Calliope articles from January 2007

Calliope archives from January 2007

5 awe-inspiring Chinese sites along the Silk Road.(Geographic overview)(Brief article)
January 1, 2007... 1. Qinghai Lake in central China is almost 10,500 feet above sea level. With a salt content of 60 percent, it is the largest inland saltwater lake in China. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] 2. The Flaming Mountains--known to the locals as...

Along the Silk Road.(MUSINGS)(Brief article)
January 1, 2007... Music produces a type of pleasure without which human nature cannot exist. --Confucius, Chinese philosopher and teacher, 551-479 B.C. CAN YOU IMAGINE A WORLD WITHOUT MUSIC? "Sure," you say. Well, think again! Music is literally...

The legend of the horse-held fiddle.(Short story)
January 1, 2007... Long, long ago in Mongolia, there was a boy who lived with his grandmother and cared for her by herding sheep. A tall, well-built youth with a good and honest heart, he loved to sing and play simple homemade instruments. One day, when...

Bactrian camel.(Brief article)
January 1, 2007... This clay figure of a Bactrian camel clearly represents the importance of the camel as a "beast of burden" in international trade. Because animals rarely appeared in the nomadic art of Central Asia, this figure, which was uncovered in a tomb,...

Music's role on the road.(Silk Road)
January 1, 2007... The story of music on the Silk Road is largely one of interaction between two cultures: a nomadic way of life (shepherds who make yearly moves or migrations among different pastures, for example) and a sedentary or settled way of life (farmers...

Chronicle of the King of the World.(Shah Jahan)(Brief article)
January 1, 2007... Shah Jahan, the 17th-century ruler who had the magnificent Taj Mahal built on the bank of India's Yamuna River as a tomb for his wife, commissioned paintings similar to the one below as part of the Chronicle of the King of the World, or...

A road with many routes.
January 1, 2007... The Silk Road was a network of trade routes that extended from Japan and China west across Central Asia, south to India, and then west again across the Iranian plateau and other lands to the Mediterranean Sea. While people, goods, and ideas had...

Meet Yo-Yo Ma: stimulating the imagination.(Interview)
January 1, 2007... The winner of 15 Grammy awards, cellist Yo-Yo Ma has recorded nearly 50 albums. His goal as a musician is always to find connections that stimulate the imagination. How did you choose music as your profession? Yo-Yo Ma: I grew up with...

The pipa makes the journey.(Chinese string instrument)
January 1, 2007... One of China's principal string instruments the pipa is evocative of the Silk Road, especially since its four strings were traditionally made of twisted strands of silk. Among its distinctive features are its pear-shaped outline its short neck,...

Uzbek Khalfas.(female entertainers)(Brief article)
January 1, 2007... The musicians Shirin and Dilbar (below) perform live for female wedding guests. The site is the Central Asian city of Khiva in the northwest region of Uzbekistan. Khalfas--female entertainers in Khorezm, the northwestern region of Uzbekistan,...

The pipa-playing dancer.(Chinese dance girl)
January 1, 2007... One day, according to a modern Silk Road tale, a Persian merchant was returning home after a successful journey to China and found himself caught in a terrible desert sandstorm close to the Persian border. A renowned Chinese artist and his...

Master of the pipa: meet Wu Man.(Interview)
January 1, 2007... Born in China, Wu Man is recognized internationally as a master of the pipa (see pages 15-18). In 1999, she became the first musician from China to play at the White House, part of the festivities honoring the visiting prime minister of China,...

Word stories.(FUN WITH WORDS)(Brief article)
January 1, 2007... GINSENG A powerful love potion--that is how many people view ginseng, a perennial herb with thick roots that have a pleasing aroma and are forked in shape. The word is a compound of two Chinese words, ren ("man") and shen (its meaning is...

Word origins.(FUN WITH WORDS)(Brief article)
January 1, 2007... CHINA While the exact origin of the name "China" is still unclear, many scholars believe that the country was named after Qin Shi Huangdi, the first ruler to unify much of the area known today as China. "Shi Huangdi" is most often translated...

Music-related words.(FUN WITH WORDS)(Brief article)
January 1, 2007... FANFARE, Ever hear a loud flourish of trumpets? Well, that's a fanfare! It derives from the French verb fanfarer, meaning to blow trumpets. A look further back in history takes fanfarer to the Spanish fanfaron ("a boaster") to the Arabic farfar...

Master of the Kamancheh: meet Kayhan Kalhor.(fiddler)(Interview)
January 1, 2007... Born in Tehran, Iran, Kayhan Kalhor began studying music when he was 5 years old. By the time he was 13, he was playing in the Iranian National Orchestra of Radio and Television. Today, Kahlor is a master on the kamancheh, a bowed spike fiddle...

Master of the tabla: meet Sandeep Das.(Interview)
January 1, 2007... Sandeep Das began playing the tabla at age eight and is a student of Pandit Kishan Maharaj, the senior member of the Benares Gharana, a well-known school of Indian classical music and dance in India. He is one of the most talented and...

