Original subtitles

(MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS TUNING)

(PEOPLE CHATTERING SOFTLY)

(MUSIC AND CHATTERING STOP)

(FOOTSTEPS) (RUSTLING)

(MAN SIGHS)

(STRUMMING CELLO)

So, this is my cello.

Have you ever seen one before?

(BOAT HORN BLARES)

(PEOPLE CHATTERING)

(SHOUTING)

(MUSIC PLAYING)

(CHATTERING CONTINUING)

(CROWD WHISTLES)

(LIVELY MUSIC PLAYING)

(WOMAN VOCALIZING)

(CROWD CHEERING)

(CROWD CHEERING)

(SHOUTS)

(LIVELY MUSIC PLAYING)

(CROWD CHEERING)

(MUSIC STOPS) (CHEERING, APPLAUSE)

(CHEERING, APPLAUSE STOPS) (CHATTERING)

ANNOUNCER (ON PA): ...the many faceted career of cellist Yo-Yo Ma is

a testament to his continual search

for new ways to communicate with audiences...

(YO-YO MA SPEAKING)

(WOMAN SNICKERS)

ANNOUNCER: Mr. Ma maintains a balance

between his engagements and his solo...

ANNOUNCER: He's recorded over 90 albums,

including more than 17 Grammy Award winners.

(WOMAN SPEAKS INDISTINCTLY)

ANNOUNCER: ...studied at the Juilliard School...

(WOMAN SPEAKS)

(YO-YO SPEAKS)

WOMAN: I didn't get in there...

(WOMAN LAUGHS)

...President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities.

After Mr. Ma's remarks tonight,

we will have an opportunity to ask questions...

(SPEAKS)

So without any further ado, please welcome Yo-Yo Ma.

(CHEERS, APPLAUSE)

Hi there.

Hi.

I'll start off with this. There's an old joke.

A six-year-old boy tells his father,

"When I grow up, I want to be a musician."

And the father looks at the son,

shakes his head sadly, and says,

"I'm sorry, son,

you can't do both."

(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)

(CELLO MUSIC PLAYING)

YO-YO: I think when I was a kid,

a lot of things just happened.

LEONARD BERNSTEIN: There has come to us this year

a young man aged seven,

bearing the name Yo-Yo Ma, (MUSIC CONTINUES)

a Chinese cellist playing old French music

for his new American compatriots. (APPLAUSE)

NICHOLAS MA: Being good at something can carry you really far

for a long period of time,

and not require a lot

of introspection, right?

Because... you're good at it

and everyone tells you that.

(MUSIC CONTINUES)

JOHN WILLIAMS: I would think that somebody who has mastered his art

so early in life, so completely,

would have the problem that most wunderkinder have,

which is, how do you keep your interest up?

(MUSIC STOPS)

That's part of my problem. When you grow up with something,

you kind of don't make a choice.

(MUSIC CONTINUES)

I never committed to being a musician.

You know? I just did it, I fell into it.

I was interested in a lot of things, but...

I didn't particularly pursue any of those.

♪ ♪

NICHOLAS: Leon Kirchner said to him when he was young,

"You're a phenomenal musician,

but you haven't found your voice."

♪ ♪

And this notion was stuck in my dad's mind.

"What does that mean? How do you do that?"

♪ ♪

I think he started looking for answers.

(MUSIC STOPS)

(APPLAUSE)

I'm always trying to figure out at some level

who I am and how I fit in the world,

which I think is something

that I share with seven billion other people.

(LIVELY MUSIC PLAYS)

♪ ♪

(KIDS PLAYING, LAUGHING)

(PEOPLE CHATTERING)

♪ ♪

(CLICKS, HISSING)

KINAN AZMEH: I was calling my mom in Damascus

before... before you guys came in.

And she's like, "Oh, Kinan, did you clean the place?"

I'm like, "Yes, Mom, it's okay." (MAN LAUGHS)

She wants to make sure... MAN: Moms are always moms.

No, she wants to make sure that the CDs are not here,

because, you know, they're there and, you know, it's like, "Is it all tidy?"

I said, "Yes, I've tried my best. It's going to be fine."

♪ ♪ So...

I mean, growing up in Damascus was great.

Just had, you know, lots of friends and family.

I don't think of myself as somebody who just,

you know, packed his stuff and left, actually.

I mean, I still have a little apartment back in Damascus.

And my parents are still there.

I miss it a lot. I do miss it.

Now I'm thinking a lot like, "What is home?

"Is it where your friends are? Is it where your family are?

"Is it the place where you grew up

or is it the place that y... where you want to die?"

I mean, you know, all the... all these questions,

and I think now I'm realizing that

it's basically the place where you feel you want to contribute to

without having to justify it.

And here is your coffee,

whoever wants my little Arabic coffee.

♪ ♪

I mean, since I left Syria, lots of things have changed.

(PEOPLE SCREAMING)

♪ ♪ (GUNFIRE)

(PEOPLE CHATTERING) YO-YO: There's always a fight in each one of us

between believing in the power of the human spirit

and dreading the power of the human spirit.

