SWEDISH SOUTH ASIAN STUDIES NETWORK

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Royal College of Music (KMH), Stockholm:

Postal address: Kungl. Musikhögskolan, Box 27711, SE-115 91 Stockholm, Sweden
Visiting address: Valhallavägen 105
Fax: +46 (0)8 664 14 24
Web page: http://www.kmh.se/home_en.php

Contact person: Johan Falk at the International Office, phone: +46 (0)8 16 18 41

Founded way back in 1771 the Royal College of Music is one of the oldest music colleges in the world. It offers unique opportunities for combining a wealth of tradition with open-minded creativity of the highest international standard. Students in the six departments are given the opportunity to deepen and develop their playing or singing, their musical genres or their educational specialities. KMH has been involved in various international joint projects.

South Asia related activities at KMH:

An exchange programme was started in 2002 between KMH and the Bangalore Music of School, India, and Coimbatore Music school, Tamil Nadu, India. The programme aims at supporting the (updated) teaching of Western as well as Indian music, and experimenting with different kinds of fusion forms. It was first initiated by Mark Lomnäs at KMH, who originally hails from Coimbatore, after being presented to Darryl Atkinson, music teacher at IC Convent.
Mark and Cecilia Öhrwall (photo to the right), also teacher at KMH, spent six months in Bangalore during the Spring 2003 as part of the programme, and in May 2003 a group of six teachers from Bangalore and Coimbatore visited KMH in Stockholm in order to study the Swedish organisation of music schools. When an official Swedish delegation (led by the Swedish Minister Leif Pagrotsky) visited India in April 2003 a ”Sweden in Bangalore festival” was  launched at the Leela Palace in Bangalore, where musical entertainment in the form of Swedish Chamber Music from the 18th century was performed by the Bangalore School of Music in cooperation with the Stockholm Royal College of Music.

The programme developed into a three-years project, that in January 2004 was awarded SEK 10,9 Million from Sida, the Swedish Development Cooperation Agency. In the motivation it is stated that a deepened knowledge in Western music pedagogics and methodology leads to better self-confidence, to democratic values, and equality withing music education. The teaching of music in the Indian classical tradition is said to be available mostly for people from privileged classes. More information on the exchange project (in Swedish only).
The main partner on the Indian side has been Ms. Aruna Sunderlal, Principal of Bangalore School of Music. In May 2003 she visited Sweden, and along with Mark Lomnäs she participated in a lecture meeting arranged by Svensk-Indiska Föreningen in Stockholm. Read a summary of the meeting.
The project was phased out during 2006.

A totally different India related initiative consists of a collaboration that the Dept. of Folk Music at KMH has with the two renowned Indian musicians K Shivakumar (violin) and V Shyamsundar (mridangam). In the Fall 2006 they were invited to teach at at KMH, and also participated in the Days of Pedagogy (KMHs pedagogdagar 2006) from 30 October to 1 November. Workshops were arranged where they were able to share their Indian experiences on how to inspire and motivate young people. They have a long relation to Sweden, having worked together with the Swedish folk musicians Mats Edén and Ellika Frisell. In October 2002 they also toured Sweden with a programme called ”When North India meets South India”, giving performances in several places, among them Stockholm, Västerås, Malmö (photo to the right), Göteborg and the Swedish West coast.