{"id":2032,"date":"2021-07-05T22:34:59","date_gmt":"2021-07-06T02:34:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/?p=2032"},"modified":"2021-07-05T22:35:03","modified_gmt":"2021-07-06T02:35:03","slug":"savage-beauty-take-two","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/2021\/07\/savage-beauty-take-two.html","title":{"rendered":"Savage Beauty &#8212; Take two"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Min Xiao-Fen&#039;s &quot;White Lotus&quot; soundtrack trailer for 1934 silent film &quot;The Goddess&quot; with Rez Abbasi\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/5uXpjzEX1hI?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Three months ago I <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/2021\/04\/savage-beauty.html\">blogged<\/a><\/strong> about Min Xiao-fen\u2019s exceptional new recording, \u201cWhite Lotus,\u201d in which her pipa is mated with Rez Abbasi\u2019s guitar. The music comes from her soundtrack to a classic Chinese silent film: &#8220;The Goddess.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I\u2019m delighted to see that NPR has now done an enterpirising <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/2021\/07\/03\/1012832047\/the-traditional-chinese-pipa-meets-guitar-in-min-xiao-fens-white-lotus\">seven-minute feature.<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Here\u2019s an excerpt:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>ABBASI: And there is that scene [in &#8220;The Goddess&#8221;] where the principal comes to visit the mother and son. And we both dig into a kind of the blues . . . It&#8217;s like a blue pipa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>(SOUNDBITE OF MIN XIAO-FEN&#8217;S &#8220;HATHA (SUN AND MOON)&#8221;)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>MIN: It&#8217;s a little bit like the swamp kind of idea, because, you know, Chinese [music] has a blues, too. . . . And so that&#8217;s why I feel this American style for blues swamp is the perfect match with the Chinese blues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>ABBASI: Yeah. Chinese opera&#8217;s drenched in the blues, actually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>How I wish the musical fusion of East and West more frequently attained the synergies explored in this remarkable recording. One father of all such synergies was the master American composer Lou Harrison, who in his majestic <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/2019\/02\/lou-harrison-and-the-great-american-piano-concerto-reprised.html\">Piano Concerto<\/a><\/strong> fused gamelan with Brahms. It worked because he dealt not only with intermingling surface attributes, but intermingling creative idioms: from the inside out.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Three months ago I blogged about Min Xiao-fen\u2019s exceptional new recording, \u201cWhite Lotus,\u201d in which her pipa is mated with Rez Abbasi\u2019s guitar. The music comes from her soundtrack to a classic Chinese silent film: &#8220;The Goddess.&#8221; I\u2019m delighted to see that NPR has now done an enterpirising seven-minute feature. Here\u2019s an excerpt: ABBASI: And [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2032","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2QLHN-wM","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2032","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2032"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2032\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2041,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2032\/revisions\/2041"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}