Article

From Donegal to Senegal: An Experience of the Process of Collaboration in Intercultural Ensemble Practice

Desi Wilkinson

Published in: Ethnomusicology Ireland 1 (2011)

Pages: 26-31 | Published Online: 2011

https://doi.org/10.64208/RTEW3181

Abstract

People ‘get together’ (or are voluntarily organised in ensembles or groups) for a wide variety of context specific and socially meaningful reasons. Symphony orchestras, ritual performance groupings, friendship groupings or professional bands; each shares to a significant extent an ‘artworld’ of aesthetic preferences, forms of formative enculturation and an organisational structure which is specific to their generic ‘ensemble’. A group’s creative dynamic may be led by one individual or arrived at by a more apparently democratic negotiation of a performed end result, which must be both imagined and communicated by the musicians involved. Where the participants in an ensemble come from very different cultural backgrounds, with divergent musical and possibly career aspirations this web of creative negotiation can become both complex and revealing. In this paper I will examine one example of such a process by offering a brief description of the specific socio-cultural and musical dynamics of a production that I was involved in during 2002. This production was comprised of Irish traditional musicians and Senegalese musicians. The description below does not provide a theoretical overview but it is an illustrative case study based on first hand experience and as such contributes to a topic in need of scholarly investigation.

Keywords: Collaboration, creativity, Irish traditional music

Author: Desi Wilkinson