The Need for Otherness: Hispanic Music at ‘Warsaw Autumn’

Abstract

In 2008, the 51st International Festival of Contemporary Music ‘Warsaw Autumn’ featured music by Spanish, Portuguese, and Hispanic-Luso American composers, the largest review of this music that has ever taken place in Poland. More than half of the 82 composers selected came from the Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal) and Latin-American countries (Mexico, Argentina, Cuba, Ecuador, Chile and Brazil). The festival organisers also invited several orchestras and ensembles from Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking regions. In their descriptions, the festival’s organisers often referred to Hispanic cultures as ‘exotic’, ‘mysterious’, ‘dynamic’, ‘sensual’, and ‘spiritual’. In this article, I analyse how this music was contextualised, and how the notion of music from a ‘nation’ was constructed there, by means of the programme book of the festival, press reviews, and committee reports. I examine discourses accompanying the performances, the decision-making process within the repertoire committee, the collaboration with various national agencies, and other institutions funding the presence of Spanish and Hispanic-Luso American music. Finally, I look at the consequences and implications of such a broad exposure.