The Music of Strangers

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So, this is my cello.

Have you ever seen one before?

...the many faceted career

of cellist Yo-Yo Ma is

a testament to his

continual search

for new ways to communicate

with audiences...

Mr. Ma maintains a balance

between his engagements

and his solo...

He's recorded over 90 albums,

including more than 17

Grammy Award winners.

...studied at the

Juilliard School...

I didn't get in there...

...President's Committee on

the Arts and the Humanities.

After Mr. Ma's remarks tonight,

we will have an opportunity

to ask questions...

So without any further ado,

please welcome Yo-Yo Ma.

Hi there.

Hi.

I'll start off with this.

There's an old joke.

A six-year-old boy

tells his father,

"When I grow up, I want

to be a musician."

And the father looks at the son,

shakes his head sadly, and says,

"I'm sorry, son,

you can't do both."

I think when I was a kid,

a lot of things just happened.

There has come to us this year

a young man aged seven,

bearing the name Yo-Yo Ma,

a Chinese cellist playing

old French music

for his new American

compatriots.

Being good at something

can carry you really far

for a long period of time,

and not require a lot

of introspection, right?

Because... you're good at it

and everyone tells you that.

I would think that somebody

who has mastered his art

so early in life, so completely,

would have the problem that

most wunderkinder have,

which is, how do you

keep your interest up?

That's part of my problem. When

you grow up with something,

you kind of don't make a choice.

I never committed to

being a musician.

You know? I just did

it, I fell into it.

I was interested in a

lot of things, but...

I didn't particularly

pursue any of those.

Leon Kirchner said to

him when he was young,

"You're a phenomenal musician,

but you haven't

found your voice."

And this notion was

stuck in my dad's mind.

"What does that mean?

How do you do that?"

I think he started

looking for answers.

I'm always trying to

figure out at some level

who I am and how I

fit in the world,

which I think is something

that I share with seven

billion other people.

I was calling my mom in Damascus

before... before

you guys came in.

And she's like, "Oh, Kinan,

did you clean the place?"

I'm like, "Yes, Mom, it's okay."

- She wants to make sure...

- Moms are always moms.

No, she wants to make sure

that the CDs are not here,

because, you know, they're there and,

you know, it's like, "Is it all tidy?"

I said, "Yes, I've tried my best.

It's going to be fine."

So...

I mean, growing up in

Damascus was great.

Just had, you know, lots

of friends and family.

I don't think of myself

as somebody who just,

you know, packed his stuff

and left, actually.

I mean, I still have a little

apartment back in Damascus.

And my parents are still there.

I miss it a lot. I do miss it.

Now I'm thinking a lot

like, "What is home?

"Is it where your friends are?

Is it where your family are?

"Is it the place

where you grew up

or is it the place that y...

where you want to die?"

I mean, you know, all the...

all these questions,

and I think now I'm

realizing that

it's basically the place where you

feel you want to contribute to

without having to justify it.

And here is your coffee,

whoever wants my

little Arabic coffee.

I mean, since I left Syria,

lots of things have changed.

There's always a fight

in each one of us

between believing in the

power of the human spirit

and dreading the power

of the human spirit.

March 2011...

when the Syrian

revolution started...

I found myself experiencing

emotions that are, by far,

more complex than...

than what I can express

with my music.

So the music fell short,

and I found myself not

able to write any music.

Like, can a piece of

music stop a bullet?

Can it feed somebody who's hungry?

Of course, it doesn't.

You question the role

of art altogether.

When I was a student at Harvard,

Leonard Bernstein came to visit.

In his lectures,

he was searching

for a universal

musical language.

That idea stuck

with me ever since.

What's the relevance of all

this musical linguistics?

Can it lead us to an answer

of Charles Ives' unanswered

question, "Whither music?"

And even if it eventually can...

does it matter?

The world totters,

governments crumble,

and we are poring over music.

Out of the 35 years

I've been married,

I've been gone for 22 of

those years, away traveling.

I used to throw up

before every trip,

you know, just... I would just

feel so awful and anxious,

and just like, you know...

it's like I'd get so paralyzed.

What is my role?

I'd better find a good reason

to say, "Why am I doing this?"

Play... play a song.

Which song? Um...

play... "Iron Man."

Let's own it.

My interest is kind of

jump out of the box...

...not only limiting myself as a

Chinese musician or pipa player.

Yes!

Yeah! Woo-woo-woo-woo!

Thank you, thank you.

Hey, wait. What do you do?

This...

I mean, Wu Man was not

supposed to be here.

She was just supposed to be

a music professor, right,

at the Central Conservatory

or somewhere in China.

I remember 1966,

starts the Cultural Revolution.

And then my parents actually

asked me to learn music...

to escape from that situation.

Wu Man was in the first

class of students

that reentered Conservatory

after the Chinese

Cultural Revolution,

and she became a

sensation overnight.

We had no information

about Western culture.

Right after revolution...

everything was

destroyed, culturally,

so we are, I guess,

standing on the ruins,

dreaming, "What's

the next music?"

Oh! Surprised they open.

It's all very different.

Isaac Stern gave a

master class here,

right here on this stage.

It's like opened another idea.

It opened the door to me.

"American orchestra, that's...

that's very interesting."

I wanted to see what's

going on outside China.

In the '80s,

when I was asked in an interview

about what my next

project might be...

What's next for you?

I'm casting about for

something, anything,

I said that I had always...

I said, "I have always been

fascinated by"... guess what...

The bushmen of the

Kalahari Desert.

Yeah.

I think he went

because he wanted...

He wanted to put some

dirt in his bones.

He wanted to get

down into the soil.

He wanted something that was

going to radically alter

his ways of thinking

about things.

Shoot.

Where the hell is the "F"?

There we go.

I'll tell you one thing

that stayed with me

that actually became the event

that unlocked all of this.

They do a trance dance...

...and I was invited

to participate.

They get into trance,

and then they lay hands on

people who need healing.

I asked the women why they

do their trance ritual...

and they said the

clearest reason

for music, for culture, for

medicine, for religion.

They said, "Because

it gives us meaning."

So one day, I sat with

Yo-Yo at the caf

and we were talking about

where creativity comes from...

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