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So, this is my cello. | 0:00:34 | 0:00:36 | |
Have you ever seen one before? | 0:00:36 | 0:00:38 | |
THEY START PLAYING | 0:01:21 | 0:01:23 | |
SINGING STARTS | 0:01:46 | 0:01:49 | |
CHEERING | 0:03:29 | 0:03:31 | |
The many faceted career of cellist Yo-Yo Ma is | 0:03:43 | 0:03:45 | |
a testament to his continual search | 0:03:45 | 0:03:47 | |
for new ways to communicate with audiences... | 0:03:47 | 0:03:49 | |
..Mr Ma maintains a balance between his engagements and his solo... | 0:03:53 | 0:03:56 | |
..He's recorded over 90 albums, | 0:04:00 | 0:04:02 | |
including more than 17 Grammy Award winners... | 0:04:02 | 0:04:05 | |
..studied at the Juilliard School... | 0:04:09 | 0:04:10 | |
..President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities. | 0:04:18 | 0:04:20 | |
After Mr Ma's remarks tonight, | 0:04:20 | 0:04:22 | |
we will have an opportunity to ask questions... | 0:04:22 | 0:04:24 | |
So without any further ado, please welcome Yo-Yo Ma. | 0:04:27 | 0:04:30 | |
APPLAUSE | 0:04:30 | 0:04:32 | |
Hi, there. | 0:04:37 | 0:04:38 | |
Hi. | 0:04:40 | 0:04:41 | |
I'll start off with this. There's an old joke. | 0:04:43 | 0:04:46 | |
A six-year-old boy tells his father, | 0:04:46 | 0:04:51 | |
"When I grow up, I want to be a musician." | 0:04:51 | 0:04:54 | |
And the father looks at the son, | 0:04:56 | 0:04:57 | |
shakes his head sadly, and says, | 0:04:57 | 0:05:00 | |
"I'm sorry, son, you can't do both." | 0:05:00 | 0:05:03 | |
LAUGHTER | 0:05:03 | 0:05:05 | |
I think when I was a kid, a lot of things just happened. | 0:05:18 | 0:05:21 | |
There has come to us this year | 0:05:22 | 0:05:25 | |
a young man aged seven, | 0:05:25 | 0:05:28 | |
bearing the name Yo-Yo Ma, | 0:05:28 | 0:05:31 | |
a Chinese cellist playing old French music | 0:05:31 | 0:05:35 | |
for his new American compatriots. | 0:05:35 | 0:05:37 | |
Being good at something can carry you really far | 0:05:42 | 0:05:44 | |
for a long period of time, | 0:05:44 | 0:05:46 | |
and not require a lot | 0:05:46 | 0:05:47 | |
of introspection, right? | 0:05:47 | 0:05:49 | |
Because... you're good at it and everyone tells you that. | 0:05:49 | 0:05:52 | |
I would think that somebody who has mastered his art | 0:06:00 | 0:06:03 | |
so early in life, so completely, | 0:06:03 | 0:06:06 | |
would have the problem that most wunderkinder have, | 0:06:06 | 0:06:09 | |
which is, how do you keep your interest up? | 0:06:09 | 0:06:12 | |
That's part of my problem. When you grow up with something, | 0:06:15 | 0:06:19 | |
you kind of don't make a choice. | 0:06:19 | 0:06:21 | |
I never committed to being a musician. | 0:06:29 | 0:06:33 | |
You know? I just did it, I fell into it. | 0:06:33 | 0:06:37 | |
I was interested in a lot of things, but... | 0:06:37 | 0:06:40 | |
I didn't particularly pursue any of those. | 0:06:40 | 0:06:44 | |
Leon Kirchner said to him when he was young, | 0:06:47 | 0:06:49 | |
"You're a phenomenal musician, but you haven't found your voice." | 0:06:49 | 0:06:52 | |
And this notion was stuck in my dad's mind. | 0:06:55 | 0:06:58 | |
"What does that mean? How do you do that?" | 0:06:58 | 0:07:00 | |
I think he started looking for answers. | 0:07:04 | 0:07:06 | |
APPLAUSE | 0:07:29 | 0:07:32 | |
I'm always trying to figure out at some level | 0:07:33 | 0:07:37 | |
who I am and how I fit in the world, | 0:07:37 | 0:07:40 | |
which I think is something | 0:07:40 | 0:07:42 | |
that I share with seven billion other people. | 0:07:42 | 0:07:45 | |
I was calling my mum in Damascus before... before you guys came in. | 0:08:01 | 0:08:04 | |
And she's like, "Oh, Kinan, did you clean the place?" | 0:08:04 | 0:08:05 | |
I'm like, "Yes, Mum, it's OK." | 0:08:05 | 0:08:08 | |
-She wants to make sure... -Mums are always mums. | 0:08:08 | 0:08:10 | |
No, she wants to make sure that the CDs are not here, because, you know, | 0:08:10 | 0:08:12 | |
they're there and, you know, it's like, "Is it all tidy?" | 0:08:12 | 0:08:14 | |
I said, "Yes, I've tried my best. It's going to be fine." | 0:08:14 | 0:08:16 | |
So... | 0:08:16 | 0:08:18 | |
I mean, growing up in Damascus was great. | 0:08:23 | 0:08:26 | |
Just had, you know, lots of friends and family. | 0:08:26 | 0:08:30 | |
I don't think of myself as somebody who just, | 0:08:33 | 0:08:35 | |
you know, packed his stuff and left, actually. | 0:08:35 | 0:08:37 | |
I mean, I still have a little apartment back in Damascus. | 0:08:39 | 0:08:43 | |
And my parents are still there. | 0:08:44 | 0:08:47 | |
I miss it a lot. I do miss it. | 0:08:50 | 0:08:52 | |
Now I'm thinking a lot, like, "What is home? | 0:08:54 | 0:08:57 | |
"Is it where your friends are? Is it where your family are? | 0:08:57 | 0:09:00 | |
"Is it the place where you grew up | 0:09:00 | 0:09:02 | |
"or is it the place that... where you want to die?" | 0:09:02 | 0:09:05 | |
I mean, you know, all the... | 0:09:05 | 0:09:06 | |
all these questions, and I think now I'm realising that | 0:09:06 | 0:09:08 | |
it's basically the place where you feel you want to contribute to | 0:09:08 | 0:09:11 | |
without having to justify it. | 0:09:11 | 0:09:12 | |
And here is your coffee, | 0:09:14 | 0:09:15 | |
whoever wants my little Arabic coffee. | 0:09:15 | 0:09:17 | |
I mean, since I left Syria, lots of things have changed. | 0:09:30 | 0:09:35 | |
There's always a fight in each one of us | 0:09:42 | 0:09:45 | |
between believing in the power of the human spirit | 0:09:45 | 0:09:49 | |
and dreading the power of the human spirit. | 0:09:49 | 0:09:52 | |
SIREN WAILS | 0:09:58 | 0:10:00 | |
March 2011... | 0:10:01 | 0:10:03 | |
when the Syrian revolution started... | 0:10:03 | 0:10:05 | |
I found myself experiencing emotions that are, by far, | 0:10:06 | 0:10:10 | |
more complex than... | 0:10:10 | 0:10:13 | |
than what I can express with my music. | 0:10:13 | 0:10:15 | |
So the music fell short, | 0:10:15 | 0:10:18 | |
and I found myself not able to write any music. | 0:10:18 | 0:10:21 | |
Like, can a piece of music stop a bullet? | 0:10:26 | 0:10:28 | |
Can it feed somebody who's hungry? Of course, it doesn't. | 0:10:28 | 0:10:31 | |