♪ ♪ (SIRENS OVER COMPUTER)

KINAN: March 2011...

when the Syrian revolution started...

I found myself experiencing emotions that are, by far,

more complex than...

than what I can express with my music.

So the music fell short,

and I found myself not able to write any music.

♪ ♪

Like, can a piece of music stop a bullet?

Can it feed somebody who's hungry? Of course, it doesn't.

You question the role of art altogether.

(MUSIC FADES)

(APPLAUSE)

YO-YO: When I was a student at Harvard,

Leonard Bernstein came to visit.

In his lectures, he was searching

for a universal musical language.

That idea stuck with me ever since.

What's the relevance of all this musical linguistics?

Can it lead us to an answer

of Charles Ives' unanswered question, "Whither music?"

And even if it eventually can...

does it matter?

The world totters, governments crumble,

and we are poring over music.

YO-YO: Out of the 35 years I've been married,

I've been gone for 22 of those years, away traveling.

I used to throw up before every trip,

you know, just... I would just feel so awful and anxious,

and just like, you know...

it's like I'd get so paralyzed.

(CAR HONKS)

YO-YO: What is my role?

I'd better find a good reason to say, "Why am I doing this?"

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

(PEOPLE SPEAKING IN UNISON)

♪ ♪ (LAUGHING, CHATTERING)

♪ ♪

(DISTANT SHOUTING)

(MAN LAUGHS) (CHATTERING)

(PIPA MUSIC PLAYING)

(FEEDBACK)

(MUSIC REVERBERATES) (LAUGHTER)

VINCENT WANG: Play... play a song.

WU MAN: Which song? Um...

play... "Iron Man."

("IRON MAN" PLAYING)

Let's own it.

My interest is kind of jump out of the box...

(LAUGHS)

...not only limiting myself as a Chinese musician or pipa player.

(MAN CLAPPING) Yes!

(LAUGHS)

Yeah! Woo-woo-woo-woo!

MAN: Thank you, thank you.

Hey, wait. What do you do? This...

(LAUGHING)

I mean, Wu Man was not supposed to be here.

She was just supposed to be a music professor, right,

at the Central Conservatory or somewhere in China.

(PIPA MUSIC PLAYING)

(PEOPLE CHATTERING)

(MUSIC CONTINUES)

WU MAN: I remember 1966,

starts the Cultural Revolution.

And then my parents actually asked me to learn music...

to escape from that situation.

Wu Man was in the first class of students

that reentered Conservatory

after the Chinese Cultural Revolution,

and she became a sensation overnight.

(PIPA MUSIC PLAYING)

WU MAN: We had no information about Western culture.

TAN DUN: Right after revolution...

everything was destroyed, culturally,

so we are, I guess, standing on the ruins,

dreaming, "What's the next music?"

Oh! Surprised they open.

It's all very different.

Isaac Stern gave a master class here,

right here on this stage.

("OH! SUSANNA" PLAYING)

WU MAN: It's like opened another idea.

It opened the door to me.

"American orchestra, that's... that's very interesting."

I wanted to see what's going on outside China.

♪ ♪

(MUSIC STOPS)

YO-YO: In the '80s,

when I was asked in an interview

about what my next project might be...

CHARLIE ROSE: What's next for you?

I'm casting about for something, anything,

I said that I had always... (AUDIENCE LAUGHS)

I said, "I have always been fascinated by"... guess what...

BOTH: The bushmen of the Kalahari Desert.

(LAUGHTER)

Yeah.

♪ ♪

BOBBY MCFERRIN: I think he went because he wanted...

He wanted to put some dirt in his bones.

He wanted to get down into the soil.

He wanted something that was going to radically alter

his ways of thinking about things.

♪ ♪ (YO-YO MUTTERS)

Shoot.

Where the hell is the "F"?

There we go.

YO-YO: I'll tell you one thing that stayed with me

that actually became the event

that unlocked all of this.

They do a trance dance...

(PEOPLE SINGING, CLAPPING RHYTHMICALLY)

...and I was invited to participate.

They get into trance,

and then they lay hands on people who need healing.

(SINGING)

YO-YO: I asked the women why they do their trance ritual...

and they said the clearest reason

for music, for culture, for medicine, for religion.

They said, "Because it gives us meaning."

(RHYTHMIC CLAPPING)

So one day, I sat with Yo-Yo at the café

and we were talking about

where creativity comes from...

(CLAPPING CONTINUES) (CHANTING)

...where new ideas come from.

And so he drew... on a napkin at the bar,

he drew circles intersecting.

And he said... then he shaded the intersections and said,

"This is, you know... this is a culture,

"this is another culture, and in the intersection,

that's where new things will emerge."

♪ ♪ (CHANTING CONTINUES)

YO-YO: The Silk Road Project

we started as an idea...

a group of musicians getting together

and seeing what might happen...

you know, when strangers meet.

♪ ♪

We went and scoured from Venice through to Istanbul,

central Asia, Mongolia, and China

looking for incredible talent.

This was like the Manhattan Project of music.

We invited about 60 performers

and composers from the lands of the Silk Road,

meeting in a kind of workshop.

No one knew what was gonna happen.

(LAUGHING) "Did Yo-Yo go off his tracks or something?

What... what did he drink?" You know?

♪ ♪

YO-YO: We gathered in the summer of 2000 in Massachusetts.

Frankly...

I was scared to death.

♪ ♪

NIELS SWINKELS: Yo-Yo Ma is, of course,

a golden child.

He can touch anything and do anything,

and everything... everybody thinks it's great.

(INSTRUMENTS TUNING)

But you could not expect

that someone from Africa or China picks up on the...

on the subtleties of a culture that is not their own.

♪ ♪

YO-YO: A lot of people thought that...

what we were doing was not pure.

It's, uh... What is it called?

Cultural tourism.

♪ ♪ Let's go. Yeah.

(VOCALIZING NOTES)

(SPEAKS SOFTLY)

♪ ♪

KAYHAN KALHOR: Beautiful.

This is basic rhythm.

I mean, just not the accent.

Try... dut-dut, ba-ba-ba-ba.

Ba-ba-ba-ba, ba-ba-ba...

(SINGS IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE)

YO-YO: Kayhan, he's such a well-known figure in Iran,

and he was here at the very beginning.

(CONTINUES SINGING)

That's fantastic. Ah.

(CHUCKLES) So the nail going back and forth, right?

Yeah. Right, left, two rights. Does it...

YO-YO: Oh.

♪ ♪ Yeah.

(MUSIC CONTINUES)

♪ ♪

KAYHAN: My intention is to represent my culture

and the contribution

that this very old culture

made to human life.

♪ ♪

If you go back, you know, in the beginning of the 20th century,

every Eastern culture was so fascinated with West...

you know, the technology, cars,

and music, of course.

(MUSIC CONTINUES)

My instrument, kamancheh,

it was not being taught.

And I was really lucky, because I got to professional music very early,

so I had the chance to work with the older generation.

Kayhan, he brings you closer to the horse

or to the cow or to the... to the source,

you know, that you forget.

♪ ♪

But Kayhan has had a very tragic life.

♪ ♪

The revolution. (CHUCKLING)

Chaos.

You realize that your life's not going to be the same anymore.

I was 17...

my parents decided that I had to leave.

I just walked... walked, you know, out...

out of the country like that.

I... I worked little by little

in every country, kind of farm work.

Turkey for nine months, and then Romania, Yugoslavia, Italy.

Yeah, I had a little backpack...

and, um... I had a kamancheh.

That was it. Yeah.

♪ ♪

When I left...

meeting a lot of different world musicians...

that was very attractive to me.

I always wanted to do something outside of my culture.

I think that was a...

a very important turning point in my career.

(MUSIC FADES)

WOMAN: How's it going, Kayhan?

Uh, fine. We definitely need more rehearsal time.

But... um, they're very good musicians,

and they're much better than yesterday,

so... there is hope.

(LAUGHS)

♪ ♪

TAN: The Tanglewood workshop was fantastic,

because we don't speak necessarily perfect English

or perfect Chinese or perfect Persian,

but we speak perfect music language.

♪ ♪

YO-YO: Some projects, you know,

at the end of it, that's wonderful.

It was a great thing, but it's done.

This one... is different.

♪ ♪

(MUSIC STOPS) (CHEERS, APPLAUSE)

YO-YO: You make a connection.

You make a cultural connection.

You make a connection to another human being.

That's very precious.

We were faced with the decision,

"Should we go on or is this it?"

And we were very careful to try to not just say

we should go on because we would like it to.

Bye!

YO-YO: What's the reason for going on?

KATIE COURIC (ON TV): ...understandably so, but of course,

the major concern is human loss.

I mean, do you know if there

were many people in the building?

ELLIOTT WALKER: Oh! Another one just hit!

Something else just hit. A very large plane

just flew directly over my building,

and there's been another collision.

Can you see it? I can see it on this shot. KATIE: Yes. Oh my...

Ellio Something else has just... that looked more like a 747.

MATT LAUER: We just saw a plane circling the building.

♪ ♪ (VOICES FADE)

YO-YO: I was in a hotel room at nine o'clock the morning of 9/11.

My wife called me and said,

"Turn on the television. Something's happening."

(WOMAN SPEAKS INDISCERNIBLY ON TV)

I saw a large plane, like a jet,

go immediately heading directly in towards the World Trade Centers...

(CONTINUES SPEAKING INDISCERNIBLY)

♪ ♪

YO-YO: It was surreal.

The, you know, nation was in shock.

And I had a lot of time to think.

♪ ♪

THEODORE: We really wondered that, in the face of the xenophobia,

it might just not be possible to do this anymore.

YO-YO: Everybody, in the face of disaster,

reexamines who they are in their purpose.

♪ ♪

KOJIRO UMEZAKI: We are a group that has so many disparate elements.

We could have been a group of adversaries, essentially.

And I think all of us kind of knew that,

you know, we had a responsibility to...

to work harder.

This piece is called "Quartet to the End of Time,"

and it's written by a composer named Olivier Messiaen.

He wrote this while he was a prisoner of war during World War II.

♪ ♪

How does Messiaen do that?

How do you express incredible grief

or eternity and love?

♪ ♪

You add a little vibrato,

and you suddenly feel that you might be bathed

and blanketed by the warmth of an intense light.

That love is mythic,

eternal, and unconditional love.

OSVALDO: It's a paradox.

By trying to kill the human spirit,

the answer of the human spirit

is to revenge with beauty.

♪ ♪

(MUSIC FADES)

YO-YO: Culture doesn't end.

It's not a business deal where, at the conclusion

of the business deal, it's... it's done.

You know, it's not an election cycle.

It... it's about keeping things alive and evolving,

and so we decided to go on, and...

and then that's when all of our trouble began.

♪ ♪

(CRISTINA PATO SINGING LOUDLY)

(PEOPLE SHOUTING)

JOHNNY GANDELSMAN: Cristina is one of those people

that we were lucky to meet through Osvaldo.

He said, "Guys, you have to work with Cristina.

She is amazing."

She brings... something...

so sensual, so... earthy.

She needs to be here,

because she brings something that is essential to...

to the universal soul and I... and it was missing.

(COWBELL CLANGING) (GAITA PLAYING)

CRISTINA: There is something very primitive about the sound of the gaita.

To me, it's like hearing my father speaking.

(PEOPLE MAKING APPRECIATIVE NOISES)

CRISTINA: In the generation I come from,

it's like you have two choices,

of playing soccer or playing bagpipes,

if you were born in Galicia.

♪ ♪

Ah! Man: Ah!

WOMAN: Whoo! Oh!

♪ ♪

If I ask you to think about Spain

and to think about what is

the first music that comes to your mind...

♪ ♪

Galicia doesn't have anything to do with that.

Galicia is in the northwest corner of Spain,

and geographically speaking,

it has been always kind of isolated.

It has its own language, its own culture,

and if you were to shrink everything to just one sound,

the sound of the bagpipe is the sound of Galicia.

(MUSIC ENDS)

(CRISTINA SINGING IN GALICIAN)

YO-YO: That part of Spain...

is culturally rich and economically poor.

(SINGING CONTINUES)

YO-YO: Cristina is hugely conscious

of what her friends and family go through in Galicia.

CRISTINA: I knew exactly what the tradition meant

to the elder generation.

(GAITA PLAYING)

But I was excited about everything

that was happening in the present tense.

(AUDIENCE CHEERING)

(SHOUTS)

(LIVELY MUSIC PLAYING)

ROBERTO VARELA: It was like something explosive.

(ROCK MUSIC PLAYING)

She took the instrument to an extreme

that people could not even think about.

She's the Jimi Hendrix of the gaita.

But, you know, I don't think everybody likes Jimi Hendrix.

♪ ♪

CRISTINA: When you play an instrument that really represents

your country or your area of the world,

that has implications.

The first bad reviews I got were from the kind of people

that really wants to preserve pure, traditional Galician music,

and some of them were not very nice to me.

I was 18 years old.

I wasn't thinking about any other political meaning.

I just played bagpipes.

♪ ♪

One day I woke up and I saw myself

doing that for the rest of my life,

and I didn't like that feeling.

(CHEERS, APPLAUSE)

I decided to put all that life away and go away.

I didn't even bring my bagpipe.

(SHOUTING IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE) (FIREWORKS EXPLODE)

(BELLS DINGING) (HORNS HONKING)

(WHISTLING) (CHEERING)

(BIRDS CHIRPING)

(TRAIN APPROACHING)

(PIANO MUSIC PLAYING)

KINAN AZMEH: I mean, I moved to New York

about 10 days before 9/11 happened.

And do I say it was easy?

It wasn't easy, because all the stereotypes come.

And, you know, you're judged by the way you look,

and I had a big beard at that time.

♪ ♪

YO-YO: I was born in Paris.

We moved to New York,

and I had nothing to do with that,

except things just changed around me...

the way things look, smell, taste.

And it was confusing.

WU MAN: A lot of friends said, "Why are you going to America?

You're crazy." And... I was crazy, actually. (LAUGHS)

No English.

Nobody know what a pipa was.

♪ ♪

KAYHAN: The very first thing that I learned

was that my experience as kamancheh player

would not count as anything.

It was zero.

♪ ♪

CRISTINA: The moment you place yourself in a different context...

(SINGING IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE)

...then you have to stretch yourself,

because nobody knows the pipa or the kamancheh or the gaita.

KAYHAN: I worked in a restaurant.

I drove a cab.

But I wanted to learn,

I wanted to study and become a better musician.

(SINGING CONTINUES)

WU MAN: Play in a Chinatown with... local musicians,

you know, factory worker, taxi driver.

That's the only way I keep it up.

