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It sounds like the start of a really bad joke, but Wu Man and her friends James Makubuya and Lee Knight presented a mind blowing concert that ultimately left audiences feeling good about the prospect of world peace.

Wu Man plays the Chinese lute or pipa (pronounced pee-pah) with the intensity of a rock star.  Where many traditional pipa players strive to serve the traditional voice of the instrument, Wu Man fearlessly tests its limits.  Joined by Ugandan string player James Makubuya and Appalachian folk musician Lee Knight the three friends represent the wonderful cultural connections that occur when curious musicians meet and mix.

The Pipa is a tear drop shaped wooden lute with four strings and raised frets than span the length of the instrument.  It is help upright on the players lap and plucked or strummed in any variety of ways.  Wu Man is not only a pipa virtuoso from the Pudong School of playing, but she knows how to make the pipa relevant to the music of today by collaborating with this century's brightest composers.  She has worked with Terry Riley, Philip Glass, Lou Harrison, and UMKC composer in residence, Chen Yi, to name a few.  Her biography is impressive but she is down to earth and maintains a humble and gracious stage presence. 

Wu Man and Friends is a cozy tour.  At the Lied Center, Thursday night the relaxed vibe and obvious enjoyment the group took in playing with each other made the audience feel like we were invited to hang out on the back porch for an intimate jam.  The program was flexible and changed. The first half featured Makubuya and the second half, Knight.  Folk music concerts can make even the most cavernous stages seems like intimate coffee houses and this performance was no exception.

Wu Man opened the concert with a solo piece of classical pipa repertoire called Flute and Drum Music at Sunset. Written in 1875 in the "civil" style of pipa music her interpretation sounded very modern to my Western ears.  The piece is showy and uses a flutter roll finger picking style. She slowly bends the strings to alter the pitches, reveling in the multitude of "notes between the notes".  There is a Jimi Hendricks-like virtuosity about her as she closes her eyes and shakes her head from side to side.  She looks like she is singing the angular pentatonic melody in her head.   Then, in an instant, the piece becomes staccato and linear, painting a completely different picture. The form moves back and forth like a conversation.

Her tool box of finger picking techniques is loaded. She plucks, flicks, rolls, strums, dampens bar chords, pulls, adds vibrato and trills, scratches, slides and even pops like a funk bassist.  American rock guitarists could learn a thing or two from her. The only things she didn't do were bow it or play it with her teeth, maybe next time.

James Makubuya joined her from off stage, shuffling, singing a traditional African song while bowing his one stringed endingidi.  A Ugandan, ethnomusicologist, Makubuya tells the audience the highly entertaining folk stories and legends about the instruments and they way they look.  In addition to the edingidi he also played the endongo (8-string bowl lyre) and adungu (9-string bow harp) with Wu Man showing that instruments made in different parts of the world can speak the same language.

Lee Knight is full of down home humor.  "If it's a dead animal, we can make an instrument out of it." said Knight, with a smile, as he asked the audience to save their road kill.  For this performance he played his fretless five-string banjo, Appalachian dulcimer, Cherokee flute and mouth bow.  It was refreshing to hear our familiar folk music tradition juxtaposed against the Chinese and African cultures.  The Cherokee flute blended particularly well with the pipa, both deriving their special sounds from five note scales.

Both Makubuya and Knight chose to share songs that centered on a young girls desire to choose her own spouse instead of succumbing to an arranged marriage.  These songs highlighted how similar our traditions, with regard to marriage, were and how far these young heroines would go to be with their true loves. 

On instruments made from the same, earthly raw materials, Wu Man and her friends proved that for thousands of years, people have been making music that highlights the beauty and uniqueness of their individual cultures and the similarity of their human experience. 


Note:
Prior to the Wu Man and Friends performance, the KC Chinese Music Ensemble held a demonstration lecture and a Chinese Music Workshop for music educators in the area. The outreach was sponsored by the KU Center for East Asian Studies, the Lied Center and the Spencer Art Museum.  After each performance they graciously answer questions and share their instruments with curious audience members.  If an opportunity to hear these fantastic local musicians arises, don't let it pass you by.


REVIEW:
Lied Center at KU
Wu Man and Friends
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Lied Center of Kansas
Lawrence, KS

By Megan Browne Helm

Classical, Vocal and Theatre Contributor

Megan Browne Helm grew up singing, dancing and acting.  Inspired by Emma Kirkby as a high school student in St. Louis she went on to study voice and sing with the Collegium Musicum at the Oberlin Conservatory in Ohio where she also had a radio show of contemporary classical music on WOBC.  At the University of Kansas she had the pleasure of working with former Kings’ Singer, Simon Carrington in his Collegium Musicum and Oread consort. Years later, she was a choral fellow at the Yale School of Music’s  Norfolk Chamber Music Festival.  She is currently singing with the Kansas City Symphony Chorus under the direction of Charles Bruffy. 

 As a freelance music and culture writer her work can be found on KCMetropolis.org, presentmagazine.com, the Lawrence Journal World, Shawnee Magazine, Leawood Lifestyle Magazine and KC Parent.  She was one of 26 journalists in the country chosen as a NEA Institute Fellow for Classical Music and Opera at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. 

Her current interest is how classical music remains relevant through active collaborations with artists in different fields, including science.  She also sees a connection between classical music, travel and food as a way to engage all of the senses in a 360 degree cultural experience.  She blogs at raworganum.wordpress.com.