All language subtitles for The.Music.of.Strangers.2015.1080p.HBO.WEB-DL.DD+5.1.H.264.shd.eng

(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)