Dialogue · Yo-Yo Ma
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△ Yo-Yo Ma
He is one of the world's best-known cellists and has collaborated with the best symphony orchestras and top artists in the world. He used music to bridge cultures and races, becoming one of 13 UN Ambassadors for Peace.
Yo-Yo Ma: If I want to be a musician, I have to listen, I have to care, I have to empathize, I have to be curious, because I ultimately have to represent people's voices.
In January 2020, we met cellist Yo-Yo Ma in Guangzhou, who used music to build bridges between different cultures.
△ Yo-Yo Ma directs the orchestra in rehearsal
Five years ago, Yo-Yo Ma came to Guangzhou to become the artistic director of Guangdong International Youth Music Week. He brought together more than a dozen established musicians from world-renowned orchestras and met young students here. The 10-day rehearsal, exchange, and performance continued from morning to night, and Yo-Yo Ma chose to participate in the whole process. This time, he also wanted to use his break to communicate with each student face-to-face. We wondered how the exchange with young people really attracted this world-class player. What was he thinking at the age of 64? And what do you want to do? We tried to find some answers during these 10 days.
Yo-Yo Ma: I'm doing a listening journey, I want to do an experiment, I want to listen to what people want to say.
Tagawa: Why do you have a desire to communicate with them in depth?
Yo-Yo Ma: Because I'm interested in "people". I know that everyone is different, and they may do the same thing and have the same thoughts, but what their ears hear, see, smell, and experience is different. It's hard to discover the "truth," you know yourself as one person, and other people know you as a different person. It's like you're constantly studying who you really are and what the world is like, and you need to keep looking for balance.
On November 29, 1962, 7-year-old Yo-Yo Ma and his sister Yo-Yo Ma performed for then-U.S. President John F. Kennedy and more than 5,000 spectators at a fundraising event called the American Arts Extravaganza. This performance made 7-year-old Yo-Yo Ma famous. The following year, he and his sister took to the stage at Carnegie Hall.
△ As a child, Ma Youyou and his sister performed together
Yo-Yo Ma: I started learning violin at the age of three, but I played it so badly that I made it make the harshest sound you could imagine, so I gave up, and my parents thought I had no musical talent. But when I was four years old, I saw a super big instrument, the double bass. I thought, "I'm going to play the biggest instrument in the world." But I was too young for me to pull, so I had to learn the second largest instrument in the world, the cello.
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, Lo Ya-man, 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 of Ma
His parents told him that Chinese culture was the best in the world, but he didn't understand why they were living 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.
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. "Why? 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 community, or as human beings on Earth. We have the same genes, the same genetic material, but between the innate and the acquired, we are all constantly evolving.
△ Yo-Yo Ma performs all over the world (slide right to see more)
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 is a message from society, and if we don't ask that question, it will definitely make us a musician who lacks expressiveness.
For Yo-Yo Ma, who became famous at a young age, adolescence was a time of confusion and rebellion. His father, Ma Xiaojun, was a strict and traditional Chinese father who taught Ma Youyou and his sister to Chinese, learn Chinese history, and even when eating, they had to be able to say the names of Chinese dishes before they could move chopsticks. At home, he had little communication with his parents, and he was asked to obey and hide his emotions. In his schools in New York, however, Yo-Yo Ma adapts to a different culture, and teachers and friends expect him to open his mouth, express himself, and show his personality.
Struggling in such a contradictory environment, he gradually became rebellious and uneasy, began to secretly drink heavily, skip class, and deliberately opened the case to let the cello rain.
Yo-Yo Ma: My father was a very strong and intelligent educator. But I said to him, I can't be a great musician and listen to you completely. Because part of being a great musician is knowing yourself and stating "who I am and what matters", 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.
Yo-Yo Ma studied at the Juilliard School preparatory department for a few years, but before he graduated, he decided to give up his professional conservatory and enter Harvard University to study anthropology. He wanted to know the world beyond music.
At school, he studied the Bushmen living in the Kalahari Desert and would call his classmates in the middle of the night to discuss Dostoevsky.
When Yo-Yo Ma today sees many children learning music early, he always reminds parents not to let their children's world be just playing. Childhood and adolescence are the stages of establishing an "emotional account" in which children deposit something of real value.
Tagawa: You said we need to build an emotional bank account between the ages of 12 and 21. If you had the opportunity to go back in time and put into this account what you thought was important now, but didn't deposit at the time, what do you think?
Yo-Yo Ma: It's hard to say because I can't put my current self in the state of a 12-year-old. Actually I don't regret it at all, I think young people are agitated, 12 year old you are in adolescence, your hormones have changed, literally it has turned you into a different person. You're perceiving the world in a different way, you're going to be a little bit separated from your parents, you're trying to understand a different world, and all the people your age are changing. It's a very drastic, even violent process of change, your shoes don't fit, your clothes don't fit, you try to become attractive in front of people you like, you suddenly have self-awareness, you have a lot of questions, who can you trust, who can give you advice... Today, we can know what your peers all over the world are doing, but it can put a lot of pressure on people and potentially make you bullied, which is one of the worst things that can happen. People are bound to go through this, and I think it's part of your "emotional account" that you'll learn from for the rest of your life.
△ Yo-Yo Ma performs in a community in Guangzhou
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: We all go through 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 children used to say, "We're boring," and my wife said to them, "Nothing is boring, it's that you're bored because you've lost interest in the world."
Tagawa: So do you know "who I am" now?
Yo-Yo Ma: I know how heavy I am, I know what I ate last night. When you're over 60 and say something stupid, people say, "He's old, and he's completely incomprehensible." When I say something meaningful, they say, "This old man can still say a few words, as if it were still interesting." So as a guy over 60, I feel like I'm very free. At 20, life was exciting and I was experiencing a lot of firsts, but then I felt differently about time than I am now. Now I don't have much time to live, let's say 10 years, it's actually a very short time. But for 20-year-olds, 10 years is forever.
Choreographer: Gao Shuqing
Edit: 612, Batam