Volume 21 Issue 1 - September 2015

Silk Road
Stories:
Spinning a
Musical Web
ANDREW TIMAR
The historic trade routes collectively referred to as the Silk Road, an
interconnected web of maritime and overland pathways, have, for
centuries, served as sites for cultural, economic, educational, religious
– and purely musical – exchanges. In that light, “silk roads”
can be seen as a significant factor in the development of the ever-evolving
hybridities that have shaped the face of the modern musical world.
In 1998 the Grammy Award-winning cellist Yo-Yo Ma proposed “Silkroad”
as the name of his new non-profit organisation. That project,
inspired by his global curiosity and eagerness to forge connections across
cultures, disciplines and generations, has grown several branches, the
first of which was the successful music performing group, Silk Road
Ensemble (SRE). It has played to sold-out houses at Roy Thomson
Hall in 2003 and 2009 and will return to perform at Massey Hall on
September 15. (Serendipitously, Toronto audiences will have another
opportunity to see the SRE up close this September. Morgan Neville’s
feature-length documentary The Music of Strangers: Yo-Yo Ma and
the Silk Road Ensemble graces TIFF’s red carpet, enjoying its world
premiere.)
Wu Man’s view from the pipa. Chinese-born Grammy Award nominee
Wu Man, widely hailed as the world’s premier pipa (Chinese lute)
virtuoso, has a unique perspective on the SRE’s career. An educator,
composer and an ambassador of Chinese music, she has a prolific discography
of 40 albums and counting. She was among the first musicians
to get the call from Yo-Yo Ma to help in founding SRE.
We spoke by phone on August 14. “It was actually in 1998, even before
we officially announced the ensemble in 2000 at Tanglewood [the Boston
Symphony Orchestra’s summer festival home]. Of course many other
musicians have joined us since then.”
Asked about her early encounters with Western classical music and
musicians, Wu recounted her first live exposure as a young student.
“In 1979 I saw Seiji Ozawa conduct the Boston Symphony Orchestra
performing in Beijing. At the time I was still a pipa student at the
Central Conservatory of Music” (where she became the first recipient
of a master’s degree in pipa). The Boston Symphony, she explains, was
“conducted by a charismatic Asian conductor, so the hall was packed
with curious people from across the county: it wasn’t easy to get a ticket.
The music played that night proved to be a revelation to me and my
classmates.”
Her next Western musical encounter came a year later. “I participated
in an inspiring Beijing masterclass with violinist Isaac Stern.” (The 1980
Academy Award winning documentary film From Mao to Mozart:
Isaac Stern in China provides insight into the great maestro’s groundbreaking
tour.)
These two musical experiences proved to be pivotal influences in Wu’s
subsequent professional music career in the West, launched when she
moved to the U.S. in 1990. They also undoubtedly played a role in her
eagerness to be among the SRE founders.
How does she respond to concerns some have around cultural appropriation?
“I’d have to say that there’s nothing ‘pure’ in a given culture –
or in a national state for that matter – as illustrated for instance by the box
we may label ‘China.’ When we can equitably share cultures however,
it puts us in a much bigger [and more inclusive] box called ‘the world.’”
Wu’s 2012 Borderlands CD/DVD, co-produced by the Aga Khan Trust
for Culture and the Smithsonian Institution Center for Folklife and
Wu Man
Culture Heritage, traces the history of the pipa in China. Its narrative
also speaks to the primary mission of the SRE. “My instrument’s roots
extend to Persia 1,000 years ago, but its origins had largely been forgotten
in China,” she noted. It was only through the SRE, working with Central
and South Asian musicians, that “I became aware of the commonalities
between many plucked string instruments and their performance
methods. Only then was I able to appreciate our common roots. I feel
that only if you know your roots can you then imagine how to create
something new.”
Above all, Wu Man takes very seriously her responsibility “to represent
the pipa to the audience, most of whom have never seen or heard it
live.” The pipa, she says, is the musical vehicle which she uses to “bridge
many cultures. This is my mission. In recent years I’ve gone back quite
often to give masterclasses at Chinese music schools.” Her rediscovery,
embrace and showcasing of the musical traditions of her birthplace,
projects she has titled her “Return to the East,” are often expressed in
stage appearances with the SRE. They can also be seen as completing the
circle Ozawa and Stern’s example modelled for the young pipa student
in Beijing nearly two generations ago.
Behind the Cello.“Behind the Cello,” published January 21, 2014, is a
wide-ranging and penetrating Huffington Post article I found, adapted
from a conversation Ma had with WorldPost. In it Ma talks about having
founded the Silk Road Project “to study the flow of ideas among the
many cultures between the Mediterranean and the Pacific over several
thousand years.”
The silk road as a useful and enduring metaphor for exploration of
intersecting and cross-pollinating musical routes has served other musicians
and ensembles well over time, but it is particularly well suited
to Ma’s capacious intellectual curiosity, encrusted as it is with historic
and personal echoes. As he and his travelling companions in the SRE
continue to experiment with these ideas, on stage and in the larger
social project these performances are encased in, the metaphor takes
on greater and greater resonance. Positive audience response to the SRE’s
always musically engaging concert performances have given the groups a
special niche on world stages. Beyond that, in my view, the group is also
operating at the leading edge of the evolution of a greater pan-cultural
musical consciousness in the 21st century. Let’s explore some of these
grand assertions.
While making music is SRE’s essential mission, Ma’s vision for the
group as stated in his “Behind the Cello” interview is no less than to
bring “the world together on one stage.” Calling SRE’s musicians a “peer
group of virtuosos, masters of living traditions,” he has enlisted European,
Arabic, Azeri, Armenian, Persian, Russian, Central Asian, Indian,
Mongolian, Chinese, Korean and Japanese participants into its ranks. The
group modus operandi entails generous sharing of received knowledge,
curiosity about other forms of expressions and a reciprocal keenness to
learn from each other. That much is evident to audiences attending live
SRE concerts or one of its workshops, and even to those casually flipping
through YouTube videos.
Ma argues that invention and evolution hand-in-hand hold the keys
to cultural engagement and growth: “... we have found that every tradition
is the result of successful invention. One of the best ways to ensure
the survival of traditions is by organic evolution, using all the tools
available to us in the present day, from YouTube to the concert hall.”
STEPHEN KAHN
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