The SIlk Road Project
On a Friday while at Brown last winter, I heard about a performance happening that night at the little Avon Theater. The rumor going around said that Yo Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble (youtube) was going to be playing a live score to a 1926-something animated, silhouette style film based on the the Arabian epic The 1001 Nights. Better yet, I heard that this was free to Brown students.
I arrived at the theater to see a line that stretched almost a half mile down the street. It was cold, and I had come alone. I made a few phone calls, I watched my breath dissolve with every exhale. The line began to move, and soon I was inside the theater. I was lucky: those who had arrived to the line only ten minutes after I had were past the capacity of the theater, and weren't allowed in.
The Adventures of Prince Achmed (imdb), as it was titled, is the oldest full-length animated film. It took a decade for German animator Lotte Reiniger to paste together this epic entirely out of paper-cut silhouettes.
Rarely has this film ever been screened in public, and never again would it be screened with a live score provided by the Silk Road Ensemble, which was at the time in residence at RISD. The music, played on a myriad of world instruments, was vivid and rich, enhanced all the more by it's live performance. The animation, far from being shoddy or "experimental" somehow conveyed more emotion, more humanity, and more drama than any of the more realistic or "cartoon-like" animation of today. It was a once-ever performance, and the sheer emotive force brought by the combination of both music and light - it moved the audience to utter silence at times, and gasps and cheers at others - is something I will remember and carry with me until the end of my days. (Providence Journal Article about the event here)
Yo-Yo Ma has said in various places (namely his podcast) that his motivation for music is actually the study of human relationships - how relationships come and go, their joys and their pains, and the ever more complex interweave of human experience. The historical Silk Road, the amorphous trade route from China to Rome that existed for many centuries, is the perfect medium for this study. The Silk Road was a truly amazing phenomenon: before the age of mass transit and fast travel, people would cross borders and mountains and deserts between them and their far-flung cultural neighbors to trade art, food, stories, and melodies.
The Silk Road Ensemble, which played an original score to The Adventures of Prince Achmed using instruments from every corner of Eurasia, is only a part of Yo-Yo Ma's greater Silk Road Project. The Project is dedicated to both the study of the historical cross-cultural interactions along the Silk Road, but also the potential for contemporary interaction. Asking "What happens when strangers meet?" it brings together artists, musicians, writers, poets, and scholars from Italy to Saudi Arabia to Mongolia, and together creates something that is innately human and truly beautiful.
They Silk Road Ensemble has two CD's out, and I highly recommend buying them both. There is going to be a concert next week at Harvard, Nov. 29 and 30, featuring the Silk Road Ensemble. I'm going, who's coming with me?
