Phoenix Rising

During the last year, I’ve found myself drawn to old folk music from around my parts (North Carolina and the American South) to help me deal with some of the massiveness of this last year. This song is a well-known traditional piece sung that came to popular notice when it was sung by Ralph Stanley in the wildly popular film O Brother, Where Art Thou? But this version from noted folklorist Bessie Jones is where I found inspiration – her approach is rooted in African American traditions and really spoke to me. I recorded “O Death” on my newest album, They’re Calling Me Home, with Francesco Turrisi on frame drum. These traditional songs have a way of getting to the bones of humanity, showing the stark contrast of life and death, and I thought it might do the same in a new setting with Silkroad.

—Rhiannon Giddens

Translation:

See your pale breath floating over there
As it slowly drifts off in the air
See it billow into the clouds in the sky
And vanish before your eyes
See the white clouds reaching out there hands
In the sky so far above the land
Breathing in the air you breathed out
Rolling on, Rolling On, Rolling On
And do you remember
The clouds streaming by ‘bove the river?
And didn’t they look just like this?
Or maybe my mind plays tricks
And do you remember the glaring sun
And the dog sleeping there ‘neath the eaves
And all of these memories
Fade into the sky as they leave
On the other side of the sky
There’s another sky there so blue
There’s not a single soul or a sound
But there’s a rolling, rolling cloud
And do you remember
The clouds streaming by ‘bove the river?
And didn’t they look just like this?
Or maybe my mind plays tricks
See your pale breath floating over there
As it slowly drifts off in the air
See it billow into the clouds in the sky
And vanish before your eyes
And vanish before your eyes

In the summer of 2004, I had the opportunity to visit Iran, the home of Siamak Aghaei and Kayhan Kalhor, musicians and friends whom I met through the Silkroad Ensemble. The visit, made alongside my friend and colleague Nicholas Cords, was a cultural exchange made possible by Silkroad and would prove to be a life-changing experience. Besides learning more about traditional Persian architecture, calligraphy, arts and crafts, and their close link to Persian music, we spent many hours in the homes of both Kayhan and Siamak listening to them play and talk about the philosophy behind their music. Siamak is a bit of a modern-day Bartók in that he has traveled around Iran making field recordings of folk musicians from the many and varied traditions represented by the different regions of Iran. He dusted off one such recording and the sound that emerged from the speakers gave us a form of vertigo. Our ears were held to attention by the sound of an incredibly potent and piercing instrument, which Siamak told us was made out of the fused bones of a bird and measured little more than two inches in length. The music also encoded a popular mythical story of a bird attempting to fly to the sun. Failing on the first two attempts, on the third try the bird loses its physical body in the radiant embrace of the sun, a metaphor for spiritual transcendence. What emerged from this experience was “Ascending Bird”—comprised of Siamak’s reinterpretation of the traditional tune to which I added further textural layers and combined with an original coda.

—Colin Jacobsen

The Internal Chamber (w/t) is a multidisciplinary storytelling project between three artists, representing the personal narratives of Silkroad artists during the time of the COVID-19 pandemic. The project is at once personal and universal through its themes of grief and hope shared by all during these trying times. Using voice, sound design, movement, and visual art creation, Nora Fischer, Kevork Mourad, and Preeti Vasudevan come together to weave this tapestry of storytelling. The Internal Chamber is a unique project in which the multiple voices of the collective at Silkroad are able to express their personal journeys.

In “Silent City”, kamancheh, western strings, and percussion join in a meditation that is recreated with each performance. “The music commemorates the Kurdish village of Halabja in Iraqi Kurdistan,” writes composer Kayhan Kalhor. “I chose to base the piece on an altered A-minor scale using Kurdish themes to remember the Kurdish people…who are often called a ‘nationless nation’ and who have been the subject of numerous assaults and difficulties because of their demand for sovereignty. In a way, Silent City is a tribute to all of the cities that were somehow destroyed by humanity, war, and natural disaster.”

