Last Thursday's cultural exchange was a bit awkward, at first. Breaking the cultural ice revealed, most of all, an eagerness for each group to tell the other just a little something about their musical culture.
Honestly they came better prepared, being as they were the traveling performing arts troupe of a Chinese university. We were treated to a few performances of Peking Opera, including a duet that I thought was just great, and some contemporary sounding folk using guitar and tradition Chinese percussion instruments. Of note was the depth they had to draw upon; they had come representing a very old musical culture, and that identity is maybe something we lack, through no fault of our own. It made me think; do we, as Americans, have a pervasive sense of music tradition? It seems like we are too preoccupied with difference to come to a consensus on what actually is 'American music'. And maybe that's not such a bad thing, either.
Then we discovered the Godfather. Cui Jian.
He started playing guitar after listening to American folk style music like Simon and Garfunkel. He was there at Tienanmen square in 1989; people were rallying behind his music. And I had no idea that such a man existed.
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