The bonds of peace between nations

'How many people are aware the modern torch relay was introduced by Carl Diem, president of the organisation committee for the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, as part of an effort to turn the games into a glorification of the Third Reich. "Sporting chivalrous contest helps knit the bonds of peace between nations. Therefore may the Olympic flame never expire," - Adolf Hitler' - writes Patricia van den Brink from Herne, Germany in today's Guardian.

And how many people are aware that Hitler's court composer was a Harvard alumni?
Photo of demonstration in London on April 6, 2008 from Students for a Free Tibet UK. Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

The art of protest

While in the Guardian author Charles Cumming makes an important point about China's Turkic-Muslim minority - The British media's obsession with Buddhist Tibet says a great deal about western attitudes to Xinjiang and to its predominantly Turkic-Muslim population. It may be that people remain ignorant of Xinjiang because it has no Dalai Lama, no Richard Gere, to bring its cause to the world's attention. If it did, then we would know more about the barbaric treatment meted out to Uighurs on a day-to-day basis.

So paranoid is the Chinese government about the threat of a separatist movement in Xinjiang that it will incarcerate innocent civilians on the flimsiest pretexts. Uighurs have been jailed for reading newspapers sympathetic to the cause of independence. Others have been detained merely for listening to Radio Free Asia, an English-language station funded by the US Congress. Even to discuss separatism in public is to risk a lengthy jail sentence, with no prospect of habeas corpus, effective legal representation or a fair trial. About 100 Uighurs were arrested in Khotan recently after several hundred demonstrated in the marketplace of the town, which lies on the Silk Road.

And what happens to these innocent Uighur men and women once they land up in one of Xinjiang's notorious "black prisons"? Amnesty International has reported numerous incidents of torture, from cigarette burns on the skin to submersion in water or raw sewage. Prisoners have had toenails extracted by pliers, been attacked by dogs and burned with electric batons, even cattle prods.


Listen to samples of the music of the Turkic-Muslim people, not of China but of Azerbaijan here, and more art of protest here.
Image credit Free Tibet Campaign. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Where is the Chinese Shostakovich?

BBC News reports today - A prominent activist who publicised human rights abuses across China has been convicted of subversion and jailed for three-and-a-half years. Hu Jia, 34, was convicted of "inciting subversion of state power and the socialist system", his lawyer said. He has long campaigned for the environment, religious freedom and for the rights of people with HIV and Aids.

In 1997 Adrian Abbotts wrote - Over thirty million people are estimated to have disappeared through China's gulags since 1949. Fox Butterfield's all too valid critique that when a dissident was sent to a prison camp in the Soviet Union it was headline news, but when it happened in China no-one cared came instantly to mind. The former Soviet Union was for years subjected by the West to the propganda attacks of the Cold War while China, though worse in many ways than the USSR, remained a curiosity shop on the edge of the universe.

It is changing a little now, but names such as Wei Jingsheng amd Phuntsok Nyidron (A Tibetan nun serving nine years for demonstrating, whose sentence was increased by a further eight years in 1994 for singing a song of independence while in jail - she is on the right in the photo below) do not yet trip so easily from the tongue as Sakharov and Solzhenitsyn, and China remains a blind spot in the eyes of the West, visible only when it comes to trade.

Chinese troops can kill hundreds of pro-democracy demonstrators in Lhasa or the centre of their own capital, live on television with running commentary, yet 'favoured nation' trading status is not withdrawn by the United States, and British towns twin happily with Chinese cities in a way that would have been unthinkable with the Soviet Union or South Africa a decade earlier. This is all apart from the evidence linking Western companies with the export of precision-made torture instruments to China, none of which have been prosecuted.

It is curious to think that the adults involved in such decisions, presidents and prime ministers included, who are themselves instrumental in perpetuating the worst excesses of totalitarianism this planet has yet produced, would be horrified should their child return from school having been told that the Holocaust was a good thing.


