About

Now a dragon, now a snake, You transform with the times. And never consent to be one thing alone.

Chuang-tzu

As a composer-performer I have been involved in many diverse projects, compositions, arrangements, mix media events and writings that are in the cross section of diverse styles, aesthetics and idioms. For the convenience of mental clarity, I follow philosopher S. Eisenstadt’s theory of multiple modernities, which can give us a certain historical perspective on the contemporary culture.

The anthropologist Ellen Dissanayake, explains the theory with these words: « The Multiple Modernities concept is a recent approach to understanding music in a culturally-decentered world not as an abstraction or flaccid “anything goes” ideology—but as a broad, universal activity that can be found in multiple forms in multiple cultures. The approach treats music globally, appreciating that from earliest times, until the invention of written scores, musicians have been composers-performers-improvisers—and that it is possible in their own music-making to become cultural pluralists, able to deeply integrate (not just “borrow”) the aesthetic sensibilities of other and different cultures .» (from Tradition and Synthesis).

Consequently, Singidunum Music is conceived as a publishing company that encourages multiplicity of forms and aesthetics within the same theoretical and practical framework. If being creative today means being an artistic acrobat with a head in Europe, body in Africa and spirit in Asia, then maybe this place could be a cosmopolitan virtual musical garden in which to plant creative seeds for the present and for the future.

Dusan Bogdanovic, Geneva, 2020

Link to the Multiple Modernities Festival 2016 video: