The Music of Strangers Page #2

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...where new ideas come from.

And so he drew... on a

napkin at the bar,

he drew circles intersecting.

And he said... then he shaded

the intersections and said,

"This is, you know...

this is a culture,

"this is another culture,

and in the intersection,

that's where new

things will emerge."

The Silk Road Project

we started as an idea...

a group of musicians

getting together

and seeing what might happen...

you know, when strangers meet.

We went and scoured from

Venice through to Istanbul,

central Asia,

Mongolia, and China

looking for incredible talent.

This was like the Manhattan

Project of music.

We invited about 60 performers

and composers from the

lands of the Silk Road,

meeting in a kind of workshop.

No one knew what

was gonna happen.

"Did Yo-Yo go off his

tracks or something?

What... what did he

drink?" You know?

We gathered in the summer

of 2000 in Massachusetts.

Frankly...

I was scared to death.

Yo-Yo Ma is, of course,

a golden child.

He can touch anything

and do anything,

and everything... everybody

thinks it's great.

But you could not expect

that someone from Africa

or China picks up on the...

on the subtleties of a culture

that is not their own.

A lot of people thought that...

what we were doing was not pure.

It's, uh... What is it called?

Cultural tourism.

Let's go. Yeah.

Beautiful.

This is basic rhythm.

I mean, just not the accent.

Try... dut-dut, ba-ba-ba-ba.

Ba-ba-ba-ba, ba-ba-ba...

Kayhan, he's such a

well-known figure in Iran,

and he was here at

the very beginning.

That's fantastic. Ah.

So the nail going back

and forth, right?

Yeah. Right, left, two rights.

Does it...

Oh.

Yeah.

My intention is to

represent my culture

and the contribution

that this very old culture

made to human life.

If you go back, you know, in the

beginning of the 20th century,

every Eastern culture was

so fascinated with West...

you know, the technology, cars,

and music, of course.

My instrument, kamancheh,

it was not being taught.

And I was really lucky, because I got

to professional music very early,

so I had the chance to work

with the older generation.

Kayhan, he brings you

closer to the horse

or to the cow or to

the... to the source,

you know, that you forget.

But Kayhan has had a

very tragic life.

The revolution.

Chaos.

You realize that your life's not

going to be the same anymore.

I was 17...

my parents decided

that I had to leave.

I just walked... walked,

you know, out...

out of the country like that.

I... I worked little by little

in every country,

kind of farm work.

Turkey for nine months, and then

Romania, Yugoslavia, Italy.

Yeah, I had a little backpack...

and, um... I had a kamancheh.

That was it. Yeah.

When I left...

meeting a lot of different

world musicians...

that was very attractive to me.

I always wanted to do something

outside of my culture.

I think that was a...

a very important turning

point in my career.

How's it going, Kayhan?

Uh, fine. We definitely

need more rehearsal time.

But... um, they're

very good musicians,

and they're much

better than yesterday,

so... there is hope.

The Tanglewood workshop

was fantastic,

because we don't speak

necessarily perfect English

or perfect Chinese

or perfect Persian,

but we speak perfect

music language.

Some projects, you know,

at the end of it,

that's wonderful.

It was a great thing,

but it's done.

This one... is different.

You make a connection.

You make a cultural connection.

You make a connection

to another human being.

That's very precious.

We were faced with the decision,

"Should we go on or is this it?"

And we were very careful

to try to not just say

we should go on because

we would like it to.

Bye!

What's the reason for going on?

...understandably

so, but of course,

the major concern is human loss.

I mean, do you know if there

were many people

in the building?

Oh! Another one just hit!

Something else just hit.

A very large plane

just flew directly

over my building,

and there's been

another collision.

- Can you see it? I can see it on this shot.

- Yes. Oh my...

Ellio Something else has just...

that looked more like a 747.

We just saw a plane

circling the building.

I was in a hotel room at nine

o'clock the morning of 9/11.

My wife called me and said,

"Turn on the television.

Something's happening."

I saw a large plane, like a jet,

go immediately heading directly in

towards the World Trade Centers...

It was surreal.

The, you know,

nation was in shock.

And I had a lot

of time to think.

We really wondered that, in

the face of the xenophobia,

it might just not be

possible to do this anymore.

Everybody, in the

face of disaster,

reexamines who they

are in their purpose.

We are a group that has so

many disparate elements.

We could have been a group

of adversaries, essentially.

And I think all of us

kind of knew that,

you know, we had a

responsibility to...

to work harder.

This piece is called "Quartet

to the End of Time,"

and it's written by a composer

named Olivier Messiaen.

He wrote this while he was a

prisoner of war during World War II.

How does Messiaen do that?

How do you express

incredible grief

or eternity and love?

You add a little vibrato,

and you suddenly feel

that you might be bathed

and blanketed by the warmth

of an intense light.

That love is mythic,

eternal, and unconditional love.

It's a paradox.

By trying to kill

the human spirit,

the answer of the human spirit

is to revenge with beauty.

Culture doesn't end.

It's not a business deal

where, at the conclusion

of the business deal,

it's... it's done.

You know, it's not

an election cycle.

It... it's about keeping

things alive and evolving,

and so we decided

to go on, and...

and then that's when all

of our trouble began.

Cristina is one of those people

that we were lucky to

meet through Osvaldo.

He said, "Guys, you have

to work with Cristina.

She is amazing."

She brings... something...

so sensual, so... earthy.

She needs to be here,

because she brings something

that is essential to...

to the universal soul and

I... and it was missing.

There is something very primitive

about the sound of the gaita.

To me, it's like hearing

my father speaking.

In the generation I come from,

it's like you have two choices,

of playing soccer or

playing bagpipes,

if you were born in Galicia.

Ah! Man:
Ah!

Whoo! Oh!

If I ask you to

think about Spain

and to think about what is

the first music that

comes to your mind...

Galicia doesn't have

anything to do with that.

Galicia is in the northwest

corner of Spain,

and geographically speaking,

it has been always

kind of isolated.

It has its own language,

its own culture,

and if you were to shrink

everything to just one sound,

the sound of the bagpipe

is the sound of Galicia.

That part of Spain...

is culturally rich and

economically poor.

Cristina is hugely conscious

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