You question the role of art altogether. | 0:10:32 | 0:10:35 | |
When I was a student at Harvard, | 0:10:50 | 0:10:52 | |
Leonard Bernstein came to visit. | 0:10:52 | 0:10:56 | |
In his lectures, he was searching | 0:10:56 | 0:10:59 | |
for a universal musical language. | 0:10:59 | 0:11:01 | |
That idea stuck with me ever since. | 0:11:01 | 0:11:05 | |
What's the relevance of all this musical linguistics? | 0:11:05 | 0:11:09 | |
Can it lead us to an answer | 0:11:09 | 0:11:11 | |
of Charles Ives' unanswered question, "Whither music?" | 0:11:11 | 0:11:14 | |
And even if it eventually can... | 0:11:14 | 0:11:17 | |
..does it matter? | 0:11:18 | 0:11:19 | |
The world totters, governments crumble, | 0:11:19 | 0:11:22 | |
and we are poring over music. | 0:11:22 | 0:11:25 | |
Out of the 35 years I've been married, | 0:11:31 | 0:11:33 | |
I've been gone for 22 of those years, away travelling. | 0:11:33 | 0:11:38 | |
I used to throw up before every trip, | 0:11:41 | 0:11:43 | |
you know, just... I would just feel so awful and anxious, | 0:11:43 | 0:11:47 | |
and just like, you know... | 0:11:47 | 0:11:49 | |
it's like I'd get so paralysed. | 0:11:49 | 0:11:51 | |
What is my role? | 0:11:55 | 0:11:57 | |
I'd better find a good reason to say, "Why am I doing this?" | 0:11:59 | 0:12:03 | |
Play... play a song. | 0:12:36 | 0:12:38 | |
Which song? Um... | 0:12:38 | 0:12:39 | |
Play... Iron Man. | 0:12:41 | 0:12:44 | |
Let's own it! | 0:12:51 | 0:12:52 | |
My interest is kind of jump out of the box... | 0:12:52 | 0:12:55 | |
..not only limiting myself as a Chinese musician or pipa player. | 0:12:57 | 0:13:02 | |
Yes! | 0:13:03 | 0:13:05 | |
SHE LAUGHS | 0:13:05 | 0:13:07 | |
Yeah! Woo-woo-woo-woo! | 0:13:07 | 0:13:09 | |
Thank you, thank you. | 0:13:09 | 0:13:10 | |
Hey, wait. What do you do? This... | 0:13:10 | 0:13:13 | |
SHE LAUGHS | 0:13:13 | 0:13:15 | |
I mean, Wu Man was not supposed to be here. | 0:13:15 | 0:13:17 | |
She was just supposed to be a music professor, right, | 0:13:17 | 0:13:20 | |
at the Central Conservatory or somewhere in China. | 0:13:20 | 0:13:22 | |
I remember 1966, | 0:13:46 | 0:13:49 | |
start of the Cultural Revolution. | 0:13:49 | 0:13:51 | |
And then my parents actually asked me to learn music... | 0:13:54 | 0:13:59 | |
to escape from that situation. | 0:13:59 | 0:14:01 | |
Wu Man was in the first class of students | 0:14:03 | 0:14:08 | |
that re-entered Conservatory | 0:14:08 | 0:14:13 | |
after the Chinese Cultural Revolution, | 0:14:13 | 0:14:16 | |
and she became a sensation overnight. | 0:14:16 | 0:14:19 | |
We had no information about Western culture. | 0:14:29 | 0:14:32 | |
Right after revolution... | 0:14:36 | 0:14:38 | |
..everything was destroyed, culturally, | 0:14:39 | 0:14:42 | |
so we are, I guess, standing on the ruins, | 0:14:42 | 0:14:47 | |
dreaming, "What's the next music?" | 0:14:47 | 0:14:51 | |
Oh! Surprised they open. | 0:15:00 | 0:15:03 | |
It's all very different. | 0:15:08 | 0:15:10 | |
Isaac Stern gave a masterclass here, | 0:15:14 | 0:15:16 | |
right here on this stage. | 0:15:16 | 0:15:19 | |
It's like opened another idea. | 0:15:26 | 0:15:28 | |
It opened the door to me. | 0:15:28 | 0:15:31 | |
"American orchestra, that's... that's very interesting." | 0:15:31 | 0:15:35 | |
I wanted to see what's going on outside China. | 0:15:37 | 0:15:41 | |
In the '80s, when I was asked in an interview | 0:15:50 | 0:15:54 | |
about what my next project might be... | 0:15:54 | 0:15:58 | |
What's next for you? | 0:15:58 | 0:15:59 | |
I'm casting about for something, anything, | 0:16:00 | 0:16:03 | |
I said that I had always... | 0:16:03 | 0:16:06 | |
I said, "I have always been fascinated by" - guess what? | 0:16:06 | 0:16:10 | |
The bushmen of the Kalahari Desert. | 0:16:10 | 0:16:13 | |
LAUGHTER | 0:16:13 | 0:16:16 | |
Yeah. | 0:16:16 | 0:16:18 | |
I think he went because he wanted... | 0:16:22 | 0:16:25 | |
He wanted to put some dirt in his bones. | 0:16:25 | 0:16:28 | |
He wanted to get down into the soil. | 0:16:28 | 0:16:31 | |
He wanted something that was going to radically alter | 0:16:31 | 0:16:35 | |
his ways of thinking about things. | 0:16:35 | 0:16:38 | |
Shoot. | 0:16:43 | 0:16:44 | |
Where the hell is the F? | 0:16:44 | 0:16:46 | |
There we go. | 0:16:46 | 0:16:48 | |
I'll tell you one thing that stayed with me | 0:16:48 | 0:16:50 | |
that actually became the event | 0:16:50 | 0:16:53 | |
that unlocked all of this. | 0:16:53 | 0:16:55 | |
They do a trance dance... | 0:16:57 | 0:16:59 | |
THEY SING AND CLAP | 0:16:59 | 0:17:02 | |
..and I was invited to participate. | 0:17:02 | 0:17:05 | |
They get into trance, | 0:17:07 | 0:17:08 | |
and then they lay hands on people who need healing. | 0:17:08 | 0:17:11 | |
I asked the women why they do their trance ritual... | 0:17:14 | 0:17:18 | |
..and they said the clearest reason | 0:17:20 | 0:17:23 | |
for music, for culture, for medicine, for religion. | 0:17:23 | 0:17:29 | |
They said, "Because it gives us meaning." | 0:17:29 | 0:17:31 | |
So one day, I sat with Yo-Yo at the cafe | 0:17:38 | 0:17:41 | |
and we were talking about where creativity comes from... | 0:17:41 | 0:17:44 | |
Where new ideas come from. | 0:17:46 | 0:17:48 | |
And so he drew on a napkin at the bar. | 0:17:50 | 0:17:53 | |
He drew circles intersecting. | 0:17:53 | 0:17:55 | |
And then he shaded the intersections and said, | 0:17:55 | 0:17:58 | |
"This is, you know... this is a culture, | 0:17:58 | 0:17:59 | |
"this is another culture, and in the intersection, | 0:17:59 | 0:18:02 | |
"that's where new things will emerge." | 0:18:02 | 0:18:04 | |
The Silk Road Project - we started as an idea | 0:18:11 | 0:18:15 | |
a group of musicians getting together | 0:18:15 | 0:18:18 | |
and seeing what might happen... when strangers meet. | 0:18:18 | 0:18:22 | |
We went and scoured from Venice through to Istanbul, | 0:18:28 | 0:18:33 | |
central Asia, Mongolia and China, | 0:18:33 | 0:18:36 | |
looking for incredible talent. | 0:18:36 | 0:18:37 | |
This was like the Manhattan Project of music. | 0:18:37 | 0:18:41 | |
We invited about 60 performers | 0:18:41 | 0:18:44 | |
and composers from the lands of the Silk Road, | 0:18:44 | 0:18:46 | |
meeting in a kind of workshop. | 0:18:46 | 0:18:49 | |
No-one knew what was going to happen. | 0:18:50 | 0:18:52 | |
"Did Yo-Yo go off his tracks or something? | 0:18:53 | 0:18:57 | |
"What... What did he drink?" You know? | 0:18:57 | 0:18:59 | |
We gathered in the summer of 2000 in Massachusetts. | 0:19:02 | 0:19:06 | |
Frankly... | 0:19:10 | 0:19:12 | |
I was scared to death. | 0:19:12 | 0:19:14 | |
Yo-Yo Ma is, of course, a golden child. | 0:19:18 | 0:19:21 | |
He can touch anything and do anything, | 0:19:21 | 0:19:24 | |
and everything... Everybody thinks it's great. | 0:19:24 | 0:19:26 | |
But you could not expect | 0:19:30 | 0:19:31 | |
that someone from Africa or China picks up | 0:19:31 | 0:19:36 | |
on the subtleties of a culture that is not their own. | 0:19:36 | 0:19:39 | |
A lot of people thought that what we were doing was not pure. | 0:19:43 | 0:19:48 | |
It's, uh... What is it called? | 0:19:48 | 0:19:51 | |
Cultural tourism. | 0:19:51 | 0:19:53 | |
Let's go. Yeah. | 0:19:54 | 0:19:56 | |
Beautiful. | 0:20:32 | 0:20:34 | |
This is basic rhythm. | 0:20:35 | 0:20:36 | |
I mean, just not the accent. | 0:20:36 | 0:20:38 | |
Try... dut-dut, ba-ba-ba-ba. | 0:20:38 | 0:20:40 | |
Ba-ba-ba-ba, ba-ba-ba... | 0:20:40 | 0:20:42 | |
HE SINGS | 0:20:42 | 0:20:46 | |
Kayhan, he's such a well-known figure in Iran, | 0:20:46 | 0:20:50 | |
and he was here at the very beginning. | 0:20:50 | 0:20:53 | |
-That's fantastic. -Ah. | 0:20:57 | 0:20:58 | |
So the nail going back and forth, right? | 0:20:58 | 0:21:00 | |
Yeah. Right, left, two rights. | 0:21:00 | 0:21:02 | |
Oh. | 0:21:03 | 0:21:04 | |
My intention is to represent my culture | 0:21:46 | 0:21:50 | |
and the contribution | 0:21:50 | 0:21:53 | |
that this very old culture made to human life. | 0:21:53 | 0:21:57 | |
If you go back, you know, in the beginning of the 20th century, | 0:22:03 | 0:22:07 | |
every Eastern culture was so fascinated with West... | 0:22:07 | 0:22:11 | |
You know, the technology, cars, and music, of course. | 0:22:11 | 0:22:16 | |
My instrument, kamancheh, | 0:22:17 | 0:22:20 | |
it was not being taught. | 0:22:20 | 0:22:24 | |
And I was really lucky, | 0:22:24 | 0:22:25 | |
because I got to professional music very early, | 0:22:25 | 0:22:27 | |
so I had the chance to work with the older generation. | 0:22:27 | 0:22:30 | |
Kayhan, he brings you closer to the horse | 0:22:33 | 0:22:35 | |
or to the cow or to the source, | 0:22:35 | 0:22:37 | |
you know, that you forget. | 0:22:37 | 0:22:39 | |
But Kayhan has had a very tragic life. | 0:22:42 | 0:22:45 | |
The revolution. | 0:22:49 | 0:22:52 | |
Chaos. | 0:22:52 | 0:22:54 | |
You realise that your life's not going to be the same anymore. | 0:22:56 | 0:23:00 | |
I was 17... | 0:23:03 | 0:23:05 | |
My parents decided that I had to leave. | 0:23:05 | 0:23:08 | |
I just walked... walked, you know, out... | 0:23:11 | 0:23:14 | |
out of the country like that. | 0:23:14 | 0:23:16 | |
I... I worked little by little in every country, kind of farm work. | 0:23:18 | 0:23:23 | |
Turkey for nine months, and then Romania, Yugoslavia, Italy. | 0:23:25 | 0:23:29 | |
Yeah, I had a little backpack... and, um... I had a kamancheh. | 0:23:30 | 0:23:34 | |
That was it. Yeah. | 0:23:36 | 0:23:38 | |
When I left... | 0:23:58 | 0:24:01 | |
meeting a lot of different world musicians... | 0:24:01 | 0:24:05 | |
that was very attractive to me. | 0:24:05 | 0:24:07 | |
I always wanted to do something outside of my culture. | 0:24:09 | 0:24:12 | |
I think that was | 0:24:12 | 0:24:14 | |
a very important turning point in my career. | 0:24:14 | 0:24:17 | |
How's it going, Kayhan? | 0:24:23 | 0:24:25 | |
Uh, fine. We definitely need more rehearsal time. | 0:24:25 | 0:24:28 | |
But... um, they're very good musicians, | 0:24:28 | 0:24:31 | |
and they're much better than yesterday, | 0:24:31 | 0:24:34 | |
so... there is hope. | 0:24:34 | 0:24:36 | |
HE LAUGHS | 0:24:36 | 0:24:38 | |
The Tanglewood workshop was fantastic, | 0:24:48 | 0:24:50 | |
because we don't speak necessarily perfect English | 0:24:50 | 0:24:53 | |
or perfect Chinese or perfect Persian, | 0:24:53 | 0:24:55 | |
but we speak perfect music language. | 0:24:55 | 0:24:59 | |
Some projects, you know at the end of it, that's wonderful. | 0:25:05 | 0:25:10 | |
It was a great thing, but it's done. | 0:25:10 | 0:25:12 | |
This one... is different. | 0:25:13 | 0:25:15 | |
APPLAUSE | 0:25:37 | 0:25:39 | |
You make a connection. You make a cultural connection. | 0:25:40 | 0:25:44 | |
You make a connection to another human being. | 0:25:44 | 0:25:47 | |
That's very precious. | 0:25:47 | 0:25:49 | |
We were faced with the decision, "Should we go on or is this it?" | 0:25:49 | 0:25:53 | |
And we were very careful to try to not just say | 0:25:53 | 0:25:57 | |
we should go on because we would like it to. | 0:25:57 | 0:26:00 | |
What's the reason for going on? | 0:26:03 | 0:26:05 | |
Of course, the major concern is human loss. | 0:26:09 | 0:26:12 | |
I mean, do you know if there were many people in the building? | 0:26:12 | 0:26:15 | |
Oh! Another one just hit! | 0:26:15 | 0:26:16 | |
Something else just hit. A very large plane | 0:26:16 | 0:26:18 | |
just flew directly over my building, and there's been another collision. | 0:26:18 | 0:26:21 | |
-Can you see it? I can see it on this shot. -Yes. -Oh, my... | 0:26:21 | 0:26:24 | |
Something else has just... that looked more like a 747. | 0:26:24 | 0:26:26 | |
We just saw a plane circling the building. | 0:26:26 | 0:26:28 | |
I was in a hotel room at nine o'clock the morning of 9/11. | 0:26:33 | 0:26:39 | |
My wife called me and said, | 0:26:44 | 0:26:45 | |
"Turn on the television. Something's happening." | 0:26:45 | 0:26:49 | |
I saw a large plane, like a jet, | 0:26:51 | 0:26:53 | |
go immediately heading directly in towards the World Trade Center... | 0:26:53 | 0:26:57 | |
It was surreal. | 0:27:02 | 0:27:05 | |
You know, nation was in shock. | 0:27:05 | 0:27:07 | |
And I had a lot of time to think. | 0:27:11 | 0:27:15 | |
We really wondered that, in the face of the xenophobia, | 0:27:24 | 0:27:28 | |
it might just not be possible to do this anymore. | 0:27:28 | 0:27:31 | |
Everybody, in the face of disaster, | 0:27:35 | 0:27:39 | |
re-examines who they are in their purpose. | 0:27:39 | 0:27:42 | |
We are a group that has so many disparate elements. | 0:27:46 | 0:27:49 | |
We could have been a group of adversaries, essentially. | 0:27:49 | 0:27:53 | |
And I think all of us kind of knew that, you know, | 0:27:55 | 0:27:57 | |
we had a responsibility to... | 0:27:57 | 0:27:58 | |
..to work harder. | 0:28:00 | 0:28:02 | |
This piece is called Quartet to the End of Time, | 0:28:05 | 0:28:09 | |
and it's written by a composer named Olivier Messiaen. | 0:28:09 | 0:28:13 | |
He wrote this while he was a prisoner of war during World War II. | 0:28:13 | 0:28:18 | |
How does Messiaen do that? | 0:28:36 | 0:28:38 | |
How do you express incredible grief or eternity and love? | 0:28:39 | 0:28:45 | |
You add a little vibrato, | 0:28:49 | 0:28:50 | |
and you suddenly feel that you might be bathed | 0:28:50 | 0:28:54 | |
and blanketed by the warmth of an intense light. | 0:28:54 | 0:28:57 | |
That love is mythic, | 0:29:01 | 0:29:03 | |
eternal and unconditional love. | 0:29:03 | 0:29:07 | |
It's a paradox. | 0:29:10 | 0:29:13 | |
By trying to kill the human spirit, | 0:29:13 | 0:29:15 | |
the answer of the human spirit is to revenge with beauty. | 0:29:15 | 0:29:19 | |
Culture doesn't end. | 0:29:33 | 0:29:35 | |
It's not a business deal where, | 0:29:36 | 0:29:38 | |
at the conclusion of the business deal, it's done. | 0:29:38 | 0:29:41 | |
You know, it's not an election cycle. | 0:29:41 | 0:29:42 | |
It's about keeping things alive and evolving, | 0:29:42 | 0:29:47 | |
and so we decided to go on, | 0:29:47 | 0:29:49 | |
and then that's when all of our trouble began. | 0:29:49 | 0:29:52 | |
SHE SINGS | 0:29:59 | 0:30:01 | |
THEY SHOUT | 0:30:05 | 0:30:07 | |
Cristina is one of those people | 0:30:15 | 0:30:17 | |
that we were lucky to meet through Osvaldo. | 0:30:17 | 0:30:21 | |
He said, "Guys, you have to work with Cristina. | 0:30:21 | 0:30:25 | |
"She is amazing." | 0:30:25 | 0:30:27 | |
She brings... something... | 0:30:27 | 0:30:31 | |
so sensual, so... earthy. | 0:30:31 | 0:30:36 | |
She needs to be here, | 0:30:37 | 0:30:38 | |
because she brings something that is essential | 0:30:38 | 0:30:41 | |
to the universal soul and it was missing. | 0:30:41 | 0:30:43 | |
There is something very primitive about the sound of the gaita. | 0:30:52 | 0:30:55 | |
To me, it's like hearing my father speaking. | 0:30:58 | 0:31:00 | |
THEY CHEER | 0:31:13 | 0:31:15 | |
In the generation I come from, it's like you have two choices, | 0:31:18 | 0:31:21 | |
of playing soccer or playing bagpipes, | 0:31:21 | 0:31:23 | |
if you were born in Galicia. | 0:31:23 | 0:31:25 | |
-Whoo! -Oh! | 0:31:28 | 0:31:30 | |
If I ask you to think about Spain | 0:31:46 | 0:31:48 | |
and to think about what is | 0:31:48 | 0:31:50 | |
the first music that comes to your mind... | 0:31:50 | 0:31:53 | |
..Galicia doesn't have anything to do with that. | 0:31:56 | 0:31:59 | |
Galicia is in the northwest corner of Spain, | 0:32:05 | 0:32:08 | |
and geographically speaking, | 0:32:08 | 0:32:10 | |
it has been always kind of isolated. | 0:32:10 | 0:32:12 | |
It has its own language, its own culture, | 0:32:14 | 0:32:16 | |
and if you were to shrink everything to just one sound, | 0:32:16 | 0:32:20 | |
the sound of the bagpipe is the sound of Galicia. | 0:32:20 | 0:32:23 | |
SHE SINGS | 0:32:32 | 0:32:34 | |
That part of Spain... | 0:32:37 | 0:32:41 | |
is culturally rich and economically poor. | 0:32:41 | 0:32:46 | |
SHE SINGS | 0:32:46 | 0:32:49 | |
Cristina is hugely conscious | 0:32:49 | 0:32:52 | |
of what her friends and family go through in Galicia. | 0:32:52 | 0:32:57 | |
I knew exactly what the tradition meant to the elder generation. | 0:32:59 | 0:33:02 | |
But I was excited about everything | 0:33:06 | 0:33:08 | |
that was happening in the present tense. | 0:33:08 | 0:33:10 | |
CHEERING | 0:33:16 | 0:33:18 | |
SHE YELLS | 0:33:22 | 0:33:23 | |
It was like something explosive. | 0:33:26 | 0:33:28 | |
She took the instrument to an extreme | 0:33:30 | 0:33:32 | |
that people could not even think about. | 0:33:32 | 0:33:35 | |
She's the Jimi Hendrix of the gaita. | 0:33:37 | 0:33:39 | |
But, you know, I don't think everybody likes Jimi Hendrix. | 0:33:41 | 0:33:45 | |
When you play an instrument that really represents | 0:33:49 | 0:33:51 | |
your country or your area of the world, | 0:33:51 | 0:33:54 | |
that has implications. | 0:33:54 | 0:33:57 | |
The first bad reviews I got were from the kind of people | 0:34:01 | 0:34:06 | |
that really wants to preserve pure, traditional Galician music, | 0:34:06 | 0:34:10 | |
and some of them were not very nice to me. | 0:34:10 | 0:34:15 | |
I was 18 years old. | 0:34:16 | 0:34:18 | |
I wasn't thinking about any other political meaning. | 0:34:18 | 0:34:22 | |
I just played bagpipes. | 0:34:22 | 0:34:23 | |
One day I woke up and I saw myself doing that for the rest of my life, | 0:34:26 | 0:34:31 | |
and I didn't like that feeling. | 0:34:31 | 0:34:33 | |
I decided to put all that life away and go away. | 0:34:35 | 0:34:39 | |
I didn't even bring my bagpipe. | 0:34:39 | 0:34:41 | |
SHE SHOUTS | 0:34:42 | 0:34:45 | |
CHEERING AND WHISTLING | 0:34:48 | 0:34:51 | |
BIRDSONG | 0:34:51 | 0:34:53 | |
SILENCE | 0:34:53 | 0:34:55 | |
I mean, I moved to New York about 10 days before 9/11 happened. | 0:35:08 | 0:35:12 | |
And do I say it was easy? | 0:35:14 | 0:35:15 | |
It wasn't easy, because all the stereotypes come. | 0:35:15 | 0:35:18 | |
And, you know, you're judged by the way you look, | 0:35:18 | 0:35:21 | |
and I had a big beard at that time. | 0:35:21 | 0:35:23 | |
I was born in Paris. | 0:35:35 | 0:35:38 | |
We moved to New York, | 0:35:38 | 0:35:40 | |
and I had nothing to do with that, | 0:35:40 | 0:35:42 | |
except things just changed around me. | 0:35:42 | 0:35:44 | |
The way things look, smell, taste. | 0:35:44 | 0:35:48 | |
And it was confusing. | 0:35:50 | 0:35:51 | |
A lot of friends said, "Why are you going to America? | 0:35:54 | 0:35:56 | |
"You're crazy." And... I was crazy, actually. | 0:35:56 | 0:36:00 | |
No English. | 0:36:02 | 0:36:03 | |
Nobody know what a pipa was. | 0:36:03 | 0:36:05 | |
The very first thing that I learned | 0:36:12 | 0:36:14 | |
was that my experience as kamancheh player | 0:36:14 | 0:36:17 | |
would not count as anything. | 0:36:17 | 0:36:19 | |
It was zero. | 0:36:19 | 0:36:21 | |
The moment you place yourself in a different context... | 0:36:29 | 0:36:33 | |
SHE SINGS | 0:36:33 | 0:36:35 | |
..then you have to stretch yourself, | 0:36:37 | 0:36:40 | |
because nobody knows the pipa or the kamancheh or the gaita. | 0:36:40 | 0:36:45 | |
I worked in a restaurant. I drove a cab. | 0:36:46 | 0:36:49 | |
But I wanted to learn, | 0:36:50 | 0:36:52 | |
I wanted to study and become a better musician. | 0:36:52 | 0:36:55 | |
Play in a Chinatown with... local musicians, | 0:36:57 | 0:37:01 | |
you know, factory worker, taxi driver. | 0:37:01 | 0:37:04 | |
That's the only way I keep it up. | 0:37:06 | 0:37:09 | |
SHE SINGS | 0:37:09 | 0:37:10 | |
The good thing about being in New York, | 0:37:16 | 0:37:18 | |
everybody comes from a different place, | 0:37:18 | 0:37:20 | |
and we all bring our roots. | 0:37:20 | 0:37:22 | |
Those roots get re-rooted here. | 0:37:23 | 0:37:26 | |
Definitely, America's very different. | 0:37:39 | 0:37:41 | |
But I'm more interested in actually appreciating the differences... | 0:37:44 | 0:37:48 | |
What you have that I don't have. | 0:37:50 | 0:37:51 | |
Not that I want to take it away from you, | 0:37:51 | 0:37:53 | |
no, but I want to learn from it, you know? | 0:37:53 | 0:37:55 | |
I do remember a press conference | 0:38:05 | 0:38:06 | |
which was one of the first times that we got up as a group | 0:38:06 | 0:38:09 | |
to talk about what we did in front of cameras, in front of the press. | 0:38:09 | 0:38:12 | |
And they were asking questions along the lines of, you know, | 0:38:12 | 0:38:17 | |
"It's like you're taking this traditional music, | 0:38:17 | 0:38:19 | |
"you're mixing it together, and you're diluting, | 0:38:19 | 0:38:22 | |
"you know, these traditions." | 0:38:22 | 0:38:23 | |
-Nick, you want to go? -Uh, sure. | 0:38:23 | 0:38:27 | |
I was just terrified. | 0:38:27 | 0:38:29 | |
Share a little bit about... | 0:38:29 | 0:38:30 | |
We were not at the point of describing it | 0:38:30 | 0:38:32 | |
as a family or as this creative cauldron. | 0:38:32 | 0:38:35 | |
Uh... | 0:38:35 | 0:38:36 | |
We had none of that, really, to stand on. | 0:38:36 | 0:38:39 | |
Thanks, everybody, for being here. | 0:38:39 | 0:38:42 | |
I'm going to go to the bathroom. | 0:38:42 | 0:38:44 | |
To try to describe what we were trying to do, | 0:38:44 | 0:38:47 | |
what this meant and all that was... was a nightmare. | 0:38:47 | 0:38:51 | |
I knew that whatever we did, | 0:38:52 | 0:38:55 | |
there was going to be naysayers from all sides. | 0:38:55 | 0:38:57 | |
-Kinan and Wu Man, are you ready? -KINAN: -Yep. | 0:38:57 | 0:39:02 | |
All set. | 0:39:02 | 0:39:04 | |
Yes, criticism hurts. | 0:39:04 | 0:39:06 | |
But you actually have to have conviction | 0:39:09 | 0:39:12 | |
in the genuineness and the power of your ideas. | 0:39:12 | 0:39:17 | |
And I'm sort of saying, "Gee, let's take a chance." | 0:39:17 | 0:39:21 | |
SHE CHEERS | 0:40:29 | 0:40:32 | |
Phew! | 0:41:02 | 0:41:05 | |
What a beaut! | 0:41:05 | 0:41:06 | |
This project, it adds your voice. | 0:41:06 | 0:41:09 | |
I think this is what is exciting about the journey is, | 0:41:09 | 0:41:11 | |
you look for your voice, you know? | 0:41:11 | 0:41:13 | |
Sometimes you think you found it, | 0:41:13 | 0:41:14 | |
and then once you have it, it changes again. | 0:41:14 | 0:41:16 | |
Oh, look, look, look. They're playing badminton. | 0:41:38 | 0:41:41 | |
Oh, yeah, let's go see this. | 0:41:42 | 0:41:43 | |
This is... I love this. | 0:41:43 | 0:41:45 | |
Wow! | 0:41:48 | 0:41:51 | |
-Oh. -Whoa! | 0:41:54 | 0:41:56 | |
That's great. That's great. | 0:41:59 | 0:42:01 | |
Mmm! | 0:42:15 | 0:42:17 | |
HE SINGS | 0:42:44 | 0:42:46 | |
HE SINGS | 0:43:30 | 0:43:32 | |
INDISTINCT | 0:44:05 | 0:44:07 | |
It's very, very necessary for me to go and live in Iran, | 0:44:24 | 0:44:28 | |
because what happened after the revolution... | 0:44:28 | 0:44:32 | |
all of the better teachers moved out. | 0:44:32 | 0:44:36 | |
I went back 2002 to teach Persian music. | 0:44:39 | 0:44:43 | |
HE HUMS | 0:44:50 | 0:44:52 | |
WOMAN LAUGHS | 0:44:58 | 0:45:00 | |
I think living with tragedy for many years | 0:45:30 | 0:45:33 | |
and being alone is really, really tough. | 0:45:33 | 0:45:36 | |
So when he moved back to Iran... | 0:45:39 | 0:45:43 | |
he started teaching, met Zohreh... | 0:45:43 | 0:45:46 | |
and it changed his life. | 0:45:46 | 0:45:48 | |
It's very dangerous. | 0:46:34 | 0:46:35 | |
The Iranian government really keeps their eye on artists like Kayhan | 0:46:35 | 0:46:41 | |
and other musicians that are quite popular. | 0:46:41 | 0:46:43 | |
They were warned that they should not be participating | 0:46:43 | 0:46:47 | |
in conversations about what's happening in Iran. | 0:46:47 | 0:46:50 | |
One thing that I cannot accept is violence. | 0:46:52 | 0:46:55 | |
I've been outspoken, I've been active, | 0:46:58 | 0:47:01 | |
you know, to try to help that. | 0:47:01 | 0:47:03 | |
Did anything happen to you personally? | 0:47:05 | 0:47:08 | |
Yes, but, you know, I... I wouldn't want to talk, | 0:47:08 | 0:47:11 | |
you know, to camera about it. | 0:47:11 | 0:47:13 | |
I can choose to be part of that society or not, | 0:47:16 | 0:47:19 | |
and... and that's not a very idealistic society | 0:47:19 | 0:47:24 | |
for me to be a part of. | 0:47:24 | 0:47:26 | |
So I had to leave. | 0:47:28 | 0:47:30 | |
But... Zohreh stayed. | 0:47:33 | 0:47:36 | |
I haven't been back for five years now, yeah. | 0:47:43 | 0:47:46 | |
You know, I miss her, | 0:47:55 | 0:47:56 | |
and I miss my homeland, | 0:47:56 | 0:47:58 | |
and I always want to go back and live there. | 0:47:58 | 0:48:01 | |
I haven't been able to do it so far. | 0:48:03 | 0:48:05 | |
