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

I first met Josh Norek about ten years ago when he sent me a low budget video of his Latino-Jewish band the Hip Hop Hoodíos. It was a song about Chanukah sung in Spanish and English, and there were plenty of surreal shots of the "Bagel Babe" - a hot young thing wearing a bra made from that circular staple - even in a Jacuzzi! I sensed there was an unusual mind behind this.

Further down the road, Josh sent me an email about a new event: the Latin Alternative Music Conference (LAMC) that he was co-organizing in New York City. I wished him well. He continued to send me press releases about bands I had never heard of but which were pretty damned good. I started to trust his taste.

Five years ago, he helped Tomas Cookman launch the company Nacional Records. Between them, they had tons of experience managing and promoting "Rock en Español" acts, and soon they began aggregating the strongest roster of Latin Alternative Music extant. Then, prior to the past presidential election, Josh sent an email around, saying he was taking a sabbatical (or should that be shabattical?) from the music biz, and donating significant time to his favorite grassroots organization, Voto Latino, working to register and activate young Latinos in battleground states to get the vote out. Since then he has also gotten his radio show "The Latin Alternative" up and syndicated. So when I heard that Josh was going to be in town, I jumped at the chance to interview him. His time as usual, was tight; we had just half an hour, so we plowed into it despite the noise from construction on an adjacent floor.

No matter where we fall on the immigration issue, the undeniable fact is that the burgeoning Latino population is changing the face and culture of the USA. I wanted Josh to talk about this, to reflect on the relationship between music, demographics and activism. He did that and more; his conversation was so far ranging that I may have to present those parts of it that dealt specifically with Rock en Español, Nacional, the LAMC and the state of the music industry in general, at a later date.

I have nothing against the idea of the latest fundraising video for Haiti because the cause is certainly a great one; it's just that I tire of the usual bevy of First World entertainers belting it out. That's why it's refreshing to meet someone like Mark Johnson, one of the founders of Playing for Change.  By now you've all probably heard about this organization through the widely seen globetrotting video of "Stand By Me." The first time I saw it, I thought it was pleasant enough, but what was it for, what was the next step -- what was the substance? Mark clarified it all for me in an eloquent interview, in which he laid out a vision for using music as a catalyst for social change. I've heard my share of pie-in-the-sky blah blah about using music for this or that, but Mark's ideas are not dreams -- they are based on solid reality and hard work.

Can any of us deny that one of our greatest achievements to date is our unprecedented technological connectivity? Playing for Change is not just about making pretty videos. It's about connecting a global community where access to medicine, education, and mutual respect are a given.

I had a conversation many years ago with Christoph Borkowsky, one of the founders of the World Music Expo, WOMEX. At the time he said to me that the music of every nation should be treated as a natural resource. He chafed at the lack of market exposure great world artists got, and was certain that significant revenue streams could result from a level, truly international marketplace. Now that a new generation can access global content with ease, perhaps the idea finally has the proper soil in which to grow. And perhaps the next great musical outpouring of support for a cause will well up spontaneously, from another part of the world, and have a truly international face and sound.