(SINGING CONTINUES)

CRISTINA: The good thing about being in New York,

everybody comes from a different place,

and we all bring our roots.

Those roots get re-rooted here.

(SINGING CONTINUES)

KINAN: Definitely, America's very different.

But I'm more interested in actually... in appreciating the differences...

what you have that I don't have.

Not that I want to take it away from you,

no, but I want to learn from it, no?

(MUSIC FADES)

(PEOPLE CHATTERING)

NICHOLAS CORDS: I do remember a press conference

which was one of the first times that we got up as a group

to talk about what we did

in front of cameras, in front of the press.

(CHATTERING) And they were asking questions

along the lines of, you know,

"It's like you're taking this traditional music,

"you're mixing it together, and you're diluting,

you know, these traditions."

MAN: Nick, you want to go? Uh, sure.

NICHOLAS: I was just terrified.

MAN: Share a little bit about...

NICHOLAS: We were not at the point of describing it

as a family or as this creative cauldron.

Uh...

NICHOLAS: We had none of that, really, to stand on.

THANK YOU. MAN: Thanks, everybody, for being here.

I'm gonna go to the bathroom.

To try to describe what we were trying to do,

what this meant and all that was... was a nightmare.

♪ ♪

I knew that whatever we did,

there was going to be naysayers from all sides.

(INSTRUMENTS TUNING) MAN: Kinan and Wu Man,

are you... you ready? Kinan: Yep.

MAN: All set. ♪ ♪

YO-YO: Yes, criticism hurts.

(LIVELY MUSIC PLAYING)

But you actually have to have conviction

in the genuineness and the power of your ideas.

And I'm sort of saying, "Gee, let's take a chance."

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

(VOCALIZING)

(MUSIC STOPS)

Phew!

MAN: What a view! (CLAPPING)

KINAN: This project, it adds your voice.

I think this is what is exciting about the journey is,

♪ ♪ you look for your voice, you know?

Sometimes you think you found it,

and then once you have it, it changes again.

♪ ♪

(PEOPLE CHATTERING)

YO-YO: Oh, look, look, look. They're playing badminton.

Oh yeah, let's go see this.

(LAUGHS) This is... I love this.

Wow.

(YO-YO LAUGHS) Look. WU TONG: Wow.

(SPEAKING CHINESE)

YO-YO: Oh. Whoa!

(LAUGHTER)

That's great. That's great.

♪ ♪

(MAN SPEAKS CHINESE) Mmm.

(SPEAKS CHINESE) Mmm!

♪ ♪

(WU TONG SPEAKS ENGLISH)

(SINGING IN CHINESE)

(YO-YO SPEAKING CHINESE)

(SINGING CONTINUES)

(MUSIC STOPS)

♪ ♪

(CHATTERING)

♪ ♪

(MUSIC STOPS)

(BIRDS CHIRPING)

♪ ♪

It's very, very necessary for me

to go and live in Iran,

because what happened after the revolution...

all of the better teachers moved out.

♪ ♪

I went back 2002 to teach Persian music.

(SPEAKING PERSIAN)

(VOCALIZES TUNE)

♪ ♪

(ZOHREH LAUGHS, SPEAKS PERSIAN)

(LAUGHS)

(SPEAKS PERSIAN) Uh-huh.

♪ ♪

YO-YO: I think living with tragedy for many years

and being alone is really, really tough.

So when he moved back to Iran...

he started teaching, met Zohreh...

and it changed his life.

(KAYHAN SPEAKS PERSIAN)

(SPEAKS PERSIAN)

♪ ♪

(CROWD SHOUTING)

♪ ♪

ISABEL SOFFER: It's very dangerous.

The Iranian government

really keeps their...

their eye on... on artists like Kayhan

and other musicians that are quite popular.

They were warned that they should not be participating

in conversations about what's happening in Iran.

♪ ♪

KAYHAN: One thing that I cannot accept is violence.

I've been outspoken, I've been active,

you know, to try to help that.

♪ ♪

INTERVIEWER: Did anything happen to you personally?

Yes, but, you know, I... I wouldn't want to talk,

you know, to camera about it.

I can choose to be part of that society or not,

and-and... and that's not a very idealistic society

for me to be a part of...

so I had to leave.

But... Zohreh stayed.

(SKYPE RINGTONE)

(ZOHREH SPEAKS) (KAYHAN SPEAKS PERSIAN)

KAYHAN: I haven't been back for five years now, yeah.

(KAYHAN SPEAKS PERSIAN) (LAUGHS)

(ZOHREH SPEAKS)

(KAYHAN SPEAKS)

(ZOHREH SPEAKS)

KAYHAN: You know, I miss her,

and I miss my homeland,

and I always want to go back and live there.

I haven't been able to do it so far.

But I think it... it will happen.

♪ ♪

(PEOPLE CHATTERING) YO-YO: Yeah, I think I missed one.

Okay, guys, all right.

Okay. I'd like to ask you something.

I would like a very free rhythm

and almost nothing.

It's sort of intimate and atmospheric and...

