A path to passionate learning

The fruits of three years of collaboration at Harvard

The Silk Road Ensemble allowed the Harvard community to share in the development of a new work © David O’Connor

Last November, Harvard University students and faculty got a rare glimpse into the evolution of a musical piece across cultures and artistic disciplines. Performed as a work in progress, the Silk Road Ensemble’s arrangement of Layla and Majnun blends Western melodies and mugham, a traditional Azerbaijani form of improvisatory song. Images, music and poetry tell a wellknown Central Asian story of love, betrayal, grief and, ultimately, redemption.

As the last keening notes of the 45-minute performance faded, a stunned silence filled Harvard’s New College Theater. Then the overflow audience rose as one, many individuals drying their eyes throughout the applause.

“Have you heard anything like it?” asked cellist and Artistic Director Yo-Yo Ma from the stage. Most had not.

“Would you like to hear it again?” The crowd cheered, a resounding yes.

Question-and-answer sessions opened the floor to violinist Jonathan Gandelsman, who arranged the original threehour Azerbaijani opera with mugham master Alim Qasimov. The two communicate in Russian. When asked how he came to perform outside of his country, Qasimov said he was reluctant initially, but the more he travels, the more he sees the folly of building walls between cultures. “Real music,” he said through a translator, “will find a path to the heart, regardless of who is in the audience.”

Layla and Majnun was the capstone in a week of related programming. The Arthur M. Sackler Museum installed illustrations of the traditional love story, and presentations by Harvard professors featured music by the Silk Road Ensemble.

Fargana Qasimova learned the art of mugham from her father, renowned performer Alim Qasimov © David O’Connor

The Silk Road Project has been affiliated with Harvard University since 2005, conducting weeklong residencies every fall. As a catalyst for what Ma terms “learning as passionate engagement,” however, the Project’s impact at Harvard has already extended far beyond the Ensemble’s presence on campus.

Taking up the metaphor of the Silk Road as an arena for intercultural exchange, Harvard has introduced two “Silk Road Courses” that are animating faculty in the humanities, arts, sciences and social sciences. Shakespeare scholar Stephen Greenblatt’s course, “Travel and Transformation on the High Seas: An Imaginary Journey in the Early 17th Century,” was featured in the October 2007 issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education for its pioneering use of technology and interdisciplinary collaboration. In another course taught by historian Mark Elliott and ethnomusicologist Richard Wolf, historical study informs workshops by experts in traditional music of the Silk Road.

Diana Sorensen, Dean for the Arts and Humanities, notes, “The immersion in this powerful repertoire leaves us all moved and very aware of how art can create passionate pathways to deep understanding across cultural and material borders. The joy is not mere enjoyment: it lasts in the awareness of its ethical implications and a sense of connectedness beyond the insularity of our everyday lives.”

During the 2008–2009 academic year, the Silk Road Project will have a daily presence on campus in the person of Dmitri Yanov-Yanovsky, an Uzbek composer and teacher whose Paths of Parables was recently performed by the Silk Road Ensemble with Yo-Yo Ma in Chicago and Japan.