponement of the World Conference… A pandemic is not something you would wish for if you are responsible for the finances of an organization, but ICTM has survived and also found creative ways of dealing with the situation.
One of these was an initiative led by EB member Tan Sooi Beng, the ICTM Dialogues. We announced these in the previous Bulletin, and in the meantime we have witnessed 5 of these Dialogues and, at least according to my experience, this is the most innovative format ICTM has ever created. The ICTM Dialogues are working towards the decolonization of the discipline and definitely show how to do it: being as inclusive as possible, including research partners in presentations, so that voices usually not present at scholarly gatherings can be heard, bottom-up instead of top-down approaches, topics chosen that definitely focus on socio-political relevance, dealing with different languages in a most communicative manner, and providing a platform for excellent ideas to decolonize the discipline.
I am so happy that soon after the Declaration of Ethical Principles and Professional Integrity was issued this initiative appeared. It actually was also on my agenda four years ago to promote the socio-political relevance of ethnomusicology. I am happy the Secretariat could add its share to make the Dialogues happen. Special thanks go to Executive Assistant Carlos Yoder, who technically supports the event and this is crucial: in an online format we are much more dependent on our technical devices than ever before.
This is my last message as Secretary General, because the next Bulletin, to be circulated in October, will be the responsibility of the next Secretary General. My four-year term ends in July 2021, and this date was determined when my work started in July 2017. It was a pleasure to be part of the editing committee of the Bulletin and to work with Carlos Yoder as Editor and Don Niles. I owe thanks to both of them, for their very professional work, the warm and friendly communication, and also for having fun together.
I “inherited” the Council’s Secretariat in good shape, and I will pass it on to my successor soon. Lee Tong Soon has been appointed new Secretary General of ICTM by the Executive Board. The act of transition will take place at the General Assembly. Lee Tong Soon meets all the requirements for the position, and I am sure he is going to do an excellent job. You can read about him in the following section. I wish him all the best for his new responsibility.
Thank you all for reading the Bulletin and being part of the ICTM family. It was a pleasure to serve the Council as Secretary General.
Hoping you will enjoy reading the many reports, announcements, calls for proposals, reviews and other news, I kindly remind you that the Bulletin of the ICTM is not attached to any membership or subscription, so you are very welcome to forward this e-mail to your colleagues.
While we always strive to make the Bulletin richer and more useful, it is a task which cannot be done alone — so I warmly invite you to send your opinions, comments, suggestions, ideas, or any other kind of feedback, so we can make together a better Bulletin for everybody.
Carlos Yoder
Editor, Bulletin of the ICTM