Developing dialogues in intercultural music-making

Combining Chartwell Dutiro’s mbira music from the Shona tradition of Zimbabwe with a classically trained string quartet reveals the creative processes involved in devising new music that merges oral and notated traditions, and participatory and presentational performance practices. Adopting an ethnographic approach for examining the verbal dialogues and the sounds that develop through these processes helps to understand the nature of interculturality in music that may also apply to other disciplines. A critique of intercultural theory in theatre practice contributes towards an understanding of the concepts of flow and directionality that characterise relationships in any interactive network