Where music & animals meet.
January 1, 2007... Think of the names we use for the different parts of musical instruments --the "neck" of a guitar, the "belly" of a violin, the "legs" and "feet" of a piano. Is it coincidence that these names also refer to animal features? Most likely not....

'Animal talk'.(Brief article)
January 1, 2007... Today in Iran, shepherds continue a centuries-old tradition when they play a hey (left and right), a type of flute that has a hollow cylinder with finger holes. While the songs vary according to the folk traditions of a particular area, the...

Andrei Chuldum-ool.(musical instruments)(Brief article)
January 1, 2007... Andrei Chuldum-ool (right) tells a story with his two-stringed horse-head fiddle that imitates the sounds of horses. Popular in Tuva, an area of Russia that borders Mongolia, the igil, as the instrument is known there, is similar to the...

Master of the sheng: meet Wu Tong.(Interview)
January 1, 2007... At age 20, Wu Tong became the youngest soloist of the China Central Traditional Music and Dance Company. His specialty is wind instruments, in particular the sheng. Wu Tong is also a rock musician and the founder of the group China Magpie...

Build your own Silk Road instruments! Make a zheng.(ACTIVITY)
January 1, 2007... While zither-type instruments such as the zheng are used throughout the world, the zheng in China has a history dating back more than 2,500 years! As a matter of fact, the name probably comes from the "zheng" sound that the plucked strings...

Caring for the instruments.(protecting musical instruments from moisture and insects)
January 1, 2007... As anyone who plays music discovers, musical instruments can be quite complicated objects, and fragile ones as well. Many--the piano included--are constructed to withstand great amounts of use, but with time and too much raucous pounding even a...

Build your own Silk Road instruments! Make a guan (or guan zi).(ACTIVITY)(Brief article)
January 1, 2007... All around the world, when people want a loud wind instrument for festivals they use hat is known as a "double reed." Double reed instruments have two thin pieces of wood called reeds that are attached together so that when blown they buzz...

Build your own Silk Road instruments! Make a suona.(ACTIVITY)
January 1, 2007... What's in a Name? The suona is a perfect example of the cultural "borrowings" that took place all along the Silk Road. In Central Asia, a conical oboe was called a surnay; in Arabic lands it was known as a zurna, which in China became the...

Mingqi.(ACTIVITY)(figures in tombs)(Author abstract)
January 1, 2007... The mingqi, or ay figures that accompany the deceased in their tombs, represent the pleasures of courtly life in China. They have been thought to connect the owner of the tomb to an event in court life or to an interest in non-Chinese cultures....

Bringing Silk Road music to Japan.
January 1, 2007... Ko Umezaki ploys the shakuhachi, a Japanese five-hole, bamboo flute with a colorful history. From the 17th century onward, some Buddhist priests, wearing basketlike hats to cover their heads, wandered the countryside playing their flutes for...

A 'musical' word search.(ACTIVITY)(Brief article)
January 1, 2007... The 32 musical instrument names listed below are hidden in the letter maze. Can you find each? HINT: Some are spelled backwards and some run diagonally. barbat bayan biwa cello dahina daira fengxiao ...

Ask Calliope.
January 1, 2007... [?] I read about "Yellow Turbans" bringing down China's Han Dynasty--is it true? --Wendy, 14, Web post [!] By A.D. 184, the powers of the Han dynasty rulers had weakened considerably. Corruption was rampant, and many of the common...

Books.(Along the Silk Road)(From Silk to Oil, Cross-Cultural Connections Along the Silk Road: A Curriculum Guide for Educators)(Sounds of the Silk Road: Musical Instruments of Asia)(Brief article)(Book review)
January 1, 2007... Along the Silk Road, Elizabeth ten Grotenhuis, editor (Arthur M. Sackler Gallery and the University of Washington Press, 2002, www.asia.si.edu), includes chapters titled "A Conversation with Yo-Yo Ma," "Melodic Migration in Northwest China,"...

Cobblestone resources.(OFF THE SHELF)
January 1, 2007... Materials that complement this issue's topic, "Music Travels the Silk Road," and are available from Cobblestone Publishing include: The Spice Trade (CAL0602) The Qing Dynasty (CAL0412) The Tang Dynasty (CAL0311) The Song...

On the net.(Brief article)
January 1, 2007... For update information on the Silk Road Project, as well as links to the performing artists and to descriptions and images of the instruments, hit on: www.silkroadproject.org/ For descriptions and images of Iranian instruments--with...

A musical journey.(Geographic overview)
January 1, 2007... A weary traveler, after weeks of journeying across the desert route from Kashgar, welcomed the sight of roads lined with poplar trees leading into Kucha. Sandwiched between the mighty Tian (Heavenly) Mountains to the north and the Taklamakan...

Then and now.(Author abstract)
January 1, 2007... Present-day China: A group of musicians, playing some of the same instruments as the camel-riding musicians of old, entertains modern travelers and visitors. The backdrop is a mural of a traditional building in the Forbidden City palace complex...