Moa Pillar, an electronic music artist, leaves for the Caucasus in search of inspiration, to then work with traditional Circassian musicians. While he is eager to meet new people and discover another culture, his guide, Bulat, constantly questions the interest of this experience and the possibility of a dialogue between age-old traditions and modern culture. Because too often, electronic music has been content to affix a mechanical rhythm to ‘samples’ of traditional music to make them supposedly modern. Moa Pillar’s project is indeed driven by the ideal of dialogue and encounter, but the initial impulse of openness to others can easily turn into mistrust as the line between appropriation and collaboration is blurred.