Will we find the Chinese Shostakovich here?
Second quotation from Naked Spirits, A Journey into Occupied Tibet by Adrian Abbotts; out of print, but well worth searching out. Photo credits: Hu Jia European Parliament, Phuntsok Nyidron with fellow dissident Ngawang Sangdrol from Tibet Chine Actualité. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

The world's largest prison for journalists

Nice picture of the new head office for Chinese Central Television (CCTV) elsewhere. Read more about television and the media in China, not from me but from the BBC:

'With more than one billion viewers, television is a popular source for news and the sector is competitive, especially in urban areas. China is also becoming a major market for pay-TV; it is forecast to have 128 million subscribers by 2010. State-run Chinese Central TV, provincial and municipal stations offer a total of around 2,100 channels.

The availability of non-domestic TV is limited. Agreements are in place which allow selected channels - including stations run by AOL Time Warner, News Corp and the Hong Kong-based Phoenix TV - to transmit via cable in Guangdong province. In exchange, Chinese Central TV's English-language network is made available to satellite TV viewers in the US and UK.

Beijing says it will only allow relays of foreign broadcasts which do not threaten "national security" or "political stability". Of late, it has been reining in the activities and investments of foreign media groups. The media regulator - the State Administration for Radio, Film and Television - has warned local stations that foreign-made TV programmes must be approved before broadcast.

The internet scene in China is thriving, though controlled. Beijing routinely blocks access to sites run by the banned spiritual movement Falun Gong, rights groups and some foreign news organisations. It has moved to curb postings by a small but growing number of bloggers.

An international group of academics concluded in 2005 that China has "the most extensive and effective legal and technological systems for internet censorship and surveillance in the world".

The media rights group Reporters Without Borders describes the country as the world's "largest prison for journalists".'

And yes, it even affects music blogs.
Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Classical music has a cult following

Classical music and an "evil cult" are unlikely bedfellows. But my fun story Stockhausen, chaotic music and communism about the oboeist of the Divine Performing Arts Orchestra proved to be a bit more serious than I thought. Several readers have pointed out that the orchestra and The Epoch Times newspaper which ran the story are closely connected with Falun Gong.

A BBC website is headed 'Falun Gong - an evil cult?' and goes on to say 'Claiming to be an ancient technique of self-development, Falun Gong is an eclectic mixture of Taoist and Buddhist principles with a sprinkling of extraterrestrials ... On 22 July, 1999, Falun Gong was declared an 'evil cult' by the Beijing authorities, and totally banned, meriting 'a serious ideological and political struggle that would have a bearing on the future of the Communist Party and the State ... in terms of typical cult techniques, Falun Gong is given a 50:50 Yes/No rating by Time Asia. While it is led by a charismatic leader, fosters an 'us versus them' attitude, and uses jargon that outsiders don't understand, it does not exert pressure on people to join, its believers do not remove themselves from society, nor are they required to donate large sums of money, their homes, jobs, and so on, to a central organisation.'

An unconnected bit of trivia is that I was in Guyana shortly before the dreadful Jonestown mass suicides in 1978. On a much more positive note Georgetown, Guyana, which we were visiting, was the birthplace of the Berlin Philharmonic's first black conductor.
Header image showing Falun Gong members is from a useful article in The Johnsonian, newspaper of Winthrop University. Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Stockhausen chaotic music and communism

'Dr. Trey notes that music has lost its way since the nineteenth century. It has changed from earlier eras—the Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, and Romantic epochs (1600-1900)—to trends starting in early 1900's. These earlier eras spanning 300 years represent the pinnacle of classical music in the West and are based on higher principles and values. Composers such as Stravinsky, Schoenberg, and Stockhausen composed music from a listener's perspective as if experimenting with noise.

When this chaotic music appeared, atomic bombs, communism and cold war also surfaced. He believes this chaotic music in no small way contributes to the chaos in modern times. Destructive political movements, such as communism, thrived by killing people in its own society.

