Jazz has traveled the world and I had definitely planned to check some out when I was in Taipei.  I had invites to hang at the various clubs in town, but ended up too weirdly jet-lagged to partake of any nightlife (25 sleepless hours of travel will do that...). But I had heard about Sizhukong, a jazz ensemble featuring two Berklee grads, Yuwen Peng on keyboards, and Toshi Fujii, who plays bass here in my video, but who usually plays the drums. I was able to make a daytime appointment and went to see them during one of their rehearsals. I found the combination of traditional Chinese instruments and jazz sensibilities to be surprisingly successful, thanks to thoughtful arrangements and good material.

A quick note: Yuwen Peng was born and raised in Taiwan, and returned there after graduation from Berklee with a mission to create a jazz with Taiwanese character. The composition "I Remember Formosa" was written while she was at Berklee. It's easy to imagine her recalling the modalities she was raised with to write the piece, and it's lovely to hear it now, arranged for Erhu (violin), Dizi (flute) and Ruan (lute).    

In 1999 on the southern tip of Taiwan, where the majority population of Hakka Chinese had settled, the government planned to build a huge dam. The Hakka farmers went to the capital city of Taipei to protest. The dam, they said, would destroy the ecosystem, and was a risky enterprise considering the earthquakes and landslides the area experiences. (I was there during an earthquake...not pleasant.) Lin Sheng Xiang, a Hakka from the village of Meinong, and pursuing a musical career near Taipei, became involved with the struggle to prevent the building of the dam. He moved back to his hometown in Meinong, and the Labor Exchange Band was formed, giving a musical voice to the movement, and the dam was never built. Although the Labor Exchange band is no more, Lin Sheng Xiang has continued to create thoughtful music along with lyricist Zhong Yongfeng. When I interviewed him in the bucolic south of Taiwan, he played a Hakka folksong, a charming song he wrote about his daughter, and a song (co written with Zhong Yongfen) from his latest CD,"Growing up Wild" the concept of which is songs about females.

I was surprised that Lin Sheng Xiang's name came up as often as it did when I interviewed musicians and record people. And although no one ever called it "protest music" everyone acknowledged the call to social responsibility and greater awareness that his songs contain. Our own Woody Guthrie's songs reach out to the heartland, touching on family values and love of the land. I think there is a brotherly resonance in the songs of Lin Sheng Xiang.

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.

Ladino is the language of the Jews who lived in Spain for 1500 years until their expulsion in 1492 by Isabella and Ferdinand. After that traumatic separation, the Jews migrated to various areas, and the language incorporated words from countries all across the Ottoman Empire. Yasmin Levy's father was a Sephardic Jew from Turkey, and Ladino was spoken by her parents.  She learned to sing and loved the repertoire from an early age, but her incorporation of Flamenco into her interpretations has stirred controversy among purists. However, Yasmin is a charismatic and passionate advocate for the language and music, and feels that the best way she can help her beloved Ladino to survive is to make the songs more accessable. 

When I was a kid going to a Jewish summer camp, we all had to learn a Ladino song, "Los Bilbilicos" (The Nightingales). It was a stately song, and very Spanish sounding to me. More recently, another Ladino treasure that has become popular among the cognicenti is "El Rey de Francia," a magnificent song worth searching out....but personally, I can't imagine a Flamenco treatment of it!

In the next week or so, we will be adding interviews with Chico César (Brazil), Jorge Nasser (Uruguay) and Aterciopelados (Colombia) to our series “Music for Human Rights.” In each case we have outreached to the artists for more photos and contacts and had to do plenty of research after the actual interviewing, to make them all good television journalism. We received wonderful photos from Jorge of his rock n’ roll days complete with Telecaster, and Chico sent us a heartwarming family photo. And while one doesn’t always relish the research, sometimes it is an enriching experience all its own; looking up “Uruguayan Dictatorship,” “Landless Movement” and “Escopitarra” I found myself drawn into the multitude of Latin American historic and contemporary issues. (And the picture just gets bigger with each lead). Perhaps the most intense vector involved our interview with Emmanuel Jal, who had such an electrifying part in our “Price of Silence” video. As a Sudanese child soldier seeking refuge from the horrors of war, he was singled out by Emma McCune, a young British aid worker, who was responsible for putting him on the path to a better future. Googling her name, she emerged as a figure of extreme controversy, and in my outreach to find photos of this mysterious person I was put in touch with her mother Maggie. Not only did Maggie send me extraordinary photos of her late daughter, but she sent me a book she had written about her own journey to find herself within her daughter’s death. It’s fascinating reading, and I feel as if I now know some truths that no amount of info-surfing could ever yield.  I love this job!

This week President Barack Obama will be sworn in as our leader, and many of us will be glued to our sets, while pinching ourselves that this is all really happening. One of the surest harbingers of change is a musical one: Samba Mapangala and his stateside band Virunga will be playing not on some peripheral stage but for the invitation-only black-tie gala "Africa on the Potomac: The Pan-African Inaugural Celebration of President Barack Obama." The President's paternal grandmother will be attendance. While it is true that such familiar faces and voices as Youssou N'Dour and Angelique Kidjo will also be performing at other inaugural festivities in DC, it is heartwarming to know that Mapangala who is not nearly as well known will be bringing his singular blend of Nairobi rumba n' soukous to such a high profile setting. Maybe it will help to spread the word about this fabulous, light-hearted party music.

Several wonderful music documentaries will be making their last appearance on the channel in the next few weeks, and among my favorites showing this week is “Amadou and Mariam Live at la Gout D'Or.”  We don’t generally show full concerts, but this one had such great energy coming from both the stage and the audience, and the entire neighborhood, for that matter, that we bucked our own directive and licensed it. The band is tight, and the songs are simple, but catchy. No wonder Manu Chao decided to produce the blind couple's CD, as these elements are similar to his own music. Not only is the performance great, but you get to see one of Paris' most ethnically colorful neighborhoods, as both North and West Africans make La Gout D'Or their home.

Another great film that will be bidding us adieu soon is Jupiter's Dance.  If you haven't seen it yet, make a point to check it out in the next few weeks, and you'll hear some of the wonderfully sweet singing that Congo is famous for.

Our Best Video Finds of 2008 is playing this week, and I hope you'll check it out.   I think it's our most entertaining ever. The concept videos were really solid (from the bizarre deconstructions of SoCalled to the deliciously kitsch animated collages of Bombay Deewana) and the performances were terrific too-- who can forget the wonderfully tight harmonica quartet Svang?  Did you even KNOW that there was such a thing as a bass harmonica-- and how HUGE it is? I've often said that music is the Good News in the world, and as the various rumblings in world news reached a roar this past year, these colorful, positive statements provided us with a bit of relief.  And I'm already thinking about our next "Best of" collection for 2009!  For my part, I think that "Green Grass" by Cibelle and "Tangaroa, God of the Sea" by Tiki Taane are real contenders.  But feel free to chime in, dear viewers!

Our Music and Cultural Mini-pledge has been extended to the end of January.  If you've already made a donation, we thank you.  If not, please consider making one soon!