Children who grow up in oral musical contexts such as the families of hereditary musical specialists commonly learn the body-language of music before they learn music itself. Throughout infancy and childhood they absorb the mannerisms of performance practice and the physical and social graces befitting of musicians. Learning music is accomplished by osmosis and imitation, largely without conscious intent. Children develop an unselfconscious musical confidence born of inherited or deeply-nurtured authority. Very little has been written about the processes of childhood music acquisition in the oral traditions of non-European cultures. There is a pressing need to study these processes before they are overwhelmed by the institutionalisation of music-teaching and globalisation.\n\nThis project will document and analyse oral music acquisition and transmission, conducting a detailed exploration of the processes by which children in diverse cultures become musicians, beginning with passive exposure in infancy and culminating in adolescent participation in public performance. We will consider our findings in the context of the belief, widely-held in such cultures, that these learning processes are intrinsic to the strength and depth of these highly-specialised traditions, which in all cases are central expressions of regional/national identity.\n\nWe are a team of five ethnomusicologists, each of whom specialises in particular geographic areas and ethnic groups. Being accomplished performers of musics from these areas will greatly facilitate our fieldwork. Each of us also has qualifications and experience in other relevant disciplines including music education, cognitive psychology, psychotherapy, film-making, popular music studies, music production, and broadcasting-perspectives which will contribute to the comprehensiveness of our study. \n\nWe will study musical childhoods amongst: Mande jeli (griot) musicians of Mali and Senegal; Langa and Manganiyar folk musicians of Rajasthan; hereditary accompanists in the art music tradition of North India; ashiq bards and classical mugam musicians of Azerbaijan; kharabatian musicians of Afghanistan; rumba musicians of Western Cuba; and the música llanera harp tradition of Venezuela, an oral tradition which both contrasts with and feeds into the more formal pedagogy of Venezuela's world-famous youth orchestras. We will observe and film the same children 'growing into music' over two years, making three fieldwork trips to each country.\n\nThese cultures have been chosen because they all have strong, relatively intact, oral traditions. They present fascinating differences with regard to the centrality of hereditary transmission, their positions on the continuum between art and folk music, the relative proportions of active transmission and passive acquisition, the balance between memorisation and improvisation, and the degree of mediation by musical literacy, institutionalisation, and globalisation.\n\nWe will produce:\n\n1. a collection of essays for the SOAS Musicology Series examining each musical culture in detail and investigating their commonalities.\n \n2. a series of five educational DVDs\n\n3. a film for television (with the collaboration of an award-winning documentary film-maker)\n \n4. a programme for BBC Radio 3's World Routes. \n\nWorkshops for schoolchildren, video-based talks and film-screenings will be hosted by the Asian Music Circuit and the October Gallery, and by institutions in our research countries, promoting awareness of these threatened oral traditions.\n\nOur work will benefit both academics and the wider public. It will address a crucial gap in the ethnomusicological literature and be of interest to scholars in the fields of music cognition and pedagogy, developmental studies, and anthropology. It will appeal to those with interests in world music, world culture, and the education of children, and will be of particular relevance to diasporic communities in the UK.

The proposed activities arise from work by the "Growing into Music" research team, documenting and analyzing childhood music acquisition and transmission in oral musical traditions. Our proposal addresses the theme: "Learning across and between the generations", by celebrating the historical connections that characterise Mali and Cuba's ongoing "trans-Atlantic conversations". "Mali-Cuba: music across generations" focuses through events in Havana and Bamako in November 2011 on two countries with exceptionally strong international musical profiles and a long history of connections. Our research in these two countries is pointing towards ways in which the links (both historical and contemporary) between Cuba and Mali may be illuminated by a closer look at how children acquire musical skills and knowledge in both countries. We will explore, develop and promote such connections through live performance and workshops involving children who are participating in our project, and thereby realise a greater and more direct impact for our research than originally envisaged. "Growing into Music" has established a highly productive relationship with Caridad Diez, vice-president of UNEAC, the Union of Cuban Writers and Artists (the leading cultural institution in Cuba). Our Havana festival will take place in front of live audiences from Cuba and virtual audiences further afield via the internet, through the intervention of the UK record company World Circuit. We will bring four Malian children to Havana, with a parent and/or guardian, and film the encounter between them and Cuban children, at home and on stage, with the participation of their parents and teachers. In Mali, there is a long-established history of Mali-Cuba relations, with a large community of Cubans living and working there. We will present our research in Mali via a smaller event in November 2011, involving musicians, key people from the cultural sector, the local press, and wider audiences. The aims of our proposal are to: stimulate cross-cultural awareness by bringing together young musicians from Cuba and Mali to observe each other's acquisition processes, learn together in informal workshops, and perform in public; to publicise our work, present our films and research in Havana and Bamako; film the results and incorporate a selection of this into our final output; provide outlets for and raise awareness of "Growing into Music" via the music industry; inform audiences beyond academia of the significance of oral methods of training young children and exchanging of musical information across the generations. Our planned activities exemplify knowledge exchange; public engagement; dissemination and stimulation of new knowledge, as the project's researchers share ideas with and receive feedback from Cuban musicians and researchers, and as Cuban and Malian musicians study and perform together. Our proposed festival exploits previously unforeseen pathways opened up by collaboration with Caridad Diez and UNEAC, who will be our Cuban partner; it projects this knowledge beyond the academic sphere in Cuba and Mali; and it encourages interactions and creative engagements between the project's researchers, Cuban and Malian musicians, cultural institutions in Havana and Bamako, and the UK record label World Circuit Records. The proposed activities will thus benefit a range of artists and institutions, as well as a wider audience at public music and film events, and we will document these benefits by filming and recording the festival in Havana and seminar in Bamako, and by making written records of discussions that take place and feedback that is offered. Our UK business partner will be World Circuit Records, who are particularly interested in the topic of inter-generational exchange and will disseminate information and output via the label's international publicity networks, bringing in audiences with an interest in Mali and Cuba from around the world.