SOAS Research Online

Abstract

This chapter is in the form of an interview between Lucy Durán and Helen Penn. Lucy Durán is a well-known ethnomusicologist who has made a series of films, sponsored by the Arts and Humanities Council in the UK—Beyond Text, in the project called Growing into Music (Growing into Music films: http://www.growingintomusic.co.uk/), for which she was the principal investigator. The films document how children from specialist musical families of great oral traditions acquire musical skills and knowledge, with films made by a team of four ethnomusicologists working in five countries: India, Azerbaijan, Mali, Cuba and Venezuela. In addition to the documentaries directed and filmed in Mali, which is Durán’s regional expertise, she also provides a commentary to the comparative film that covers footage from all five countries, making some interesting and important connections, with wider implications for music education.