Roskilde Festival Gives World Music Award to Egyptian Center for Local Music

The board of the Roskilde Festival World Music Award (Denmark) has chosen the El Mastaba Center for Folk Music as the 2011 recipient of the award, which is worth € 30,000.

The award will be presented to representatives from the Center at WOMEX 2011 on Sunday 30 October. WOMEX takes place in Denmark from 26 – 30 October in Copenhagen.

The El Mastaba Center for Folk Music aims to spread knowledge and to document, preserve and develop a range of traditional Egyptian music genres. The Center is awarded with the Roskilde Festival World Music Award particularly for its effort to introduce traditional Egyptian music to youth and children. The Center was founded in July 2000.

Steen Jørgensen, chairman of the Roskilde Festival Charity Society, explains why the El Mastaba Center for Folk Music was chosen as this year’s recipient: ”It is important to us that we support the Egyptian and other Arabic populations in these times. Music and its surrounding culture has and will always be a strong medium and source of inspiration for people wanting a free life. We wish to help the El Mastaba Center to ensure their continued work with preserving and developing traditional Egyptian music for all generations.”

Peter Hvalkof, world music booker at Roskilde Festival, is happy that the Roskilde Festival World Music Award in 2011 is given to the El Mastaba Center: ”The kind of work that the El Mastaba Center does to ensure a basis for traditional Egyptian music needs to be recognized for its inspirational value to the entire scene for world music. It makes really good sense to be able to follow-up on an outstanding concert with Rango of the El Mastaba Center at this year’s Roskilde Festival in awarding the Center the Roskilde Festival World Music Award.”

Upon receiving the good news, founder and Director of the El Mastaba Center for Folk Music, Zakaria Ibrahim, stated: ”We are very honored to receive this award and delighted to join our peers in Zanzibar and Mali whom we understand share similar motivations in developing cultural projects and preserving traditions. I am also very happy I had the opportunity to visit Roskilde Festival in the summer for a performance with our Rango musicians on the new Gloria stage.”

This is the third and, until further notice, final year Roskilde Festival presents the World Music Award to a fortunate recipient at WOMEX.

The Roskilde Festival World Music Award was founded to support development through education in traditional as well as contemporary local music forms in order to ensure a cultural stepping stone in the developing countries with particular regard to children and youth.

The Award will be presented to representatives from the El Mastaba Center by the director of the Oslo World Music Festival, Alexandra Archetti Stølen, during the WOMEX Award Ceremony on Sunday 30 October 12:00 – 14:00 at DR Koncerthuset/Studio 2.

Roskilde Festival Charity Society would like to thank WOMEX and EFWMF (The European Forum of Worldwide Music Festivals) for their support and help in finding the recipients of the Roskilde Festival World Music Award.

More information about the center at: http://www.elmastaba.org