Promoting Intercultural Competence in “Mare Nostrum” through the Cross-Arrangement of Traditional Music by Cultural Regions

This study examines how the “Mare Nostrum” project by early music musician Jordi Savall reconstructs the Mediterranean as a historical contact zone into a musical archive, thereby fostering listeners’ intercultural competence. Savall’s project promotes intercultural dialogue through four mechanisms. First, texts and historical sources in ten languages perform a shared work of trauma that goes beyond any single ethnic group’s linear narrative. Second, the equal collaboration between Western early instruments and Eastern instruments, and the dialogic juxtaposition of church modes and maqām, sonically realizes a “third space.” Third, the universal affect of the lament bypasses barriers of selective exposure and activates narrative imagination. Fourth, the liminality of the concert venue and participatory staging generate communitas, enabling audiences to internalize an ethic of horizontal empathy. By elucidating how art translates memories of conflict into a language of shared responsibility, this study constructs a multidisciplinary analytical model that can contribute to strengthening intercultural competence and to education for global citizenship.