WOMAD

Zheng Chengwei & Cheng Yu

From China (Peoples Republic)

In China, the meditative thought processes inherent in Daoism and other mystical philosophies have been skilfully transposed into a coherent musical genre. In it, the guqin, a 7 stringed plucked zither, plays a key role and Zheng Chengwei is one of its greatest living virtuosi. In a neat echo of meditation itself, the guqin master attempts to yoke the thought processes of the listener together to the Dao or ‘way’ of existence, blending the two into each other until they become indistinguishable. The instrument has a wide range of tones and notes, which afford the player plenty of scope with which to demonstrate his dexterity. Chengwei comes from Sizchan province and plays in a special style called shu. He’s also an expert guqin maker. Cheng Yu is another virtuoso, this time of the pipa, a four stringed lute that came to China along the silk route. It produces delicate fountains of notes that have long serenaded the reveries of both society’s elites and the earthier folk styles of Shanghai’s silk’n’bamboo teahouses. Cheng Yu comes from the captial Beijing and in recent years she has been devoting herself to reviving the five-string pipa, which was last heard in the 8th century.