By mati /the music director

With my heartfelt grattitude to each and everyone who made this project possible.
For anyone expecting to read the detailed list of these recordings’ technical proceedings, i apologise here and now for having none to impose on you. They dont matter. I have this instead. Beyond the emotions carried in the music, which all can now share, the physical travel to their source becomes one’s experience. There appears more than rhythm and rime to any music, and one can hear its history, its environment, its lifestyle and its aspirations much more clearly. It is the universal expression of our multitude throughout our time.
While recording these artists the first time, in the surrounding beauty of TongDao, fulfilling a twenty-odd years dream of heading out “into the wild with a good tape recorder”, my joy at finally being there and able to produce such professional quality performers and direct such original work was immense and overwhelming, leading to the more “heavily” arranged versimilitudes.
Yet our second session there brought closer to me the relevance of the New Channel project to many universal issues. The exemplary social and environmental guidelines the local communities have applied through centuries to their surroundings are still alive today for us to learn from and improve, all but hidden amongst the green hills and red earth. That realisation brought a much less “invasive” approach to my work on the later versimilitudes -i just love that word.
What i can list for those still reading are blue skies, smiles, roosters, steamy noodles, green woods, kids, blue embroided everything, fresh water springs in the shady mountainside, silver flowers dangling over girls’ hair, handmade bamboo flutes, marinated-10-years fresh fish meat, green trees, rice wine, smiles, clean rivers, swimming, good rice, more fish and sweet green chilis, kids, green fields, more swimming, bluer skies, grandmas in blue and babies, giant butterflies, the smell of old pinewood in the afternoon sun, more smiles, greener trees, more rice wine, perfect-pitch voices in every kitchen, screaming bamboo pipes in harmony, fried’n'salted grasshoppers by the bucket, just a little more wine thank you, duelling lusheng troupes swinging in the square under the moon, one last swim for tonight, each and every star is above, no more ricewine p’p'please. Repeat ad.lib.