But I think it... it will happen. | 0:48:06 | 0:48:09 | |
Yeah, I think I missed one. | 0:48:15 | 0:48:18 | |
OK, guys, all right. CHATTERING | 0:48:18 | 0:48:21 | |
OK. I'd like to ask you something. | 0:48:21 | 0:48:24 | |
I would like a very free rhythm | 0:48:24 | 0:48:30 | |
and almost nothing. | 0:48:30 | 0:48:32 | |
It's sort of intimate and atmospheric and... | 0:48:32 | 0:48:36 | |
So, how does it go? | 0:48:36 | 0:48:38 | |
It can go... It can do something there. | 0:48:54 | 0:48:57 | |
OTHERS JOIN IN | 0:49:04 | 0:49:07 | |
Good. Something like that. | 0:49:12 | 0:49:14 | |
Mongolian birds' wings fluttering. | 0:49:14 | 0:49:17 | |
And if you want to do... | 0:49:17 | 0:49:18 | |
you know, it could be wind, right? So... | 0:49:18 | 0:49:21 | |
-Is that OK? -Yeah. Let's do it. | 0:49:23 | 0:49:26 | |
So it should sound like a giant horse fart. | 0:49:26 | 0:49:28 | |
You know? Like... HE SNORTS, THEY LAUGH | 0:49:28 | 0:49:32 | |
Back to the top. | 0:49:32 | 0:49:34 | |
In the States, the first few years was really difficult. | 0:49:50 | 0:49:54 | |
But music circle and the music community is very small. | 0:50:00 | 0:50:03 | |
So when you're interested, | 0:50:04 | 0:50:06 | |
you went looking for something, | 0:50:06 | 0:50:08 | |
and definitely, it's there or there | 0:50:08 | 0:50:11 | |
if you pay attention. | 0:50:11 | 0:50:12 | |
My instrument, nobody knows it. | 0:50:18 | 0:50:21 | |
And I remember one day, I get phone call. | 0:50:21 | 0:50:25 | |
"How come this string quartet wanted to work with me?" | 0:50:25 | 0:50:28 | |
She is a total rock star. | 0:50:35 | 0:50:37 | |
She started playing with so many different people. | 0:50:37 | 0:50:41 | |
It's like, "I need a pipa player!" "Call Wu Man." | 0:50:42 | 0:50:45 | |
APPLAUSE | 0:50:51 | 0:50:53 | |
In America, people think you're Chinese. | 0:51:08 | 0:51:11 | |
You play Chinese instrument and from China. | 0:51:12 | 0:51:15 | |
But when I go back to China, they say, "Oh, you're American." | 0:51:15 | 0:51:18 | |
"You... you don't know today's China." | 0:51:27 | 0:51:30 | |
When you leave your home, your country, | 0:51:42 | 0:51:44 | |
and you have this picture of it in your mind. | 0:51:44 | 0:51:49 | |
When I went back, nothing fit that picture I had in my mind. | 0:51:49 | 0:51:54 | |
Everything changed. | 0:51:57 | 0:51:58 | |
People were even speaking differently. | 0:51:58 | 0:52:01 | |
I think the challenge in Galicia right now is | 0:52:07 | 0:52:09 | |
the same challenge that exists in the rest of the world, | 0:52:09 | 0:52:12 | |
which is keeping your roots alive. | 0:52:12 | 0:52:15 | |
There is no tradition that exists today | 0:52:26 | 0:52:28 | |
that was not the result of really successful invention. | 0:52:28 | 0:52:32 | |
But unless a tradition keeps evolving... | 0:52:35 | 0:52:39 | |
...it naturally becomes smaller and smaller. | 0:52:41 | 0:52:45 | |
That leads me back to China, | 0:52:47 | 0:52:49 | |
to rediscovering "What is China's music?" | 0:52:49 | 0:52:53 | |
None of us can prove anything about how... | 0:53:09 | 0:53:13 | |
much of the past we carry with us. | 0:53:13 | 0:53:16 | |
I had thought that this is, in Yo-Yo's mind... | 0:53:19 | 0:53:23 | |
..his investigations into his own past. | 0:53:24 | 0:53:28 | |
My father was born in 1911... | 0:53:32 | 0:53:35 | |
and he left China when he was about 25 to go to France to study. | 0:53:35 | 0:53:40 | |
And he wrote about that fusion of what Chinese music | 0:53:44 | 0:53:48 | |
might sound like with French techniques of composing. | 0:53:48 | 0:53:53 | |
Isn't that strange that, so many years later... | 0:53:54 | 0:53:58 | |
the apple did not fall that far from the tree? | 0:53:58 | 0:54:01 | |
Yo-Yo! | 0:54:41 | 0:54:42 | |
Yo-Yo. | 0:54:43 | 0:54:47 | |
Yo-Yo! | 0:54:47 | 0:54:49 | |
SHE CALLS OUT | 0:54:49 | 0:54:52 | |
That's Yo-Yo, the dog. | 0:54:52 | 0:54:55 | |
OK, come on in. | 0:54:55 | 0:54:57 | |
CHATTER AND LAUGHTER | 0:55:03 | 0:55:05 | |
Home is this for me. | 0:55:26 | 0:55:28 | |
Every birthday of mine since I was first, | 0:55:28 | 0:55:30 | |
my first birthday, was celebrated here or in this house. | 0:55:30 | 0:55:34 | |
And for us to keep that cultural identity alive | 0:55:53 | 0:55:57 | |
is probably one of the most defining aspects | 0:55:57 | 0:56:01 | |
of what it means to be a Galician. | 0:56:01 | 0:56:03 | |
During the history of time, | 0:56:08 | 0:56:11 | |
many different civilisations have tried | 0:56:11 | 0:56:13 | |
to take away that identity... | 0:56:13 | 0:56:15 | |
like Roman Empire. | 0:56:17 | 0:56:19 | |
..they will lose their memories. | 0:56:35 | 0:56:36 | |
Their... They couldn't remember anything. | 0:56:36 | 0:56:39 | |
HE SINGS | 0:56:54 | 0:56:56 | |
That's the legend behind the piece I wrote for my mother, | 0:57:26 | 0:57:30 | |
who maybe, like, four years ago started to... to... | 0:57:30 | 0:57:35 | |
..lose her memory. | 0:57:36 | 0:57:38 | |
THEY SING | 0:57:38 | 0:57:40 | |
SHE LAUGHS | 0:58:11 | 0:58:13 | |
We want to protect what we have... | 0:58:17 | 0:58:19 | |
..our culture, our music. | 0:58:21 | 0:58:25 | |
And we want our children to keep the language alive. | 0:58:25 | 0:58:30 | |
And in order to be alive, you have to let it grow. | 0:58:35 | 0:58:38 | |
Lots of people, when they think of the Middle East, | 0:58:50 | 0:58:53 | |
they think of divisions, like Sunni, Shia, | 0:58:53 | 0:58:55 | |
Christian, Armenian, Kurds, Turks. | 0:58:55 | 0:58:59 | |
I don't think of the Middle East this way. | 0:59:01 | 0:59:03 | |
You know, I think it's an ancient place | 0:59:03 | 0:59:05 | |
where all the cultures happen to exist at some point. | 0:59:05 | 0:59:09 | |
-How much are these? -Excuse. | 0:59:09 | 0:59:11 | |
That's OK, that's OK. I'm just going to play this, yeah? | 0:59:11 | 0:59:13 | |
Yeah? | 0:59:13 | 0:59:15 | |
When we were in Juilliard, | 0:59:18 | 0:59:19 | |
Kinan and I, Kinan was graduating... | 0:59:19 | 0:59:23 | |
He made this very moving, beautiful piece. | 0:59:23 | 0:59:26 | |
And I told Kinan, I said, "I think I can contribute | 0:59:27 | 0:59:31 | |
