The Ureuk World Music House project was born of the dream to preserve musical cultures by creating traditional spaces for performance and community gathering. In the quickly modernizing world, as traditional architecture is swiftly destroyed to make room for modern high-rises, the different aspects of traditional culture have been scattered to disparate corners of libraries.
The premise of this project is that a culturally unique ambiance can help people make sense of traditional music. The goal is to restore culturally-significant architectural gems, and feature them in a way that incites deeper appreciation of traditional arts, meaningful community togetherness, and global interaction.
In many world cultures, traditional music is an oral family legacy, taught over decades from parent to child (without written music). In our current era of quick-moving modern life, which is often money-centric, serious interest in dedication to the long learning process is disappearing. In turn, many traditional arts, sacred intangible cultural treasures that were maintained for millennia, are quietly disappearing. The hope of this world music house project, and related projects to come, is that by creating small music centers in different locations around the world, local people will have more opportunities to experience and appreciate their own traditional music in an ambiance that respects the dignity of the music's roots. In such an environment, international audiences have the opportunity to more fully understand and appreciate the unique and precious traditional music from foreign cultures. Further, international musicians-in-residence have the opportunity to create inter-cultural synergy by sharing their art in a space created especially for preserving and promoting world music.
With global tourism thriving, traditional music has undergone the degradation of "tourist-ification;" mass concerts that give a quick, superficial taste of traditional music to foreign audiences. While concerts produced specifically for tourists may have traditional elements, the presentation is usually rushed, improperly explained, and out of context with respect to the roots and essence of the art. Often the performers are beginner or intermediate-level students. The drawback to what otherwise is a good system of presenting culturally intrinsic music, is that the audience members are left with an incomplete idea of the music, and usually walk away from concerts thinking "what interesting and strange music." When audience members are actually brought into an environment that matches the traditional music, an essence reaches beyond the ears, and captures the heart. World music being heard for the first time is then no longer considered "strange," as it has been deeply relayed in a way that preserves it's majesty.
The Ureuk World Music House is both a center for community togetherness, encouraging cultural understanding and interchange through the conduit of the arts, and a step towards preservation both of traditional architecture and the intangible cultural assets of traditional music.
