Crises in Asian Music the Manila Conference 1975

Extract

The Asian Composers' League Conference-Festival, held in Manila, the Philippines, last October, was only the third occasion at which large numbers of Asian composers had assembled to thrash out and try to solve their common problems. The League had evolved out of a new sense of regional identity, an explicitly stated desire to combat the dependence of isolated Asian composers on the distant European mainstream. The approach was one which could only have come from Asia; composers purported to ‘represent’ their country in a quasi-ambassadorial way, and the conference was opened officially by the Philippines' First Lady in person, accompanied by the President. The ‘national delegation’ status tended from the beginning to turn the conference into an uncomfortable hybrid.