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Wu Fei & Abigail Washburn, the debut duo album from the guzheng master and GRAMMY-winning banjoist, produced by 16-time GRAMMY winner Béla Fleck, is out today on Smithsonian Folkways. An elegant, innovative blend of old-time music and folk sounds from Chinese and Appalachian traditions, the intermingling of languages, dialects, and soaring, sparkling strings on the record is a celebration of music’s ability to unite distant cultures - right now, an accomplishment “deserving of mainstream recognition” (The Guardian).
Listen and purchase the album HERE
Born of a friendship begun thirteen years ago, Wu Fei & Abigail Washburn is the first formal release from the two musicians, recorded after years of inter-genre experimentation and occasional live shows. A natural extension of both Abigail’s academic pursuits and credentials in the Chinese studies world (she is Vanderbilt University’s inaugural US-China Fellow) and Fei’s reputation as a classically-trained composer and a leading-edge improviser (after moving from Beijing to the US, she played with master improvisers like John Zorn and Fred Frith and was mentored by Pauline Oliveros, Cecil Taylor and Meredith Monk), the album juxtaposes “two voices and instruments calling and blending across cultural distances that sound much closer on purely musical terms” (The New York Times).
An homage to the oral traditions of American folk music and the structured musicality of Chinese court music, the album also intentionally subverts its styles to call attention to their often misattributed origins, and pay respect to their true originators. For example, the non-traditional and non-“Western” playing of banjo on the album serves as a reminder of banjo’s true origins - an African instrument brought over with the slave trade, not created in white Appalachia -, and many of the Chinese songs chosen for the record ("Wusuli Boat Song," “Avarguli,” etc.) were intentionally chosen as tributes to the rarely-credited Chinese minority groups that first wrote and sang them.
Fei and Abigail said: "When we made the record, we could not have predicted it would be released in the middle of a pandemic. Every smart thing we thought we'd say before, now it feels weightless. If our music can help you go through a hard day wherever you are, that would be our honor. Be safe and we can't wait for the day when we can perform these songs in front of you in the same room again!"
Now more than ever, “the time is ripe for remembering that regular folks everywhere have more in common than what divides us. Case in point … [this] new, exquisite recording” (Folk Alley). Fei and Abigail will be discussing the album’s themes and its contemporary context in the current global crisis, as well as playing several songs, at 2pm EDT/1pm CDT this coming Monday, April 6th live on the Smithsonian Folkways Facebook page. Rescheduled tour dates for Wu Fei & Abigail Washburn will be announced soon.
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