(Euronews: 1056 PST, March 10, 2011) The Dalai Lama has announced he will hand over his political duties as Tibet's political leader and delegate his responsibilities to an elected member of the Tibetan government in exile.

The 76-year old made the announcement in a speech on the anniversary of the failed 1959 Tibetan uprising against Chinese rule. He said Tibetans need a leader chosen by the people, adding the time had come for him to devolve power. China claims sovereignty over the Himalayan region and labels the Dalai Lama a separatist.

This post covers a lot of territory: electronica, performance art and hip hop!
Lim Geong was the first person I absolutely knew I wanted to interview when I went to Taiwan, because his work is right up there with the best electronica, and it always retains a strong Asian flavor.  His story is unusual too, in that he started out with huge success as a pop singing star, and rejected that role to, as he says, "go from the front of the stage to behind the scenes."  He has since scored many movies, and even appeared as an actor in quite a few. To me, he's practically a metaphor for what Taiwan has gone through: he expressed the freedom from martial law when he sang his big 1990 hit "Marching Forward" and then followed his star reaching out to the rest of Asia and the world, with music of the digital age.

On the other hand, the gentle acoustic venture "A Moving Sound" is the baby of Scott Prairie and Yun-Ya Hsieh, aka Mia. Mia studied interdisciplinary arts with Meredith Monk in the USA where she met Scott, and together they have  brought the rather Western concept of performance art to the island, bringing dance, theater, music and plenty of audience participation together.

Hip-hop is of course no stranger to Taiwan, but Kou Chou Ching are the pre-eminent conscious rap band there. I first learned about them through their wonderful video "Black Heart", a computer-generated animation based on Chinese puppet theater (still a high art in Taiwan) and flavored with both classical and traditional sounds. But the song is an indictment of amok capitalism that creates the black-hearted businessman, who in turn sends poisonous products into the marketplace. Kou Chou Ching is gradually tuning in Taiwanese youth to the need for more engagement with their world.

I recently returned from a trip to Taiwan, where I checked out the local music scene. Taiwan has a very layered cultural history; when I was growing up the country was called Formosa, a name given to it hundreds of years ago by Portuguese sailors. Taiwan was colonized by the Japanese, who left a profound mark, and most obviously, there is a huge Han Chinese population there that migrated in two major waves, one early, beginning in the 1600s, and another later during the 1940s and 50s under Chiang Kai-shek. There is also an aboriginal population, and although they have been marginalized like many of the aboriginals of the world, their music is increasingly being sold and enjoyed.

For my first installment, I'm going for the throat -- with an à cappella performance by a Nanguan singer. (Usually this music is performed with an ensemble of string, wind and percussion.) I had been told that there was a very adventurous Nanguan singer named Wu Hsin-fei who was doing all kinds of collaborations with western and aboriginal musicians. When I set up my appointment to videotape her, she requested that it be in the studio of a master ceramist, so we drove up into the mountains (Taipei is surrounded on three sides by mountains, the fourth side being a harbor) and I found myself in another world.  I hope you will see and hear what I mean. So much of how we perceive music is learned, so you may need to "reset your brain" when you listen to this.  But I also think that her performance is so riveting, and I was able to get so close up, that you will be drawn into this very special experience. Personally, I find that it calms me immensely.

One of the artists I interviewed said that Taiwanese (or in this case, Chinese in Taiwan) music is about time and space. I tend to agree with that, and will go one step further: it has been so refined over the hundreds (sometimes thousands) of years, that it has retained only the most abstract essence of music. For me, it was akin to listening to a Western minimalist piece. And all you singers out there -- check out her tone production!

Here is some background information about the artist:
"Ms. Wu Hsin-fei has had formal training in Nanguan music and has performed with traditional Nanguan ensembles. Over the past few years however, she has started to sing some of the most famous ballads of the repertoire à cappella. More recently, for her new CD, she has chosen to sing Tang dynasty poetry - till now not part of the Nanguan repertoire, together with solo instruments such as pi'pa, flute, guqin and Arabic oud."

I can't wait to hear that CD!
In the coming weeks I will be posting performances and interviews with Taiwanese musicians, journalists and record people and I hope that you will find it to be as fascinating as I did.

Are you starting to get an idea of how incredibly varied WOMEX is? Here is yet another taste of one of the showcases, this one by the Chinese zheng trio, San Chuan. First off, apologies to all Chinese (Mandarin) speakers who will know right away that my subtitles are not quite in order! But in this case, I think the music speaks for itself. And I think each of these women has such a distinct personality that even my little Flip camera "loves" them.

To fill in a little bit of background on the trio, they were friends to begin with, all studied in the same conservatory and all studied under the same teacher, which made them particularly compatable in every way.

The first episode of the BBC/OU series Chinese School premieres today, November 24, on Link TV at 7:30PM Eastern/4:30PM Pacific!

Continuing in the vein of African School and Indian School, Chinese School follows the lives of families, teachers, and children in the small rural town of Anhui over the course of an academic year. The individual stories of hardship, joy, and success create an extraordinary portrait not only of the children, but of a nation in the midst of enormous change. Visit the official website of Anhui to learn more about the region.

This week's episode, The Year of the Golden Pig, follows headmistress Mrs. Zhang from Ping Min Primary School, as she heads deep into the Anhui mountains in order to recruit new children to start on their long march through the Chinese education system.  As a charitable foundation, her school is able to present an opportunity to some of the Province's most disadvantaged children, and give them the chance of a better life.  For these very poor children, a good education is their best way out of poverty.

Watch a clip from the premiere episode:

In the latest episode of Global Pulse, host Erin Coker asks whether China's 60th anniversary festivities were a display of power for the world or just for Chinese citizens. Watch the episode and leave your comments below!

Media worldwide covered China's celebration of 60 years of communist rule, acknowledging China's rise over the past six decades, while also pointing out its spotty human rights record and the barring of its own citizens from attending the festivities.

Such general wariness of the Communist Party of China's (CPC) celebration may be indicative of a greater global anxiety concerning China's new place on the world stage. In marrying the tenets of communism with explosive economic growth, the country has, perhaps, come to embody the worst of communism and capitalism -- reckless urbanization within the rigid framework of a repressive authoritarian system. The result? A growing power whose rapid industrial expansion and repression of personal freedoms is both a detriment to its people and a possible threat to western interests.

Some experts question the durability of the so-called "authoritarian capitalism" model. "The more open and competitive an economy becomes, the greater the pressure to liberalize political institutions and democratize civil society," notes Tim Dunne in a Guardian editorial. "China wants the former while resisting the latter."

For state-run Chinese media however, capitalism remains an opposing ideology that is distinct from both the country's government and its burgeoning economy. A recent opinion piece in the state-run People's Daily extols socialism as the country’s historical choice, while an article on the CCTV website attributes China's private sector expansion to the country's larger socialist market economy.

In Yasheng Huang's 2008 book, Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics, the MIT professor points to reforms of governance, not market reforms, as crucial for China’s brand of capitalism to thrive. "Many of the endemic problems in the Chinese economy today—massive pollution, corruption, inefficient capital deployment, land grabs, and so forth—cannot be tackled without…reforms of Chinese political governance," a Reuters article notes in an analysis of Huang's book.
 
In the end, whether seen as a pure success story, a threat to the west, or the worst of two economic systems, China's continuing rise assures that it will not be ignored.