Like a mountain wind or a force of nature, Yungchen Lhamo’s voice gracefully and powerfully opens Awakening, her sixth album, demonstrating that beauty exists to direct our attention. In a rare convergence of planetary decay and pandemic, she suggests, all humanity faces the same existential challenge, highlighting how connected and interdependent we are. Surely this … More Yungchen Lhamo: Awakening
Like a grand journey to distant lands, Barbora Xu’s debut album Olin Ennen (I Was) is an exploration of affinities and contrasts: In her delicate-resonant voice, the Czech-born artist sings ancient Finnish and Chinese poems, for which she composes original music and accompanies herself on zithers—Finnish kantele, Chinese guzheng and guqin. Though the album’s cross-cultural view is modern, the juxtaposed elements give her songs a timeless … More Barbora Xu: Olin Ennen
Pull back the curtain, peel the skin, peer into the microscope, much of the human quest for understanding involves looking beneath the surface of things. Sauljaljui doesn’t actually veil her mystique—outside she’s a modern singer-songwriter, inside a proud woman of her tribe, the Paiwan, one of the Indigenous peoples of Taiwan—but magic runs through every note and frame of Insides Revealed, her second solo album. It flows from her musical odyssey: Once … More Sauljaljui: Insides Revealed
The Sani people are part of China’s ethnic landscape but the fine detail of their culture is often obscured behind mythology and rock. The rock is from the Stone Forest: Sani villages dot the area around the spectacular limestone pillars, densely clustered like trees across 500 km² (200 mi²) of Yunnan province. The myth surrounds Ashima, a folk heroine who escapes a forced marriage, only to drown and turn into the forest’s most prominent monolith … More Manhu: Voices of the Sani
“Pity the nation,” wrote Lawrence Ferlinghetti, “that knows no language but its own.” Far more satisfying than pity is listening to Wu Fei and Abigail Washburn, who know one another’s languages and express their familiarity in profoundly local and transcendently global music. Wu is a Beijing-born composer, singer and master of the 21-string guzheng; Washburn an Illinois-born, Grammy winning singer-songwriter and clawhammer banjo … More Wu Fei & Abigail Washburn
