A new issue of the Bulletin of the ICTM (Volume 142, January 2020) is available for download, directly from the following links:

1. Bulletin of the ICTM Vol. 142 (January 2020), good quality (2.7 MB). Recommended for reading on screen only, and for users of slower Internet connections. 
2. Bulletin of the ICTM Vol. 142 (January 2020), best quality (7.4 MB). Recommended for those intending to print the Bulletin.

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. 

Welcome the new year, may it bring to all of us whatever we wish for! It is a good time to sum up the last year. As I mentioned in my Christmas message, 2019 was a ground-breaking year for ICTM. I am not going to repeat the whole message, but I wanted to remind you of our terrific Bangkok World Conference, the first one in Southeast Asia and the largest in the history of the Council. Another fact is very much connected to my personal agenda which I envisioned when I took over the position of Secretary General in 2017: to further democracy and transparency. In that respect things look good: last year’s elections had the highest turnout ever recorded, as almost 50% of eligible voters participated. Plus, the membership continues to grow, and the first survey of members was a success. 

My other goal was to concentrate on socio-political and ethical issues. Last year the ICTM established a Declaration of Ethical Principles and Professional Integrity. The socio-political relevance of the discipline is featured in the new publication Ethnomusicology Matters: Influencing Social and Political Realities, which consists of papers presented at the symposium we organized in Vienna in 2017 to welcome the ICTM Secretariat (see featured publications in this Bulletin). The new Music and Minorities Research Centre in Vienna (MMRC), funded by the Wittgenstein Award, was presented to the public in November 2019. There is a strong socio-political emphasis in all research that is going to be conducted there. The guiding principles of research are based on engaged ethnomusicology, dialogical knowledge production, and on countering power imbalances. It is closely connected to the ICTM Study Group on Music and Minorities and the advisory board consists of ICTM members. I think this is a another example for the importance of ICTM. The Centre also owes its existence to the international network of ICTM, in particular to the important exchange of ideas that has happened during the symposia of the Study Group on Music and Minorities since 1997. Ethnomusicological minority research gained its importance in this environment and many colleagues contributed to it. Therefore, the existence of this first centre for research on music and minorities worldwide is another success of ICTM. 

When looking at Study Groups there also seems to be a growing interest in influencing social and political realities. There are four of them explicitly dealing with such issues: Applied Ethnomusicology; Music and Minorities; Music, Education and Social Inclusion; and Music, Gender, and Sexuality. There is also a new Study Group-in-the-Making on Music and Dance in Indigenous Postcolonial Contexts. Other Study Groups include this agenda into their activities as well. As you can see in the Calendar of Events in this Bulletin, in 2020 there will be 20 Study Group symposia in all parts of the world, and I think this shows the liveliness and significance of these important bodies of ICTM. 

There is quite a bit of news about the World Network. We updated the list of countries that were lacking a representative, and identified those with recent vacancies. Now the Council has official representation in 121 countries and regions. I would like to welcome the following new ICTM representatives and thank the outgoing officials: the new Chair of the National Committee for Israel, Moshe Morad (succeeding Essica Marks); the new Chair of the National Committee for the UK, Shzr Ee Tan (succeeding Keith Howard); the new Liaison Officer for Thailand, Pornprapit Phoasavadi (succeeding Bussakorn Binson); the new Liaison Officer for Denmark: Kiku Day (succeeding Eva Fock, see her last report as Chair of the former National Committee in this Bulletin); the new Chair of the National Committee for China: Qi Kun (succeeding Xiao Mei); and the new Chair of the Regional Committee for Australia and New Zealand: Brigitta Scarfe (succeeding Catherine Grant). I would also want to welcome two new National Committees that have been formed recently: for Chile, chaired by Jacob Rekedal, and for Malaysia, chaired by Tan Sooi Beng.

This Bulletin also contains the Second Notice and First Call for Proposals for the next ICTM World Conference, to be held in Lisbon in 2021. The submissions website is ready, so you are welcome to submit your abstracts! The deadline for submissions is 30 September 2020. 

We are very sad to announce that the organizer of the 1999 World Conference in Hiroshima. Tsukada Kenichi, has passed away. He served as an Executive Board member and in many other functions within the Council. We are grateful for all the energy he dedicated to ICTM during his life, and will always honour his memory (see obituary on pages 4–5).

I want to close my message with some very nice news. Our dear Vice President Svanibor Pettan has been recently honoured with a thematic volume of the journal Muzikološki zbornik dedicated to him. The title is Music, Migration and Minorities: Perspectives and Reflections, one of the major themes in Svanibor’s professional career. My sincerest congratulations to Svanibor and to the volume’s, editors, Ana Hofman and Mojca Kovačič!

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