Edinburgh Fringe music review: Waves of Tradition: A New Horizon in Scottish-Chinese Music
A plucked zither meets traditional harp and bodhran as Waves of Tradition create an evocative mash-up of Chinese and Scottish traditional music. By Jim Gilchrist
MUSIC
Waves of Tradition: A New Horizon in Scottish-Chinese Music ★★★★☆
theSpace @ Surgeons’ Hall (Venue 53) until 23 August
This modest show – scarcely 45 minutes in duration – with a rather grandiose subtitle packs quite a musical punch. It features Wan Xing, a virtuoso of the guzheng (an imposing-looking Chinese plucked zither) with Glasgow-based Scottish harp and percussion duo Eleanor Dunsdon and Gregor Black.
On stage, both harp and zither are instruments of presence, but it was the latter that opened the show with flourishes of quavering, sliding notes, joined by the ringing strings of the harp and Black’s propulsive but not overbearing percussion, for a number called Road to the Orient.
The following piece, The Way We Dance, began with stealthy harp over brushed percussion before the distinctively clamorous voice of the guzheng came in and things developed into a fairly frenetic Chinese-Irish mash-up. They moved on to Gaelic waulking songs, conflating them with Chinese women’s work songs, zither trilling over harp and bodhran, while the pairing of a Shetland reel with a tune from south-west China prompted some dramatic interplay between all three, harp ringing out the melody, zither deploying staccato bass strings then cascades of notes.
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Before we knew where we were, they were on their final number, Ode to Friendship, which wrapped up Auld Lang Syne with the popular Chinese melody Mo Li Hua – “Jasmine Flower”, the zither sounding out the old Burnsian favourite, Dunsdon answering back on harp, before they were off into another Shetland reel, closing their brief show with multicultural gusto.
JIM GILCHRIST
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