Mandarin and Banjo
- From: Mike Wright <news@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 30 Aug 2006 16:23:49 -0500
Any of you who also subscribe to the Kenyon Chinese list will be seeing this info (slightly re-edited) twice...but what the heck! It's sort of language-related.
I've been telling all of my friends about a young lady named Abigail Washburn who plays clawhammer banjo and sings in both Mandarin and English. I'll be going to see her live this coming Saturday at Poor David's Pub in Dallas. Take a look at the following links, which include two NPR interviews with her.
<http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5049815>
<http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4840756>
<http://www.amazon.com/Song-Traveling-Daughter/dp/B0009X7704/ref=sr_11_1/104-5289010-4503908?ie=UTF8>
<http://www.abigailwashburn.com/> (especially the Press link)
I've been doing something like that for over 40 years (though not nearly so well), so it doesn't seem that unusual to me. What's different from me is that she began with Chinese language studies and trips to China, and took up the banjo and Old-Timey music later, while I studied Chinese and went to Taiwan several years after getting into American folk and Old-Timey music.
Most Spanish students probably wouldn't find the idea of doing serious singing in Spanish all that intimidating. My college friends and I, none of whom spoke much Spanish, sang a fair number of Mexican and other Spanish-language songs, but I had never run into a non-native speaker of Mandarin doing such a thing until my friends, Dave and Jo Hess (although Jo *was* a native speaker), and I started doing it Taiwan in the mid '60s with banjo, 12-string guitar, and string bass (played by a young soldier named Tim, last name lost and gone forever). We performed at the Air Force Officers' Club, the Taipei American School, on Dave's AFRT music show, and at some kind of international wingding in Taipei (where Tim got heavily involved with the daughter of the Brazilian ambassador). That was the last I'd seen of that kind of thing--until now.
I'm sure everyone will be able to judge how good her voice is. I can also tell you that she is a seriously talented clawhammer player, too--as clear, clean, and smooth as I've ever heard in all these decades of listening.
If any of y'all actually like Old-Timey music, take a look at Abigail performing with her group, Uncle Earl. Click the second link at <http://www.uncleearl.net/multimedia.htm> to see them perform at at the Kennedy Center. She does one Old-Timey song with some Mandarin verses there.
--
Mike Wright
http://www.raccoonbend.com
.
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