Dimitrije Buzarovski

The IRAM Phenomenon – IRAM in its Fifth Year - Multimedia

The London Conference ‘Reflections on Macedonian Music - Past and Future’ is undoubtedly the best indicator of IRAM’s (Institute for Research and Archiving of Music) growth and development. Each new conference reflects on different topics from contemporary and past Macedonian music culture, as well as IRAM’s achievements between the last two conferences.

The introduction to the previous London Conference stressed IRAM’s embracing of digital video. During the last year, video became an equal partner in all IRAM activities, thus forming the real multimedia concept of IRAM’s educational, research, archiving and artistic mission.

This was confirmed by the University Council’s official approval of the transformation of UKIM FM’s (University Ss. Kiril and Metodij Faculty of Music) sonology programme into a multimedia programme. It will officially enrol the first undergraduate students in autumn 2005.

To a certain extent, this was only a formal decision, as all students (undergraduate, graduate and doctoral) who form the core of IRAM’s very enthusiastic staff were already involved in the development of multimedia materials (such as graphics, video, text, web and other presentations). Most of the video recordings required a complex team with specific obligations, such as scripting, camera, editing, lights, stage, and organisation. In a way, the UKIM FM multimedia programme was introduced before the official approval of the University Council.

The opening of the multimedia programme also reflects the essence of IRAM’s design - to serve as an educational institution incorporating practical (audio and video recording and archiving) and research activities, with equal success. This blend of education, theory and practice is the major secret behind the fascinating results that IRAM achieved in the very short period of five years (the first digital recording at the IRAM’s first studio was completed on the 4^th of September, 2000).

The expansion of IRAM’s activities into the multimedia domain would have been impossible without the acquisition of new and additional equipment: a SONY DV Cam DSR-PD170, an additional PowerBook G4 computer, the editing software Final Cut Pro HD, an LCD projector, monitors, SONY DVD recorders; and particularly the two sets of lights in UKIM FM’s two concert halls, with accompanying control hardware.

IRAM’s current inventory list consists of more than 500 items of hardware and software, which were carefully selected to avoid unnecessary redundancies, while adding special functions to each new unit. As in the past, it is important to emphasise that the entire design, installation and maintenance of the new and old equipment, was done solely by IRAM’s staff. We are very proud that during the last five years we have managed to design, build and maintain:

- a major control and communication room connecting the other three studios in the building, also used for educational, recording, postproduction and archiving purposes;

- an audio and video recording studio at the UKIM FM Concert Hall, with a control room for the audio and lights in the hall;

- a studio for the Internet Student Radio complete with recording and control room;

- a studio for video recording with a recording and control room;

- additional units for audio recording and archiving, video recording and editing, burning of CDs and DVDs etc.

IRAM’s equipment is mainly designed to respond to current educational needs, as well as recording, editing and postproduction requirements in the UKIM FM building. Although IRAM does not possess transport means to move the recording equipment to other concert halls, thanks to the special efforts of IRAM’s staff, similar to previous years, IRAM provided audio and video recordings of the traditional performances of UKIM FM’s ensembles: the Symphony Orchestra (December 6^th, 2004) and Choir (Nocturnal Rite Concert on January 13^th, 2005). At the same time, IRAM continued with the documentary video coverage of different music and cultural events in Macedonia and abroad.

The expansion in the video domain contributed to several major video productions in the period between the London conferences:

- Tempus in Macedonia (60 min.)

- KGSD Yeni Yol (17 minutes)

- Concert of the UKIM FM Symphony Orchestra celebrating UKIM FM Anniversary (6^th of December, 2004) (54 minutes)

The movie Tempus in Macedonia followed IRAM’S four previous documentary videos. The movie was recorded with the SONY DCR VX2000 camera in SD format, and the entire project - from scripting to recording and editing - was completed by Prof. Dr. Dimitrije Buzarovski. The main objective of the movie is to present the impact of the EU Tempus programme on the development of higher education in Macedonia during the last decade. The movie contains a large number of statements from officials, starting from the EU Directorate General for Education and Arts in Brussels, continuing with the Minister of Education in the Government of Republic of Macedonia, the three rectors of the universities eligible to apply for Tempus programs (UKIM Skopje, SEE Tetovo, UKO Bitola), as well as the co-ordinators and other project participants from Macedonia and EU countries. Also, it contains numerous illustrations of the achievements of the projects, books, tables, hardware purchased with the Tempus grants etc. The distribution copy of the movie was presented in a DVD format, while being placed at IRAM’s Internet site in video streaming format. The video Tempus in Macedonia was the first movie offered in video streaming format, thus marking IRAM’s multimedia development and particularly the achievements in the application of digital and Internet technology.

The movie KGSD Yeni Yol was the first complete video recording in IRAM’s video studio, using the newly-installed lights, stage facilities and pre-recorded audio, i.e. playback (also achieved in IRAM). The idea for the movie stemmed from the larger research project of Aida Islam focussing on the music culture of the Turkish community in Macedonia, and particularly the Rumelian repertoire – the Balkan pop music of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries of the Balkans. The movie was realised by the IRAM team: Hristo Stojanoski, Darko Ilievski, Vesna Maljanovska, Irena Mitevska and Dimitrije Buzarovski.

The same team participated in the recording of the concert of the UKIM FM Symphony Orchestra celebrating UKIM FM’s Anniversary (6^th of December, 2004). This was a very complicated task, having in mind the number of participants at the stage, the character of the music pieces performed (Britten’s Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra, Ravel-Mousorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition). This movie was also recorded and edited in SD format, with DVD copies for broader distribution.

Parallel to its video productions, IRAM continued with the usual video documentation of concerts and other cultural events in Macedonia and abroad. The short IRAM Chronicle Movies (45 at the moment) are another illustration of IRAM’s development, steadily forming an impressive digital video archive.

Another key component is the digital audio, which has provided a basis for video productions. At the moment IRAM has fully recorded 30 concerts, and the audio for the events covered by the IRAM Chronicle or other IRAM movies.

During the last year, IRAM continued following its objective to cover classical and contemporary music, and music folklore, which have been under-represented in music culture, and culture in general. The rapidly decreasing interest of Macedonian broadcasting and recording companies for the genres which can not generate commercial effects has created a vacuum in their music production. IRAM’s care for under-represented music genres undoubtedly contributes to the importance of its digital audio and video archive.

We continued presenting IRAM’s research, scientific and archiving activities at the three IRAM’s international conferences: ‘Contemporary Trends in Musicology and Ethnomusicology’ (Struga), ‘Reflections on Macedonian Music’ (London) and ‘Cultural Policy and Music Education’ (Skopje). This is the ninth conference organised during the last three years, with a total of 110 scientific papers presented and published in IRAM’s edition, and at the web site. IRAM’s international conferences played a crucial role in encouraging our young researchers to intensify their work on the papers within their fields of interest. These papers form a substantial and profound database on Macedonian music culture published in English. In addition, the theoretical reflections from the international contributors widen the scope of such conferences, allowing Macedonian musicologists and ethnomusicologists to compare their scientific results with the findings and the experiences from other scientific and cultural environments in Europe and the US. It is very important to point out that the selection of the topics for the Macedonian papers was done in a systematic way, thus forming a mosaic of different subjects from the very complex Macedonian music culture from the past until now. Similar to the strategy for the under-represented genres, we paid special attention to the under-represented topics in the previous interests of Macedonian musicology and ethnomusicology – with contributions to the popular genres (jazz, pop and ethno-pop music) and cultures of different ethnic and religious groups in Macedonia (Turkish community, Islamic religion and the influence of the Ottoman period).

IRAM’s contribution to the digital archiving of cultural heritage was enriched with the digitisation of the Vidoeski Tape Collection and the Firfov Collection of Transcriptions. Particularly fascinating results were achieved with the digitisation of 12 tapes recorded in Sthip and Kochani region in 1952/1953. This digitisation followed from the excellent co-operation established with the Centre for Areal Linguistics at the Macedonian Academy of Science and Arts. This process started with the digitisation of the 53 cassettes from the legacy of one of the founders of the Macedonian linguistic school - Bozhidar Vidoeski (1920-1998). The awareness of the immense value and importance of the digitisation of this collection is reflected not only in linguistic, but also in ethnological, anthropological, historical and ethnomusicological terms. This collection is complementary to the previously-digitised Firfov Collection and Vidoeski Cassette Collection and also contains music materials. Having in mind that the tapes were recorded in mono format, with varying and consequently non-standard speed, (probably due to the unstable electricity supply), we had to develop a special digitisation methodology. Also, together with the stored originals, we have produced a copy with corrected speed (our assumption is that the original speed was between the 8.2 and 8.5 cm). The digitisation of the tape collection was realised by Prof. Dr. Dimitrije Buzarovski.

The secondary database was compiled by Dojrana Prokopieva, who also worked on the secondary database for the Vidoeski Cassette Collection. The missing collectors notes created a complex task for reconstruction of the missing data. The standard research procedure for recording informers of different ages - while emphasising the older ones - was also applied in this collection. It appears that some of the informers were born in the late nineteenth century (dating as far back as 1871), which makes this one of the oldest, and possibly the first, collection of recorded Macedonian dialects.

The next important IRAM achievement in the period between the last two London conferences was the digitisation of the Firfov Transcriptions Collection. Along with the scanned copies of the originals, Irena Mitevska created a Sibelius score version of the 383 transcriptions with the accompanying lyrics, the versions of the songs and the lyrics and secondary database. Moreover, this immensely-valuable material will contribute to the completion of IRAM’s archive, and the possibility of cross-research of the source artefacts.

The co-operation with the Macedonian Academy of Science and Arts provided Eleni Novakovska with access to the legacy of Vasil Hadjimanov, a large collection of tapes, transcriptions, papers, photos and other material, mainly related to Macedonian music folklore. Having in mind the complexity of the materials in the collection, and the incomplete accompanying cataloguing materials, Eleni Novakovska approached this legacy with clear theoretical and practical intentions: to establish the methodology and standards for digital catalogues of the legacies (we expect that much more of them will appear in the near future, as most of the legacies of the pioneers of the Macedonian music culture are in the possession of their families, and stored in inadequate conditions) and to provide a practical application of that methodology. Consequently, a digital catalogue of 4,253 units was created, with an intention to continue with the digitisation of the artefacts in the next phase of this project.

IRAM’s publishing activities continued with the three books from our last conferences (including this one), the three DVDs with the latest IRAM videos (Tempus in Macedonia, KGSD Yeni Yoll and UKIM FM Symphony Orchestra) and 14 CDs with the recordings from concerts and excerpts from IRAM’s digital archive (Male vocal soloists from the Firfov Collection, Recordings from the Shtip and Kochani regions in 1952/1953 from Vidoeski Collection - selection of informers born in the 19 century).

In order to promote its activities, IRAM continued performing regular public presentations of its documentary videos, and launches of the newly published CDs and DVDs. Some of the video materials were presented and broadcasted at different TV stations in Macedonia (MTV, A1, MS). Of particular importance was the DVD presentation about IRAM’s digital archiving activities at the Regional Meeting on Digitisation of the Cultural Heritage which took place in Ohrid, on March 18, 2005. All major Balkan governmental and non-governmental institutions working on the preservation of the cultural heritage were present at this meeting. It was an opportunity to verify IRAM’s position as one of the leading institutions concerned with the digital archiving of the sound and video cultural heritage in a systematic, professional and standardised way, and which already possesses an impressive digital audio archive of over 12,000 minutes.

Still the most important media for communication with IRAM’s achievements and activities is IRAM’s web site www.mmc.edu.mk. The Internet Student Radio with 44 programmes (more than 80 hours of music from IRAM’s production), the IRAM video Chronicle, 110 papers of IRAM’s international conferences, and other textual, graphic and sound data, qualifies this web site among the largest databases of Macedonian music culture. IRAM’s web site is the barometer of the Institute’s changes, and its capacity and flexibility to follow and quickly adjust to the extremely dynamic global and local social, economic and cultural environment.

Following the tradition of the previous introductions, we will briefly present the structure of the papers for this year’s London Conference. Some of the issues addressed by the papers in this conference have already been mentioned. In fact most of the papers came as a result of IRAM’s research, archiving and artistic activities. Consequently, Aida Islam gives an insight into The Rumelian Repertoire in the Music Culture of the Turkish Community in Macedonia Today. Eleni Novakovska discusses - The Methodology of Digitising Legacies -Digitising Vasil Hadjimanov’s Legacy, while Irena Mitevska presents the Problems in the Digitisation of the Firfov Collection of Transcriptions. IRAM’s concern regarding topics which were less- or under- represented in Macedonian contemporary musicology and ethnomusicology contributed to three papers: by Aleksandar Dimitrijevski - The Founders of Macedonian Ethnopop Music – Blagoja Deskovski (1943 - ) composer and violinist, by Darko Ilievski - The Role of the Skopje Amateur Music Societies in the Preservation of Traditional Music Culture in Macedonia in the 21^st Century and by Vesna Maljanovska - Four Music Videos by Kole Malinov (covering the history of music video production). Furthermore, the permanent concern to create a basic written corpus about Macedonian contemporary music composers and performers contributed to additional three papers: by Stefanija Leshkova- Zelenkovska about the Piano Accompaniment in Macedonia Between 1970-2000: a Sketch for a Portrait of Five Piano Accompanists, by Dojrana Prokopieva on the Choral works by the first generation of Macedonian composers and by Biljana Malezanova who presents The Beginning of the Composition Careers of Four UKIM FM second-year undergraduate students. IRAM’s broad theoretical and research interest is encompassed by the paper by Trena Jordanoska addressing to Macedonian musicology itself - Macedonian Musicology Between 1945-1990.