In January 2020, we met cellist Yo-Yo Ma in Guangzhou.
He got together with dozens of young musicians for a special musical experiment.
There are no competitions, no wins, and dozens of young people from different places are about to experience a new way of getting in touch with music here.
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Yo-Yo Ma
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Guangdong International Youth Music Week is an important experiment for Yo-Yo Ma after the age of 60.
Since 2017, he has come to Guangzhou every January to meet with more than 70 trainees.
These students are young musicians under the age of 35 from different countries, most of whom are studying in professional conservatories.
On this platform, he hopes that young people will be able to establish really effective communication.
For 10 days, they formed a makeshift band, played together and chatted together, and many young people came here with their own confusion, hoping to find answers.
The "truth" is hard
Yo-Yo Ma: "What I want to do is an experiment, and I feel strongly that what I am doing is a listening journey, and what I want to do is listen to what people want to say. ”
Tagawa: "Why do you have the desire to communicate with them in depth?"
Yo-Yo Ma: "Because I'm interested in 'people', I know that everyone is different from another person, they may do the same thing and have the same thoughts, but their ears hear differently, see differently, smell differently, their experiences are different. The 'truth' is hard, you know yourself as one person, but other people who know you know you as a different person. It's as if you've been studying who you really are, and you're constantly studying what the world is like, so you need to keep looking for that balance. ”
Who am I and how do I adapt to the world?
In 1955, Ma Washu was born into a Chinese family in Paris, France. His father, Ma Xiaojun, was a doctor of music education, composer and string player, and his mother, Lu Yawen, was a singer.
Born in France to Chinese parents, he moved to the United States with his family at the age of 7.
The collision of the three cultures has made Yo-Yo Ma face the confusion of identity from an early age.
Childhood Friends and Sisters
His parents told him that Chinese culture was the best culture in the world, but he didn't understand why they had to live in France. When he moved, his friend in France asked him, why do you want to move?
After arriving in the United States, people said that the United States is a great country.
7-year-old Yo-Yo Ma can't understand that these are all contradictory, how can every sentence be right?
Maybe it was then that he wanted an answer.
Childhood friends of Ma
In the music week registration form, he also asked the students two questions: Who am I? How do I adapt to the world?
Yo-Yo Ma: "I think sometimes it's more important to ask questions than to get answers. Who am I? What is the world? These are questions that we need to ask often. We change every day, whether as a society, as a person, as a community, or as all human beings on Earth, we have the same genes, the same genetic material, but between nature and nurture, we are constantly evolving. ”
Yo-Yo Ma: "A fire in Australia killed more than 1 billion animals, and that changed a lot of things, especially for those who are engaged in artistic expression. Because our job is to report everything we have, our experiences, everything we feel, from society, not asking this question is bound to make us a musician who lacks expressiveness. ”
Nothing in the world is boring
Yo-Yo Ma as a young man
Yo-Yo Ma: "My father was a very strong and intelligent educator. But I said to him, you know Dad, I can't be both a great musician and listen to you completely, because part of being a great musician is to know yourself and show 'who I am' and what matters, and you have to make decisions on that basis. In order to be 'authentic' to the musician, I can do whatever you want me to do, but I can't do both at the same time. ”
In 2018, Yo-Yo Ma embarked on a new two-year journey, the "Bach Project". He plays Bach's a cappella suite in iconic locations in 36 cities around the world.
The first performance of the afternoon was in the Ersha Island Diamond Park on the Pearl River.
There were many children watching, and they huddled in front to see what the "master" really looked like. But Ma Youyou kept making grimaces at everyone and trying to make them happy.
Tagawa: "What do you want from them?" ”
Yo-Yo Ma: "As we grow up, we all experience things that we think are less interesting, even boring. Our job is to make things interesting, nothing in the world is boring, it's people who make things boring or interesting. My kids used to say, 'We're bored,' and my wife said to them, there's nothing boring, it's you who're bored, because you've lost interest in the world. ”
I feel very free
Tagawa: "Do you know 'who I am' by now?" ”
Yo-Yo Ma: "I know how heavy I am, I know what I ate last night. When you're over 60 and you say something stupid, people will say, he's old, he's completely incomprehensible, and when I say something meaningful, they'll say, and the old man will say a few words, as if it's still interesting. So as a guy over 60, I feel very free. When I was 20 years old, life was very exciting and I was experiencing a lot of firsts, but then I felt differently about time than I am now. I don't have much time to live now, if you say 10 years, it's a short time, but for a 20-year-old, 10 years is forever. ”
Over the year, for the current Yo-Yo Ma,
What's important?
What does he want to do with all this time?
More
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