Europe boasted excellent philosophers and scholars when classical principles were followed. When music lost its classical values, chaos developed in societies and so for 100 years, music has been struggling to find direction' - from an Epoch Times interview with Dr. Torsten Trey, German medical practioner and oboeist with the New York based Divine Arts Performing Orchestra.

Now read about music, acid and the collapse of communism.
Header photo is of a performance of Stockhausen's suitably chaotic Hymnen at St John's Smith Square, London in 1971. The composer is in the centre. The Epoch Times is a New York based independent free newspaper specialising in reporting on China. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Breaching the great firewall of China

My post identifying music blogs blocked by the Chinese government has caused justified indignation over on Renewable Music, Soho the Dog and elsewhere. But here is how you breach the great firewall of China. Make sure New Music Reblog mirrors your site, because that's not blocked.

Martin Scorsese's 1997 film Kundun, with its Philip Glass score, was a brave and pioneering anti-Chinese government statement. Remember you read it here first.
Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Music behind the great firewall of China

In that classic 1968 film The Graduate Benjamin (Dustin Hoffman) is given some of the most famous advice in cinema history:

Mr. McGuire: I just want to say one word to you - just one word.
Ben: Yes sir.
Mr. McGuire: Are you listening?
Ben: Yes I am.
Mr. McGuire: 'Plastics.'
Ben: Exactly how do you mean?
Mr. McGuire: There's a great future in plastics. Think about it. Will you think about it?
Ben: Yes I will.
Mr. McGuire: Shh! Enough said. That's a deal.

Right now that conversation is being repeated with a slight twist:

Agent: I just want to say one word to you - just one word.
Musician: Yes sir.
Agent: Are you listening?
Musician: Yes I am.
Agent: 'China' ...

Orchestras are listening, composers from Gustav Mahler to Damon Albarn have been listening for years, Google are listening, and even Jordi Savall is listening. I'm quite sure Terry Riley and the Kronos Quartet don't need to listen to their agent, but their latest CD is on-message anyway. The Cusp of Magic (sleeve below) features Wu Man playing a Chinese relative of the lute called the pipa, an instrument which first appeared during the Quin dynasty (220BC-206BC) at the time the earliest sections of the Great Wall were built. Wu Man was born in Hangzhou in the Yangtze Delta in China and studied at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, where she became the first recipient of a master's degree in pipa.

Wu Man has a deservedly high profile on the world music scene, and her fans include Bill Clinton and Philip Glass. It was Philip Glass who once said that world music is the new classical, and who also provided the soundtrack for one of the most powerful criticisms of Chinese human rights abuse in recent years. Wu Man now lives in San Diego and she appeared at the opening of the 2007 Special Olympics in Shanghai together with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jackie Chan. There are clearly some admirable things happening with classical music in China and Wu Man's advocacy of the country's musical heritage is very welcome.

But at this point politics and music collide. The article that you are currently reading about Wu Man's new CD is not available to internet users in either Beijing where she studied, or in Shanghai where she played at the Special Olympics last year. The results below from a test on WebSitePulse show the domain http://www.overgrownpath.com/ is blocked by the the government controlled great firewall of China in both cities, as is The Rest is Noise, although both blogs are available in Hong Kong (which has special administrative region status and is where my header photo comes from). But Wu Man's own website is available across the whole of China, together with the Kronos Quartet's and arbritrarily Sequenza21.


But this is a music website isn't it? So back to the music and The Cusp of Magic. The pipa is not the only unfamiliar sound in the mix and a synthesizer, peyote rattle and numerous childrens toys add to a work that defies categorisation. The Cusp of Magic was commissioned by the Kronos Quartet to mark Terry Riley's 70th birthday and it contains some beautiful writing and some startling ideas. But it is very different to Riley's early signature compositions such as In C and the episodic nature of the material does make the bigger picture difficult to see at times. If the technique isn't exactly minimalist the CD is, with less than 43 minutes of music on a full price release. Like the huge country behind the great firewall you can't ignore The Cusp of Magic. But also just like China it is more mystery than magic.


Now, I just want to say one other word to you which the great firewall of China won't like - Tibet.
Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk