Musical Belongings

Since 2023, the Humboldt Forum has become a venue for musical encounters: early music from Europe meets traditional music from around the world: India, Latin America, China, the Caribbean, Nigeria, Tanzania, Cameroon, Mongolia.

With its project MUSICAL BELONGINGS, die lautten compagney Berlin, one of the most renowned ensembles for historical performance practice, explores the possibilities of music beyond the colonial canon.

Together with musicians and composers from the invited cultures, the orchestra is searching for a transcultural practice: How can new sounds and hybrid forms be found that elude the label of ‘world music’? What similarities exist between playing and composing techniques? With their project, the musicians respond to the collections of the Ethnological Museum and the Museum of Asian Art, which house many instruments and the Berlin Phonogram Archive. In the accompanying discourse, the artists and the audience take a postcolonial look at the musical practice of the European classical music industry.

With this project, die lautten compagney aims to contribute to the formation of a global society in the 21st century, to question its own practice and, in exchange with the invited musicians, to contribute to a postcolonial musical practice.

The MUSICAL BELONGINGS project was funded by the Federal Commissioner for Culture and the Media (BKM) as part of the “Excellent Orchestral Landscape Germany” program from 2023 to 2025.