Wired for Music by Adriana Barton

Author:Adriana Barton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Greystone Books
Published: 2022-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

EIGHT WEEKS after two passenger jets crashed into the World Trade Center, I boarded an airplane for Syria. Although the War on Terror raged in Afghanistan, nearly two thousand miles to the east, few American journalists felt safe enough to accept an invitation to the Aga Khan Award for Architecture, held that year in Aleppo. But I was childless and thirty-one. I jumped at the chance to tour this ancient city, continuously inhabited for at least five thousand years, and wander through souks brimming with silks, tapestries, and fragrant cubes of laurel and olive oil soap. (A dozen years after my visit, Aleppo and its warmhearted people were devastated by civil war; see notes.)

In the gleaming hotel where I was staying, courtesy of the Aga Khan, leader of the Ismaili Muslims, I waited by the elevator to go up to my room. When the doors opened, I gasped. There was Yo-Yo Ma. Even without his cello, I would recognize him anywhere, but I doubted he’d remember me from backstage when I was sixteen. As we traded places, I smiled without asking the question on my lips: What are you doing here?

That night at the awards ceremony, I learned that Ma had flown to the Islamic world to bridge cultural divides.

The evening started with a military parade outside Aleppo’s towering citadel, where spotlights illuminated the crumbling fortifications at the top. Along with five hundred international guests, I climbed the massive stone steps leading to the castle, crossing a bridge over a moat supported by eight enormous arches. We feasted in the dining hall, where waiters in spotless uniforms carried table-sized platters of tender lamb studded with pistachios and pomegranate seeds. Afterwards, Syrian hosts ushered everyone into a fifteenth-century throne room. I gazed at the ceiling of inlaid wood, as intricate as a Persian tapestry. Then I listened as Ma and an East-West mélange of musicians played variations on a theme of cultural exchange.

The cellist had teamed up with the ethnomusicologist Theodore Levin to create the Silkroad Ensemble, named for the historic trade route that had linked the goods and cultures of Asia and Central Asia with those of the West for more than a thousand years. Ma, said Levin, regarded the Silk Road as “a metaphor for human connectedness, creativity, and imagination.” That night in Aleppo marked the group’s first performance on the Silk Road itself. But as American troops descended upon neighboring Islamic countries, how would they be received?

I could imagine their jitters. The audience included dignitaries from Iraq and Iran, nations soon to be named part of U.S. President George W. Bush’s “axis of evil.” I admired the musicians’ poise as they played for the assembly of Arabic, Kurdish, Hindi, English, and Farsi speakers. And now, through the lens of neuroscience, I can picture the brainwaves of five hundred guests—many from warring countries—synchronizing to the rhythms of Ma’s velvety cello mingling with instruments from Asian, Southeast Asian, and Central Asian lands.

To my ears, the most exquisite music that evening

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.