Greetings from the IKS board of directors! It is with the greatest joy that I jump in on the opportunity to write this “From the Office” column, especially when we are getting ready for the grand celebration of various significant anniversaries during the upcoming symposium in Kecskemét, 2025.
For me, personally, it will also be the 50th anniversary since I started working with children and since I first heard about Kodály. And, for sure, not only for me but also for hundreds of other music students and teachers in Mexico. It was 1975 (around the time when universities started to include a “children’s section,” following the National Conservatoire example, later on followed by bachelor’s degrees in music pedagogy), when Pierre van Hauwe, director of the Music School in the Delft Creativity Center (Netherlands), offered a workshop for students in a preschool teachers’ training school (not music) in Chihuahua, and in the Music School of the National University in Mexico City. The success of these workshops was amazing, and extended to other cities of the country, as well as to other countries in Latin America during the following few years.
Although not a Kodály “purist,” van Hauwe encouraged the creation of the first Mexican Kodály Society in the late 1970’s and encouraged many of us in his workshops to pursue our studies in his regular courses in Holland. Thus, in 1981, I earned a double certificate from the Stichting Orff Werkgroep in Delft.
My next move was a hectic summer with an introductory course in Esztergom, and the 1981 IKS Symposium in Sapporo, Japan. In all, those were more profoundly life-changing experiences which confronted me with the need for a specific sequence based on our own musical mother tongue at the beginning, then approaching other cultures by means of similarities and differences, as opposed to a universal fixed curriculum right from the start. Most importantly, I found a community of musicians and music teachers eager to share, help, and work together towards this goal.
In this sense, both the IKS bi-annual symposia, held in different locations around the world, and the IKS László Vikár International Forum for Folk Music Research (of which I have the privilege to be a charter member and whose first colloquium in Guadalajara, México, 2008) are invaluable resources for following up on the specialization studies, and joining in the ongoing relationship with professors and colleagues.
Working personally with a sociological focus, in collaboration with musicians, music students and teachers, and other social scientists, we had our first international forum, “Music for everyone and for everything”, in Guadalajara in 2014, under the generous wing of the International Network for Cultural Heritage and Social Sciences. Then we founded Kodály México: Artes, Tradiciones y Visiones, A.C. in 2016. We try to keep up with an annual colloquium and a bi-annual international forum, which have influenced an increased interest on the part of sociologists and music students, while some institutions in the country begin to accept some aspects of Kodály’s principles. Our current focus is to make every possible folksong available to everyone, to further widen our collaborative circle, and support as best we can the professional training of young musicians and music teachers.
We are especially excited and honored to be part of an incipient project in Gabon, Africa, about collecting folksongs with a double goal: general music education, and the inclusion of musical traditions in university programs other than music, which do not exist there yet. This cooperative effort came to pass through my continuing contact with IKS member, Professor Clotilde Chantal Kwevi-Kayissa, my doctoral program classmate from the University of Montpellier, France. We have realized that both of our countries have similar levels of cultural diversity, including the influence of French music during the colonial era.
I look forward to greeting you at our 2025 symposium, which I am sure will be filled with the joy of making music together, sharing, (re)connecting, and inspiration.
Hilda Morán-Quiroz
Director
