In 1849, the American Henry David Thoreau wrote,
“Behold the difference between the Oriental and the Occidental. The former has nothing to do in this world; the latter is full of activity. The one looks in the sun till his eyes are put out; the other follows him prone in his westward course”.
This episode takes that imagined divide as its point of departure. Moving through Egypt, India, Senegal, Guinea, the United States, and beyond, tonight’s music resists the idea of an “East” and “West” that exist as separate cultural worlds. Sounds travel, instruments migrate, genres borrow, and musicians listen across borders