"something in this piece." | 0:59:31 | 0:59:33 | |
We think very similarly, | 0:59:50 | 0:59:53 | |
even though he's Muslim Arab and I'm Armenian Christian. | 0:59:53 | 0:59:55 | |
It's... it's not necessary. We grew up without even knowing | 0:59:55 | 0:59:58 | |
who's Christian, who's Muslim in Syria. | 0:59:58 | 1:00:00 | |
It was not a necessary thing. | 1:00:00 | 1:00:01 | |
So this place was... used to be a church, | 1:00:04 | 1:00:06 | |
and then it turned out to be a mosque. | 1:00:06 | 1:00:08 | |
And then here it is, now it's a museum. | 1:00:08 | 1:00:12 | |
No, "This is so beautiful, I don't want to cover it." | 1:00:46 | 1:00:48 | |
That's the power of art, | 1:00:48 | 1:00:51 | |
one crosses any... limitation. | 1:00:51 | 1:00:55 | |
Apparently I thought my father worked at the airport | 1:01:02 | 1:01:05 | |
when I was a child, because that's where he was always going, | 1:01:05 | 1:01:08 | |
and so it was a bit of a massive revelation | 1:01:08 | 1:01:10 | |
that he was not, in fact... employed by Logan Airport. | 1:01:10 | 1:01:13 | |
But he knows what's important, | 1:01:15 | 1:01:18 | |
and I think he sees his obligation, | 1:01:18 | 1:01:22 | |
particularly when he goes to smaller towns, | 1:01:22 | 1:01:24 | |
as beginning the moment he lands | 1:01:24 | 1:01:26 | |
and lasting the entire time he's on the ground. | 1:01:26 | 1:01:30 | |
He's there to spread his sense of the world | 1:01:35 | 1:01:38 | |
in every conversation and interaction that takes place. | 1:01:38 | 1:01:42 | |
APPLAUSE Wow. | 1:01:42 | 1:01:45 | |
Good evening. I'm Yo-Yo Ma, | 1:01:45 | 1:01:48 | |
and this is my brother, Kayhan Kalhor. | 1:01:48 | 1:01:51 | |
Now, we were twins, | 1:01:53 | 1:01:54 | |
but we were separated at birth. | 1:01:54 | 1:01:57 | |
LAUGHTER | 1:01:57 | 1:01:58 | |
But we found out from DNA analysis... | 1:01:58 | 1:02:03 | |
..that even our life choices... | 1:02:05 | 1:02:08 | |
-..are the same. -Almost, yeah. -APPLAUSE | 1:02:10 | 1:02:13 | |
Everybody is afraid of going somewhere they haven't gone before. | 1:03:01 | 1:03:06 | |
But you build enough trust within a group, | 1:03:08 | 1:03:12 | |
and sometimes you can turn fear into joy. | 1:03:12 | 1:03:16 | |
CHEERING | 1:04:45 | 1:04:47 | |
A lot of us in our own careers | 1:04:50 | 1:04:51 | |
have developed in different directions. | 1:04:51 | 1:04:53 | |
We have our own bands, | 1:04:53 | 1:04:54 | |
or we have our own work here and there, | 1:04:54 | 1:04:57 | |
but this is the one place where you can come together... | 1:04:57 | 1:05:01 | |
and play music that you... that you don't get to play otherwise. | 1:05:01 | 1:05:04 | |
That tells people like me, | 1:05:05 | 1:05:08 | |
it's OK to be doing what I'm doing. | 1:05:08 | 1:05:11 | |
SHE CALLS OUT | 1:05:24 | 1:05:26 | |
HE LAUGHS | 1:06:01 | 1:06:02 | |
HE SINGS | 1:06:02 | 1:06:04 | |
THEY LAUGH | 1:06:27 | 1:06:29 | |
HE SINGS | 1:06:40 | 1:06:42 | |
Music is their whole life, | 1:07:46 | 1:07:48 | |
and they told me they're already 11th generation. | 1:07:48 | 1:07:51 | |
So I asked them, "What about 12th generation? | 1:07:51 | 1:07:53 | |
"Is there any 12th, 13th?" | 1:07:53 | 1:07:56 | |
They look at me. There's no answer. | 1:07:56 | 1:07:59 | |
So that... to me, really emotional. | 1:07:59 | 1:08:03 | |
CHANTING | 1:08:58 | 1:09:00 | |
I don't know who writes the scripts | 1:09:02 | 1:09:04 | |
for different revolutions, but they all look the same... | 1:09:04 | 1:09:07 | |
..and they affect people's life in the same way. | 1:09:08 | 1:09:10 | |
Cultural Revolution is | 1:09:15 | 1:09:17 | |
the darkest history time period of China. | 1:09:17 | 1:09:20 | |
And for artist, there is no creation. | 1:09:23 | 1:09:26 | |
The party tell you what to do. | 1:09:28 | 1:09:30 | |
I question the role of art. | 1:09:45 | 1:09:47 | |
I question my role, like, "What am I doing?" | 1:09:47 | 1:09:50 | |
What is my role in comparison to somebody who's on the ground, | 1:09:53 | 1:09:56 | |
peacefully demonstrating, at the risk of being shot, you know? | 1:09:56 | 1:09:59 | |
If you ask me, "Do you want to go home?" Of course, I want to go home, | 1:10:09 | 1:10:12 | |
but in what circumstances would I go? | 1:10:12 | 1:10:14 | |
We humans are... | 1:10:51 | 1:10:53 | |
We have a tendency to control everything. | 1:10:53 | 1:10:56 | |
The Earth, animals, you know, | 1:10:56 | 1:11:00 | |
even the humans around us. | 1:11:00 | 1:11:03 | |
It's endless. | 1:11:08 | 1:11:10 | |
Later on, when the Iran-Iraq war started, | 1:11:17 | 1:11:20 | |
it was a very, very difficult period. | 1:11:20 | 1:11:23 | |
I lost two of my friends. | 1:11:31 | 1:11:33 | |
I lost my best friend. | 1:11:40 | 1:11:41 | |
And later on... a missile hit our house. | 1:11:45 | 1:11:49 | |
I lost all of my family, | 1:11:53 | 1:11:55 | |
my parents and my brother. | 1:11:55 | 1:11:57 | |
SHE SINGS | 1:12:00 | 1:12:02 | |
I mean, you see how the world is reacting to Syria. | 1:12:08 | 1:12:11 | |
Just three days ago, people die of cold. | 1:12:35 | 1:12:39 | |
I mean, as simple as that. | 1:12:41 | 1:12:42 | |
SHE SINGS | 1:12:42 | 1:12:44 | |
I mean, the fact that they tried to cut the aid for... | 1:12:48 | 1:12:51 | |
for the refugees, because it's too expensive. | 1:12:51 | 1:12:55 | |
You know, it's just people are not... are not bothered. | 1:12:55 | 1:12:59 | |
We are not our political identities. | 1:13:17 | 1:13:21 | |
Nobody remembers who was the king when Beethoven lived. | 1:13:23 | 1:13:27 | |
But culture stays, | 1:13:28 | 1:13:30 | |
language stays as a part of culture, | 1:13:30 | 1:13:32 | |
music stays as part of culture. | 1:13:32 | 1:13:35 | |
SHE SINGS | 1:13:40 | 1:13:42 | |
The arts is more about opening up yourself to possibility. | 1:14:02 | 1:14:06 | |
Possibility links to hope. | 1:14:08 | 1:14:10 | |
We all need hope. | 1:14:12 | 1:14:13 | |
SHE SINGS | 1:14:15 | 1:14:17 | |
-Hey, Yo-Yo. -Hi, Fred. | 1:14:30 | 1:14:32 | |
-So glad to see you. -Nice to see you. -Thank you. | 1:14:32 | 1:14:34 | |
When you play, | 1:14:34 | 1:14:37 | |
I'm sure you have a lot of different feelings. | 1:14:37 | 1:14:39 | |
