The Austrian Volksliedwerk is currently offering three very different projects across Austria to experience archive material on folk music. The basis of all activities in the Volksliedwerk Association are the collective holdings of the folk song archives.
In the Online exhibition “Sound Traces of Homeland. The RAVAG “Folk Song Singing” series 1934-1937 focuses on the singing of the mostly rural population from 1934 to 1937 as part of the “Volksliedersingen” series by Radio-Verkehrs-AG, the forerunner of the ORF. The exhibition not only shows protagonists and audio documents, it also presents the events in the ideological context of the Dollfuß-Schuschnigg dictatorship (1934-1938), which had a vital interest in building an Austrian identity. The important historical audio holdings on Austrian folk music are part of the UNESCO “Memory of Austria”. The exhibition is a cooperation between the Austrian National Library and the Phonogram Archive of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the Austrian Folk Song Society.
October 2024 to March 31, 2025
Link to the exhibition: https://ausstellung.onb.ac.at/online-ausstellungen-tdh?tx_jomuseo_pi2011showall%5Baction%5D=showexhibition&tx_jomuseo_pi2011showall%5Bcontroller%5D=Exhibition&tx_jomuseo_pi2011showall%5Bex%5D=12
Under the motto „Ausdrahn: Village Party & Volxfest” Performers and musicians from the EU project Village Party and the Volxfest project, with the three European Capitals of Culture 2024: Salzkammergut, Bad Ischl, Bodø in Norway and Tartu in Estonia November 23, 2024, from 6 p.m. in the Stephaneum in Bad Goisern an evening together. The audience is invited to participate in games, competitions, rhythmic and musical elements, traditional dances and fun movements. Forms of celebration from the Arctic, Estonia and Austria are used that are no longer common today. Using material from archive sources, they are reconstructed and embedded in contemporary social contexts and are intended to stimulate new developments – a future of folk art. Under the motto “The art and power of celebration,” participants and visitors experience a culture of togetherness and cultural affiliations from different perspectives. The aim of “Ausdrahn – Village Party & Volxfest” is to incorporate diversity as well as international and intersectional perspectives into regional folk cultural expressions. In the artistic process, questions about origins and developments in social, contemporary and international discourses are answered differently than in conventional settings. “Ausdrahn: Village Party & Volxfest” is the third part of the Volxfest series, which takes place as an artistic research project on the topic of celebration as part of the Cultural Capital Bad Ischl, Salzkammergut 2024. It is a joint project by Art in Motion/Simon Mayer, Kartellet/Sigurd -Johan Heide, Johanna-Adele Jüssi, Estonia and Austrian folk song work/Irene Egger.
The integration of content from the archive is also possible through this School project “With all senses”which the Austrian Volksliedwerk is also conducting in schools this school year. As part of project funding, further training, projects and workshops for educators are supported and teaching materials for regular music lessons are created in order to promote the teaching of music in schools during regular operations. The aim is to teach teachers low-threshold skills and methods based on folk music materials for music lessons. This increases the quality of music lessons and has a positive effect on the shortage of skilled workers. The focus is to counteract musical deficits, especially in regular lessons and in socially disadvantaged milieus who cannot afford private music lessons. This means equal opportunities for all children to enjoy music and creative learning, regardless of their origin and with what resources. The project aims to do justice to the proportion of people with a migrant background in schools.
Ausdrahn: Village Party & VOLXFEST
Datum: November 23, 2024, 6:00 p.m
Art: Performances/stage
Ort: Stephaneum Bad Goisern
Rudolf-von-Alt-Weg 9
4822 Bad Goisern on Lake Hallstatt
URL: https://volksliedwerk.at/2023/10/12/volxfest-die-kunst-und-kraft-des-feierns/