The music of when strangers meet

Yo-Yo Ma performs after a special screening of the film The Music of Strangers: Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble in New York on Monday.PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY

Music magic

The ensemble produces music most music lovers have never heard before, evoking everything from sound effects and tribal war dances to a Stravinsky ballet or a bluegrass hoedown, and everything in between. And in each case, the effect is magic.

It's also proof that "Music is an amazing Trojan Horse," as the film's director Morgan Neville put it, "because music carries history and emotion within it, it is an incredible tool for a filmmaker. It allows us to take people on journeys they may not even know they want to go on."

The documentary follows four of the musicians back to their homelands where they grapple with various adversities, from the conflict of modernity encroaching on tradition to dire humanitarian crises.

In each case, music, which is the real central character of the film, shows off its power to erase geographical borders, seamlessly fold together far-flung idioms and offer hope — to performers and audiences alike.

"We're trying to create a microcosm of a model suggesting here's a way that some people, who come from very different places, can really not only work together but can create together and share and feel that we're part of a group that is doing meaningful things," Ma said.

By meaningful things he means music that excites people and makes them perk up and say: "Yeah, this is our music too, this is part of our home, our planet."

So The Silk Road Ensemble also shoulders the goal of being a cultural organization with a social impact, going beyond the specificity of what they do, as Ma put it, to how they are actually helping those who need help.

The film follows one of the ensemble's newest recruits, Syrian clarinetist Kinan Azmeh, a rising star in his country who was forced into exile in 2012, as he travels to a refugee camp in Jordan and conducts workshops with school children.