And as you played as a child, | 1:14:39 | 1:14:42 | |
did you ever play happy things or sad things | 1:14:42 | 1:14:45 | |
or angry things, just cos you wanted to? | 1:14:45 | 1:14:47 | |
Oh, sure. One of my favourite was "The Swan," which is... | 1:14:47 | 1:14:50 | |
And you can imagine the swan... right? | 1:15:03 | 1:15:06 | |
MUSIC: The Swan by Camille Saint-Saens | 1:15:12 | 1:15:15 | |
You look at anybody's life, you could find tragedy. | 1:15:33 | 1:15:38 | |
Nobody escapes either the great things or horrible things. | 1:15:38 | 1:15:44 | |
That's the space between life and death. | 1:15:47 | 1:15:50 | |
How do you deal with the fears and doubts? | 1:16:20 | 1:16:23 | |
Do you dare go there? | 1:16:25 | 1:16:26 | |
Can you put all of yourself behind something | 1:16:26 | 1:16:29 | |
and be absolutely authentic in doing it to the best of your ability? | 1:16:29 | 1:16:34 | |
MUSIC ENDS | 1:16:52 | 1:16:54 | |
All right, then. | 1:16:56 | 1:16:57 | |
This is the first time that I tried to smuggle flutes into somewhere. | 1:17:00 | 1:17:05 | |
It feels like smuggling flutes, actually... | 1:17:05 | 1:17:08 | |
but it's smuggling for a good cause. | 1:17:08 | 1:17:11 | |
Of course it's emotional, yeah. It's just simply emotional. | 1:17:20 | 1:17:23 | |
I'm going to teach... | 1:17:23 | 1:17:26 | |
Syrian children who have been... They left their homes by force. | 1:17:26 | 1:17:30 | |
I was like them when I was kids. | 1:18:11 | 1:18:12 | |
Look, I didn't have... | 1:18:16 | 1:18:18 | |
a hope that I'm going to be in New York doing my art. | 1:18:18 | 1:18:22 | |
And definitely, one or two of those kids, they're going to make it. | 1:18:22 | 1:18:26 | |
So if we can inspire them and can help them to do this, | 1:18:26 | 1:18:28 | |
they're going to just continue this... this circle. | 1:18:28 | 1:18:32 | |
THEY LAUGH | 1:19:23 | 1:19:25 | |
THEY SING | 1:19:29 | 1:19:31 | |
It's one of those moments again in your life, you know? | 1:20:49 | 1:20:52 | |
Just you realise that... | 1:20:52 | 1:20:54 | |
Considering what I'm doing for the culture | 1:20:57 | 1:20:59 | |
and for the country, you know, I shouldn't be treated that way. | 1:20:59 | 1:21:02 | |
This is what I don't deserve. | 1:21:02 | 1:21:04 | |
You know, I miss my wife. | 1:21:17 | 1:21:20 | |
It doesn't really matter where the base is... | 1:21:22 | 1:21:25 | |
as long as we try to see each other, you know, | 1:21:26 | 1:21:29 | |
as-as... as much as we can. | 1:21:29 | 1:21:32 | |
-HE WHISTLES -Zohreh. | 1:21:58 | 1:22:00 | |
THEY SPEAK IN OWN LANGUAGE | 1:22:07 | 1:22:10 | |
We have a tendency not to be appreciative | 1:22:35 | 1:22:37 | |
of beautiful things that surround us. | 1:22:37 | 1:22:40 | |
But if you realise what you have in this life | 1:22:40 | 1:22:43 | |
and how precious is the breaths that you take, | 1:22:43 | 1:22:46 | |
the water that you drink, the music in your life... | 1:22:46 | 1:22:52 | |
and your loved ones around you, | 1:22:52 | 1:22:54 | |
it's just enormous wealth and happiness | 1:22:54 | 1:22:58 | |
that doesn't have... | 1:22:58 | 1:23:00 | |
to have anything else to complete it. | 1:23:00 | 1:23:02 | |
It's just complete by itself. | 1:23:02 | 1:23:04 | |
What's the purpose? | 1:23:20 | 1:23:22 | |
Everything I've learned about performing, | 1:23:22 | 1:23:25 | |
about music, | 1:23:25 | 1:23:26 | |
about what happens between the notes... | 1:23:26 | 1:23:30 | |
that's about making sure that culture matters. | 1:23:30 | 1:23:34 | |
I don't think Yo-Yo sees himself as a cellist. | 1:23:38 | 1:23:41 | |
I think he sees himself | 1:23:41 | 1:23:42 | |
as someone who wants to change the world, | 1:23:42 | 1:23:45 | |
and he happens to have a cello with him half the time. | 1:23:45 | 1:23:47 | |
And he wants us to be collaborators with scientists | 1:23:50 | 1:23:53 | |
and be collaborators with historians and educators. | 1:23:53 | 1:23:57 | |
HE SINGS, THEY REPLY | 1:23:57 | 1:24:00 | |
I would love it to be contagious. | 1:24:01 | 1:24:05 | |
It's nice just to see that it's a new way of thinking, | 1:24:05 | 1:24:08 | |
also about music, about what people can do together. | 1:24:08 | 1:24:11 | |
Cultural identity, | 1:24:19 | 1:24:21 | |
it actually shapes your decisions all the time, | 1:24:21 | 1:24:26 | |
and you can take that | 1:24:26 | 1:24:28 | |
as a good challenge or a bad one. | 1:24:28 | 1:24:30 | |
Being part of this experiment did make me understand | 1:24:31 | 1:24:35 | |
what it means to keep your identity alive. | 1:24:35 | 1:24:38 | |
I have dreams about having some sort of role in... | 1:24:42 | 1:24:46 | |
in the arts in Galicia in the future. | 1:24:46 | 1:24:50 | |
And for that, I started the festival, Galician Connection. | 1:24:50 | 1:24:55 | |
This is a festival where I put together international artists | 1:24:55 | 1:24:59 | |
with Galician traditional artists. | 1:24:59 | 1:25:02 | |
When you learn something from another culture, | 1:25:08 | 1:25:10 | |
you will grow more if you're giving back to your own culture. | 1:25:10 | 1:25:14 | |
HE SINGS | 1:25:15 | 1:25:17 | |
Just imagine, if we don't have Silk Road musicians moving around, | 1:25:49 | 1:25:54 | |
Chinese music scene or Western music scene are different. | 1:25:54 | 1:25:59 | |
To me, the world is round. | 1:26:01 | 1:26:04 | |
There's no east or west. It's just a globe. | 1:26:11 | 1:26:15 | |
As a four-year-old, | 1:26:39 | 1:26:40 | |
what I wanted to do in life was to understand. | 1:26:40 | 1:26:45 | |
As TS Eliot said, | 1:26:47 | 1:26:49 | |
"We shall never cease from exploration | 1:26:49 | 1:26:53 | |
"and the end of all of our exploring | 1:26:53 | 1:26:56 | |
"will be to arrive where we started | 1:26:56 | 1:27:00 | |
and know the place for the first time." | 1:27:00 | 1:27:03 | |
I don't think that the Silk Road Project was his trying to go home. | 1:27:09 | 1:27:13 | |
I think it was his trying to go away, away from music, | 1:27:13 | 1:27:16 | |
away from a single repertoire. | 1:27:16 | 1:27:20 | |
And I think through that process, he found himself at home again. | 1:27:21 | 1:27:25 | |
APPLAUSE | 1:27:44 | 1:27:47 | |
APPLAUSE | 1:29:58 | 1:29:59 |