Min Xiao-Fen / Rez Abbasi

This is what so-called World Music should sound like. Rather than singing in a non-English language over recycled pop beats, Chinese American Min Xiao-Fen, an Asian lutes specialist has created an original score for The Goddess, a 1934 Chinese silent film classic. Investing with emotional resonance, this story of a self-sacrificing Shanghai woman who is imprisoned after trying to balance roles as streetwalker and devoted mother Xiao-Fen stretches the contours of her voice and diverse textures from four lute variants. At the same time while adapting Asian musical currents, the soundtrack is anything but Sino-traditional. That’s because the pipa stylist, who has worked with the likes of Leroy Jenkins and John Zorn, is partnered by Pakistani-American Rez Abbasi, a guitarist, whose Jazz background includes playing with Rudresh Mahanthappa and D. D. Jackson.

That way the soundtrack picks up inflections from bottleneck Blues picking and old-timey tonal simplicity reflecting the illustrated moods and drama more concisely than more overt Asian motifs would. Intertwining higher-pitched glissandi from the pipa, saxian, guqin or runan alongside warmer string and wood clunks from the acoustic guitar, distinctive Eurasian textures are created on tracks like “Champaka” and “Karuna”. Besides describing and personifying dramatic shifts, the string-mesh also parallels the milieu of 1930s Shanghai, which was significantly westernized. Xiao-Fen’s melismatic tessitura that stretches to encompass croaks, yodels and vocal laments makes tracks such as “Faith” appear more tradition-oriented. But Abbasi‘s snaking electric guitar frails help create a more non-sectarian sound. There are even a few points during which the duo’s allegro and staccato rhythmic string doubling suggests they’re on the cusp of starting a swing jam session.

Appropriate as a soundtrack, but as important in demonstrating the inspirations and cooperation between Xiao-Fen and Abbasi, the benefits of genre-melding are conformed with White Lotus.

–Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Anicca 2.Bija 3. Champaka 4. Dukkah 5.Emako 6. Faith 7. Gassko 8.

Hatha 9. Ichie 10. Joriki 11. Karuna 12.Lotus

Personnel: Min Xiao-Fen (pipa, sanxian, guqin, ruan and voice) and Rez Abbasi (acoustic and electric guitars)