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The paper deals with the founding of a professional orchestral practice in Niš, and its beginnings that are related to the 1950s and 1960s. The research, conducted with the aim of considering the cultural and artistic contribution of the symphony orchestra, as an institution, to the dynamics of the musical life in Niš is based on local press insights and available archival material. Frequent changes in the organizational structure, financial and personnel problems, artistic rises and falls, polemical tones of the cultural public that followed the establishing of the orchestral practice in Niš after the Second World War testify to the dynamic atmosphere during the first decade of existence and artistic work of symphony orchestras that were predecessors of the Niš Symphony Orchestra, which until the mid-1960s was the only symphony orchestra ensemble in Serbia besides the Belgrade Philharmonic Orchestra.

The paper analyzes the phenomenon of world music and the preferences of music students from the Faculty of Arts of the University of Niš for this musical genre in the context of stimulating intercultural education. The research based on the descriptive method was conducted with the intention to obtain answers to questions about whether music students have knowledge/understanding of/for interculturality, to examine their attitudes towards different cultures, and whether they are ready to act against racial/cultural differences and prejudices. The results of this research were completed with the results of a survey, in which students evaluated selected examples of world music. This musical genre was chosen because in our opinion music is perceived not only as an autonomous artistic practice, but also as a representation of a particular culture, collective, and/or ethnic group. On the basis of the results, we tried to determine the students' reactions to the musical characteristics of the closer and distant cultural areas as well as their willingness to accept musical, linguistic and cultural differences in the context of the still dominant presence of the West European  musical art in the process of academic education.

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