Q+A with Lukas Ligeti

1. Can you briefly describe how you first were exposed/inspired by non western music?I only started playing music after graduating from high school, and rather than "coming from" a certain musical style or world, I began listening to all kinds of music at the same time, anything I could get my hands on. And for some reason, I'm not quite sure why, I liked many types of non-Western music. I guess I was mainly interested in ways of thinking about music that I had not been aware of previously...different ways of conceptualizing rhythm, for example, or timbre. I wanted to create my own music and was looking for conceptual inspiration, for ways to go in a different direction so as to create something new. From the beginning, I defined the creation of something original as my main purpose as an artist, and I was looking for foundations to base my thinking on - and I wanted the challenge and the potential of foundations that were little known to me and that had not been overused in the area of art music.Way before that, as a child, I was always dreaming of far-away places. I loved looking at maps way before I could read, and projected my phantasies and dreams onto these unknown worlds. I also invented my own countries, planets, etc. - in fact, I was a veritable assembly-line for the invention of new countries! And these countries needed to be populated, though music was only one of my many concerns; the countries needed everything from indigenous peoples to writers, artists, politicians (I especially enjoyed inventing dictators), etc.2. What qualities attract you to have personal experiences with non western music/musicians? What do you find meaningful in this exchange and why?I guess my first time actually working with non-Western musicians was in 1994, during my first trip to Africa. I was sent to the Ivory Coast to collaborate with traditional musicians. I had two weeks to rehearse with them, and at the end of the two weeks, a joint concert was scheduled, so it was sink or swim. 150 musicians showed up to work with me: far too many. So I played them some of my music, to scare them away, and that was successful: the next day, 15 musicians came. Over the next two weeks, those musicians became some of my closest friends; it was just a very lucky thing, and inspired me to continue along this path, and I continue working with some of those same people to this day.In order to facilitate meaningful cultural exchange, I think it's important to be curious about each other. It's important to talk, because it makes no sense to "use" musicians from a different culture to participate in works based on concepts that participants from another culture will not understand - that makes the participating musicians into pawns, and is a patronizing situation that happens all too often. So it's necessary to discuss and to try to understand each other's cultural values and concepts as well as possible. My idea in cultural exchange is not to try to play the music of the other culture, or to impose my own music on people of a different cultural background, but to create something that could only exist through the combination of our diverse backgrounds. Everyone should maintain their identity, but at the same time everyone is free to define their own identity, to adopt values from other cultures that they feel strongly about, rather than being obliged to represent a certain culture in a wholesale way.3. In what ways have these experiences changed or affected your creative process, in composition and performance?My experiences in cultural exchange - which have occurred mainly in Africa - have permeated every fibre of my being. African music theory is as much an ingredient of my music as is Western music theory. The melodies and timbres I've heard have become part of my own imagination: I can no longer clearly separate my Western influences from my non-Western ones. Due to my family history, I'm an eternal immigrant, a rootless cosmopolitan, and through my musical experiences, some other cultures have been added to the mix. That mix is my cultural identity. Sometimes it's hard not really having a home, but it also means being able to feel at home almost no matter where.