So, how does it go?

♪ ♪

YO-YO: It can go... It can do something there.

Good. Something like that.

Mongolian birds' wings fluttering.

And if you want to do...

you know, it could be wind, right? So...

Is that okay? Yeah. MAN: Let's do it.

So it should sound like a giant horse fart. (LAUGHTER)

You know? Like... (MIMICS FARTING) (LOUD LAUGHTER)

YO-YO: Back to the top.

(PIPA MUSIC PLAYING)

WU MAN: In the States, the first few years was really difficult.

But music circle and the music community is very small.

So when you're interested,

you went looking for something,

and definitely, it's there or there

if you pay attention.

♪ ♪

My instrument, nobody knows it.

And I remember one day, I get phone call.

"How come this string quartet wanted to work with me?"

♪ ♪

JOHNNY: She is a total rock star.

She started playing with so many different people.

It's like, "I need a pipa player!" "Call Wu Man."

(MUSIC STOPS) (APPLAUSE)

♪ ♪

WU MAN: In America, people think you're Chinese.

You play Chinese instrument and from China.

But when I go back to China,

they say, "Oh, you're American."

♪ ♪

"You... you don't know today's China."

KAYHAN: When you leave your home, your country,

and you have this picture of it in your mind.

When I went back, nothing fit that picture I had in my mind.

Everything changed.

People were even speaking differently.

♪ ♪

CRISTINA: I think the challenge in Galicia right now is

the same challenge that exists in the rest of the world,

which is keeping your roots alive.

♪ ♪

YO-YO: There is no tradition that exists today

that was not the result of really successful invention.

But unless a tradition keeps evolving...

(NO DISCERNIBLE DIALOG)

...it naturally becomes smaller and smaller.

WU MAN: That leads me back to China,

to rediscovering "What is China's music?"

♪ ♪

JOHN WILLIAMS: None of us can prove anything about how...

much of the past we carry with us.

I had thought that this is, in Yo-Yo's mind...

his investigations into his own past.

YO-YO: My father was born in 1911...

and he left China when he was about 25 to go to France to study.

And he wrote about that fusion of what Chinese music

might sound like with French techniques of composing.

Isn't that strange that, so many years later...

the apple did not fall that far from the tree?

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

CRISTINA PATO: Yo-Yo!

Yo-Yo. (SPEAKING SPANISH)

Yo-Yo.

That's Yo-Yo, the dog. (LAUGHS)

Okay, come on in.

(PEOPLE CHATTERING IN SPANISH)

(LAUGHS) (CRISTINA'S MOTHER SPEAKS)

(LAUGHTER CONTINUES)

(MOTHER SPEAKS)

(SPEAKS) (MOTHER SPEAKS)

CRISTINA: Home is this for me.

Every birthday of mine since I was first,

my first birthday, was celebrated here or in this house.

(SPEAKS SPANISH)

(PEOPLE SPEAKING SPANISH)

(PEOPLE SPEAK) (CRISTINA SPEAKS)

(PEOPLE SPEAK)

♪ ♪

CRISTINA: And for us to keep that cultural identity alive

is probably one of the most defining aspects

of what it means to be a Galician.

♪ ♪

During the history of time,

many different civilizations have tried

to take away that identity...

like Roman Empire.

(XAN PADRON SPEAKING)

...they will lose their memories.

Their... They couldn't remember anything.

♪ ♪ (COWBELL CLANGING)

(MAN SINGING IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE)

(XAN SPEAKING)

(SINGING CONTINUES)

CRISTINA: That's the legend behind the piece

I wrote for my mother,

who maybe like four years ago

started to... to...

lose her memory.

(SINGING CONTINUES)

(CRISTINA SPEAKS SPANISH)

(MOTHER SPEAKS)

(CRISTINA SPEAKS)

(MOTHER SPEAKS)

(CRISTINA SPEAKS)

(MOTHER SPEAKS)

(SPEAKS, LAUGHS)

(SPEAKING SPANISH)

CRISTINA: We want to protect what we have...

our culture, our music...

and we want our children to keep the language alive.

♪ ♪

And in order to be alive, you have to let it grow.

♪ ♪

KINAN: Lots of people, when they think of the Middle East,

they think of divisions, like Sunni, Shia,

Christian, Armenian, Kurds, Turks.

♪ ♪

I don't think of the Middle East this way.

You know, I think it's an ancient place

where all the cultures happen to exist at some point.

KINAN: How much are these? (MAN SPEAKS TURKISH) Excuse.

That's okay, that's okay. I'm just going to play this, yeah?

(MAN SPEAKS INDISTINCTLY) Yeah?

KEVORK MOURAD: When we were in Juilliard,

Kinan and I, Kinan was graduating.

He made this very moving, beautiful piece.

And I told Kinan, I said,

"I think I can contribute

something in this piece."

♪ ♪

We think very similarly,

even though he's Muslim Arab and I'm Armenian Christian.

It's... it's not necessary.

We grew up without even knowing

who's Christian, who's Muslim in Syria.