“Silent City” invites the performers into the process of developing the piece by means of improvisation until the last section, which follows conventional composition and notation.

Gabriela Lena Frank drew on the Peruvian and Chinese influences of her richly mixed heritage and on her ethnomusicology research to create ¡Chayraq!: Rough Guide to a Modern Day Tawantinsuyu. The fanciful title hints at the content of the piece. “Chayraq!” is an Indian expression of excitement—“hooray!” Tawantinsuyu was the Indian name given to the pre-Conquest Incan Empire. “Rough Guide” alludes to field recordings gathered in researching music from a foreign culture, typically compilations of short tracks of music caught on the fly at indigenous events such as festivals, religious ceremonies, and harvest fiestas. These examples were instrumental in Frank’s own self-education as a composer, when she was a student looking for musical clues in her Latin American travels. In a similar spirit, she constructed this piece with more than a dozen short movements, which mix and match percussion, pipa, violin, and cello, and which may be played individually or, as in this evening’s concert, as a full series.

“And The Walls Became The World All Around” follows the story told in Maurice Sendak’s classic children’s book, Where the Wild Things Are. Commissioned by Silkroad in 2019, Phoenix Rising will house the world premiere of two of its four movements.

In Where the Wild Things Are, reality itself gives way to a world of imagination and rebellion as, in the book’s own words, “the walls became the world all around.” Our young protagonist, Max, has been sent to his room without supper as a punishment for his shenanigans and, in his solitude, the walls of his room dissolve to reveal a forest and an ocean. The second movement, “An Ocean Tumbled By,” focuses on the aquatic, droplet-like sounds in the percussion section, and the melody makes its smooth journey over rhythmic patterns that mimic the gentle lilt of calm seas. Max finally arrives in a land of monsters, the wild things, but proving himself more fearsome, he becomes the king of the wild things and celebrations launch. Just as the “wild rumpus” in the book catapults the story beyond the realm of text, the third movement of the piece, “Let the Wild Rumpus Start,” moves us beyond the domain of musical notes, consisting of only unpitched percussion sounds. This movement draws heavily from the Colombian puya style, a rhythm that I love which has, in many late nights playing with Colombian bands in Queens and New Jersey, connected me to my own inner sense of wild rumpus.

—Edward Pérez

This past year, India suffered losses on a massive scale never seen before. Within a few weeks, I and many people I know were suddenly reeling from the unexpected losses of family, friends, loved ones, mentors, and some of our country’s most treasured musicians and artists. When I was asked to create a piece for Phoenix Rising, my mind immediately went to Rabindranath Tagore’s iconic song, “Ekla Cholo Re.” The refrain states, “If no one heeds your call, then walk alone.” Tagore, one of India’s most celebrated poets, was the first person of color and the first non-European to win a Nobel Prize for literature, writing thousands of songs that have stayed relevant beyond the half century since his passing. Music, I believe, is an instrument of healing—a means to create awareness, a conversation unbounded by language, and a spark that can lead to change on a global level. As “Ekla Cholo Re” rang through the Independence movement of India, I believe its words still ring true and are inspirational in our current times.

—Sandeep Das

When composer David Bruce developed Cut the Rug for the Ensemble in 2012, he was inspired not only by the concept of the historical Silk Road but also by filmmaker Tony Gatlif’s documentary Latcho Drom, which explores the broad, multicultural embrace of Roma music. “The idea of all these diverse but equally vibrant musics being part of one large family has always appealed to me,” David says, “as has the ease and naturalness with which new styles have been integrated into a developing musical language as the Roma have moved from one area to another. In my piece I think there is a similarly wide spread of cultural influences, which I hope to integrate to create something new—there are a few drops of Kyrgyzstan; definite hints of Turkey; a pinch of flamenco; perhaps even a dash of American Cajun music; and many influences besides.”

The title is a play on the rugs the Central Asian region so famously produces, but it also teases the Jazz Age lingo “cut the rug”—the deft skill of a dancer who can wow a crowd.