The Music of Strangers Page #2

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and she became a

sensation overnight.

We had no information

about Western culture.

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.

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.

In the '80s,

when I was asked in an interview

about what my next

project might be...

What's next for you?

I'm casting about for

something, anything,

I said that I had always...

I said, "I have always been

fascinated by"... guess what...

The bushmen of the

Kalahari Desert.

Yeah.

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.

Shoot.

Where the hell is the "F"?

There we go.

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...

...and I was invited

to participate.

They get into trance,

and then they lay hands on

people who need healing.

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."

So one day, I sat with

Yo-Yo at the caf

and we were talking about

where creativity comes from...

...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."

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.

"Did Yo-Yo go off his

tracks or something?

What... what did he

drink?" You know?

We gathered in the summer

of 2000 in Massachusetts.

Frankly...

I was scared to death.

Yo-Yo Ma is, of course,

a golden child.

He can touch anything

and do anything,

and everything... everybody

thinks it's great.

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