"What if Marco Polo had owned tape recorder?" This intriguing concept is raised in the liner notes to this impressive two-CD set,

which wanders along ancient Asian trade routes known as the Silk Road. The first disc, Masters & Traditions, deals with formal

styles performed by and for sophisticated connoisseurs. Meanwhile, the music on Minstrels and Lovers is played by amateurs who

are part of daily life and thus reach a wider audience. The imaginary caravan passes through Iran, Kazakhstan, China, Uzbekistan,

Mongolia, and Afghanistan, encountering nomads, mystics, and bards along the way. The instruments are scratchy, pungent,

and/or serene, while the singers weave a potent spell out of a millennium's worth of slow-changing rural and urban vistas. In the

opening essay, cellist Yo-Yo Ma, the project's artistic director, pleads for intercultural communication and empathy. This

compilation provides an exotic, brave, entertaining first step in that direction. --Christina Roden


Product Description
What if Marco Polo had owned a tape recorder? And what if his epic travels along the Silk Road had taken place not at the end of

the 13th century, but at the beginning of the 21st? Far-fetched conjectures to be sure, but our compilation The Silk Road: A

Musical Caravan offers a glimpse of the rich musical life that an intrepid and curious traveler like Marco Polo might find in the

lands of the Silk Road today.