It was not a necessary thing.

(PEOPLE CHATTERING)

KINAN: So this place was... used to be a church,

and then it turned out to be a mosque.

And then here it is, now it's a museum.

♪ ♪

(KINAN SPEAKING ARABIC)

(KEVORK SPEAKING)

(KINAN SPEAKING)

(KEVORK SPEAKING)

(KINAN SPEAKING)

(KEVORK SPEAKS) (SPEAKS)

No, "This is so beautiful, I don't want to cover it."

KEVORK: That's the power of art,

one crosses any... limitation.

(MOTORBIKE ENGINE REVVING)

(PEOPLE VOCALIZING MUSIC)

(LAUGHTER)

(SPEAKS CHINESE) (ALL CHEER)

It's the "F" word. (LAUGHTER)

Fa... fun.

(CHATTERING)

Whoa.

(JET ENGINES HUMMING)

NICHOLAS: Apparently I thought my father worked

at the airport when I was a child,

because that's where he was always going,

and so it was a bit of a massive revelation

that he was not, in fact... employed by Logan Airport.

But he knows what's important,

and I think he sees his obligation,

particularly when he goes to smaller towns,

as beginning the moment he lands

and lasting the entire time he's on the ground.

He's there to spread his sense of the world

in every conversation

and interaction that takes place.

(APPLAUSE) YO-YO: Wow.

Good evening.

I'm Yo-Yo Ma,

and this is my brother, Kayhan Kalhor.

(APPLAUSE)

Now, we were twins,

but we were separated at birth.

(LAUGHTER)

But we found out from DNA analysis...

that even our life choices...

are the same. Almost, yeah.

(APPLAUSE) (MUSIC PLAYING)

(MUSIC CONTINUES)

YO-YO: Everybody is afraid of going

somewhere they haven't gone before.

But you build enough trust within a group,

and sometimes you can turn fear into joy.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

WOMAN: Woo! (CHEERS, APPLAUSE)

KOJIRO: A lot of us in our own careers

have developed in different directions.

We have our own bands,

or we have our own work here and there,

but this is the one place where you can come together...

and play music that you... that you don't get to play otherwise.

That tells people like me,

it's okay to be doing what I'm doing.

(ROOSTER CROWS)

(DISTANT BARKING)

(DOG BARKING) (PEOPLE CHATTERING)

(SPEAKING CHINESE)

(WU MAN SPEAKING CHINESE)

Ah.

(SPEAKS)

(ENERGETIC FOLK MUSIC PLAYING)

(SPEAKS) (MAN SPEAKS)

(SINGING IN CHINESE)

(MEN SHOUT)

♪ ♪

(SINGING CONTINUES)

(ALL LAUGH)

(SHOUTS)

(SINGING)

(MUSIC STOPS)

(WU MAN SPEAKS CHINESE)

(SPEAKS CHINESE)

(PIPA MUSIC PLAYING)

♪ ♪

WU MAN: Music is their whole life,

and they told me they're already 11th generation.

So I asked them, "What about 12th generation?

Is there any 12th, 13th?"

They look at me. There's no answer.

So that... to me, really emotional.

♪ ♪

(MUSIC FADES)

(KAMANCHEH MUSIC PLAYING)

(PEOPLE CHANTING)

KAYHAN: I don't know who writes the scripts

for different revolutions, but they all look the same...

(PEOPLE CHATTERING)

...and they affect people's life in the same way.

(DISTANT SHOUTING)

WU MAN: Cultural Revolution is

the darkest history time period of China.

And for artist, there is no creation.

♪ ♪

The party tell you what to do.

I question the role of art.

I question my role, like, "What am I doing?"

♪ ♪

What is my role in comparison

to somebody who's on the ground,

peacefully demonstrating

at the risk of being shot, you know?

♪ ♪

If you ask me, "Do you want to go home?"

Of course, I want to do... I want to go home,

but in what circumstances would I go?

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

KAYHAN: We humans are...

we have a tendency to control everything...

the earth, animals, you know,

even the humans around us.

It's endless.

♪ ♪

Later on, when the Iran-Iraq war started,

it was a very, very difficult period.

♪ ♪

I lost two of my friends.

I lost my best friend.

And later on... a missile hit our house.

I lost all of my family,

my parents and my brother.

(AYNUR SINGING IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE)

KINAN: I mean, you see how the world is reacting to Syria.

Nobody gives a fuck,

if I can use the real language.

It's like...

♪ ♪

KINAN: Just three days ago,

people die of cold.

I mean, as simple as that.

I mean, the fact that they tried to cut the aid for...

for the refugees, because it's too expensive.

Fuck.

You know, it's just people are not... are not bothered.

♪ ♪

KAYHAN: We are not our political identities.

Nobody remembers who was the king when Beethoven lived.

But culture stays,

language stays as a part of culture,

music stays as part of culture.

(SINGING CONTINUES)

KOJIRO: The arts is more about opening up yourself to possibility.

Possibility links to hope.

We all need hope.

(MUSIC FADES)

(CELLO TUNING) (DOOR OPENS)

Hey, Yo-Yo. Hi, Fred.

So glad to see you. Nice to see you.

Thank you. When you play,

I'm sure you have a lot of different feelings.

And as you played as a child,

did you ever play happy things or sad things

or angry things, just 'cause you wanted to?

Oh, sure. One of my favorite was "The Swan," which is...

♪ ♪

And you can imagine the swan... right?

(MUSIC CONTINUES)

YO-YO: You look at anybody's life,

you could find tragedy.

Nobody escapes either the great things or horrible things.

That's the space between life and death.

♪ ♪

How do you deal with the fears and doubts?

Do you dare go there?

Can you put all of yourself behind something

and be absolutely authentic in doing it to the best of your ability?

(SIGHS)

KINAN: All right then.

(MUTTERS)

This is the first time that I tried to smuggle flutes into somewhere.

It feels like smuggling flutes, actually...

but it's smuggling for a good cause.

♪ ♪

Of course it's emotional, yeah. It's just simply emotional.

I'm going to teach...

Syrian children who have been...

they left their homes by force.

♪ ♪ (MAN SPEAKING INDISTINCTLY)

(MUSIC FADES) (PEOPLE CHATTERING)

(KINAN SPEAKING ARABIC)

KEVORK: I was like them when I was kids.

(CLARINET MUSIC PLAYING)

KEVORK: Look, I didn't have...

a hope that I'm going to be

in New York doing my art.

And definitely, one or two of those kids, they're going to make it.

So if we can inspire them and can help them to do this,

they're going to just continue this... this circle.

(MUSIC CONTINUES)

(GIRL SPEAKS ARABIC)

(GIRL 2 SPEAKS)

(RHYTHMIC CLAPPING) (KINAN SPEAKS ARABIC)

(SINGING IN ARABIC)

(GIRLS SING ALONG)

(SINGS)

(SPEAKS)

(SINGS)

(LAUGHS)

(GROUP SINGING SOFTLY)

(GROUP LAUGHS)

(GROUP SINGS)

(SPEAKS ARABIC)

♪ ♪

(SPEAKS)

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

It's one of those moments again in your life, you know?

Just you realize that...

considering what I'm doing for the culture

and for the country, you know,

I shouldn't be treated that way.

This is what I don't deserve.

You know, I miss my wife.

It doesn't really matter where the base is...

as long as we try to see each other, you know,

as-as... as much as we can.

♪ ♪

(WHISTLES) Zohreh.

(BOTH SPEAKING PERSIAN)

(SPEAKS)

(SPEAKS)

KAYHAN: We have a tendency not to be appreciative

of beautiful things that surround us.

But if you realize what you have in this life

and how precious is the breaths that you take,

the water that you drink, the music in your life...

and your loved ones around you,

it's just enormous wealth and happiness

that doesn't have...

to have anything else to complete it.

It's just complete by itself.

♪ ♪

YO-YO: What's the purpose?

Everything I've learned about performing,

about music,

about what happens between the notes...

that's about making sure that culture matters.

♪ ♪

MIKE BLOCK: I don't think Yo-Yo sees himself as a cellist.

I think he sees himself

as someone who wants to change the world,

and he happens to have a cello

with him half the time.

♪ ♪

And he wants us to be collaborators with scientists

and be collaborators with historians and educators.

(SINGING INDISTINCTLY)

KINAN: I would love it to be contagious.

It's nice just to see that it's a new way of thinking,

also about music, about what people can do together.

CRISTINA: Cultural identity,

it actually shapes your decisions all the time,

and you can take that

as a good challenge or a bad one.

Being part of this experiment did make me understand

what it means to keep your identity alive.

I have dreams about having some sort of role in...

in the arts in Galicia in the future.

And for that, I... I started the festival, Galician Connection.

This is a festival where I put together international artists

with Galician traditional artists.

(APPLAUSE) (MUSIC CONTINUES)

CRISTINA: When you learn something from another culture,

you will grow more if you're giving back to your own culture.

(ZHANG XIMIN SPEAKING CHINESE)

(MUSIC CONTINUES)

TAN: Just imagine, if we don't have

Silk Road musicians moving around,

Chinese music scene

or Western music scene are different.

WU MAN: To me, the world is round.

(MUSIC CONTINUES)

There's no east or west. It's just a globe.

(MUSIC FADES)

(PIANO MUSIC PLAYING)

YO-YO: As a four-year-old,

what I wanted to do in life was to understand.

As T.S. Eliot said,

"We shall never cease from exploration...

"and the end of all of our exploring...

"will be to arrive where we started...

and know the place for the first time."

I don't think that the Silk Road Project was his trying to go home.

I think it was his trying to go away, away from music,

away from a single repertoire.

And I think through that process,

he found himself at home again.

(PIANO MUSIC CONTINUING)

(MUSIC FADES)

(LIVELY MUSIC PLAYING)

(MUSIC FADES) (APPLAUSE, CHEERING)