On the day before my own departure for Central Asia, Arif Lohar brought his electrified Sufi music to the Asia Society and pretty much tore the place apart.

Although Lohar had been a steady light in Punjabi folk music for years, he really broke through barriers when in 2010 he performed "Alif Allah Chambey Di Booti" on the popular COKE STUDIO show, a mainstay of Pakistani television. His rendition of the Sufi devotional song was pure pop and the video went viral and as of my last checking has garnered almost 8.5 million views on YouTube.

The performance on April 27th of this one song lasted almost 40 minutes, so I had to do a fair amount of editing. But I mainly edited out only those parts of the song where the sound balance was problematic -- at no point did the excitement let up, and as you can see, Lohar woos the audience, and the audience responds in spades!

"Alif Allah Chambey Di Booti" is set to a classic Punjabi beat, (dhol hottie and all) and reminds the participants -- this is participatory music at its heart -- that true reality is the realm of God. It cements this concept through repeated call and response, leading to a tranced, ecstatic state. The "tongs with bells" that Lohar plays is called a Chimta, and he wields it with drama and flair.

Personally, for sheer energy, I think this live rendition, warts and all, blows the pop version out of the water. The concert capped a five-city US tour, organized by Arts Midwest's "Caravanserai: A Place Where Cultures Meet," and was part of the Asia Society's series "Creative Voices of Muslim Asia" supported by the Doris Duke Foundation.

For more of Michal's original music videos, visit inter-muse.com

About four years ago, when I was rooting around for Chinese music videos, I was sent a charming animation from a band called Shanren. The song "30 Years" was about the trials and tribulations of moving from the country to the big city to look for work. This is a motif that resonates with all working folks, and I won't even go into the hundreds of great songs dealing with this from the West's Industrial Revolution right through to today. "30 Years" describes what is going on in China currently, as its rapid industrialization is causing a vast shift in population from rural to urban centers. I was therefor already interested when I was contacted by the band's publicist, informing me that they would be playing on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, at Pianos.

The band comes from Yunnan and Guizhou provinces, with members from the Wa and Buyi minorities. The name Shanren means "mountain men." During a chat with James Pang, the band's Chinese manager, he mentioned that the people of these minorities live up in the mountains, are kind of wild living, like to brew their own liquor, and dance.

Being a lover of country music and bluegrass, I could not help but start drawing parallels between some of the characteristics of our own folk heritage and what I was about to see and hear. I was not let down. Listen to this music and tell me that you don't hear something that sounds remarkably like our own "Old Timey" music, with its trance-like repetitions. People like banjoist Abigail Washburn have been mining these parallels for years, and you can hear why. (The band even uses something that looks mighty like a banjo!)

The song is called "Left Foot Dance of the Yi".

The Yi people, as I mentioned before, are one of the ethnic minorities of southwestern China. There's a family of songs called left foot dance songs ("kind of Yi party music" their manager Sam Debell writes). This is the band's own arrangement of a very well known left foot dance song. It’s usually a circle dance, but the band adapted it, so they do it in a line (in a circle it must look positively Balkan... but I’m not going to get into that, at least not here).

A sample of the lyrics (xianzi is a stringed instrument):

- Brother play the xianzi.
- Sister sing the song.
- The moon is already risen.
- And we're waiting to dance.

And something from our own repertoire:

"Late in the evening about sundown
High on a hill and above the town
Uncle Pen played the fiddle, lordy how it would ring,
You could hear it talk, you could hear it sing."

To contact the band:
Sam Debell (Asia) at unitysam@gmail.com and +86 152-1027-0868.

For more of Michal's original music videos, visit inter-muse.com

The Sharq Taronalari festival/competition takes place every two years in Samarkand and draws artists from all over the word with an obvious concentration on Central Asia. Personally I do not approve of musical "competitions" but that reservation can be overlooked given the spectacular setting of the Registan for the main venue, and the opportunity to experience the Uzbeki culture and people. This year saw Jivan Gasparyan the younger win the UNESCO prize there. He gave a wonderful performance for which the festive lights in the Registan were hushed to a dreamy ultramarine blue.

The name of Jivan Gasparyan (Sr.) has been synonymous with Armenian duduk for over 60 years. His exquisite tone, control and interpretations have garnered him countless accolades. Now in his eighties, he had the pleasure of being in the audience during his grandson's award-winning performance.

The duduk is a simple instrument; but deceptively so, in that it requires an embouchure (and diaphragm) of steel plus circular breathing to elicit its haunting, cool sound. The younger Jivan has all these attributes, as well as technical agility, as this piece demonstrates.

I was covering the festival, toting my trusty camcorder, and had the good fortune to arrange this spontaneous shoot with Gasparyan Jr. in a room just adjacent to the hotel kitchen. My thanks to his two stalwart accompanists, and to my various friends who guarded the doors and kept waiters and dishwashers at bay.

Gasparyan senior was there too, and at the very end of this video you can see Jivan Jr. slide his eyes sideways, to see if his grandfather approved of the performance.

He did.

For more of Michal's original music videos, visit inter-muse.com.

Maria Pomianowska Plays the Suka

I met Maria Pomianowska in Samarkand, where she attended the Sharq Taronalari festival as a guest speaker. But as you can see, this woman could well have been not only one of the musicians performing, but one of its finest. I heard her jamming out on the terrace of the Afrasiyob hotel, and immediately knew that I wanted to get her and that unusual instrument of hers alone for a solo videotaping. We found a room between the basement floor lobby and the kitchen that had decent acoustics and was reasonably quiet (considering its proximity to the kitchen). I just said "play" and off she went. The room was not that well lit, so please forgive the somewhat grainy image.

Maria's credentials are impressive. She graduated in cello at the Chopin Academy of Music in Warsaw. There she was granted a scholarship to learn the sarangi under the guidance of maestro Pandit Ram Narayan in India. From 1997-2002 she lived in Japan, and in 1999 she started composing cross cultural works which were commissioned by cellist Yo Yo Ma. In her continuing efforts to find connections between Asian music with her own cultural heritage, together with Dr. Ewa Dahlig and violin maker A. Kuczkowski she managed to successfully reconstruct a Suka from Bilgoraj, which is what you see and hear in this video.

There are many kinds of "fusions" happening in music these days. Maria seems to be her own personal reactor, following her love of western classical music to an equal devotion to Indian classical music, and then adding a dash of Polish gestalt to the mix.

Ms. Pomianawska teaches music and runs a festival of world music in Warsaw. For more information on this amazing woman and musician, click here.

For more of Michal's original music videos, visit inter-muse.com.