BARBORA XU (CZECH REPUBLIC)
SINGER, COMPOSER AND ZITHER PLAYER BUILDS A BRIDGE BETWEEN ASIAN AND EUROPEAN CULTURES
MODERN INTERPRETATION OF ANCIENT POEMS ACCOMPANIED BY FINNISH AND CHINESE ZITHER
When Barbora Šilhánová gave a lecture on the breathtaking polyphonic singing of the small Taiwanese nation of Bunun during the Folk Holidays Colloquium, many in the hall did not know at first that the young girl speaking to us through Zoom also has the artistic name Barbora Xu (read shi) and plays and sings music outside the usual categories. For ten years now, the Liberec native has been shuttling between Taiwan and Finland, where she currently lives and graduated as an expert on Chinese culture at the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku. She also studied at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki and became a virtuoso on traditional zither - Finnish kantele and Chinese guzheng. That's not all: she also sets ancient Chinese and Finnish rune poetry to music and sings nature-related texts in their respective languages. "All the pieces are my Czech/Western/modern interpretation of ancient poems using old zither. My aim is to breathe new life into the instruments, part of which is my own musical experience. Some aspects are of course influenced by traditions from China and Finland, but in general I play and sing what comes out of me and is an amalgam of all the influences I have been exposed to.
I am not trying to present traditional songs, but my own music, which is inspired by these two traditions," Barbora Xu explained in an interview with Petr Dorůžka the essence of her debut album Olin Ennen (I Was), with which she has attracted well-deserved attention not only among experts, but also ordinary listeners, who have appreciated her profound art, captivated by her ethereal voice and the intimate sound of her compositions.
„Její hudba představuje jedinečný most mezi Evropou a Asií. Zvuky kantele a guzheng v kombinaci s jejím krásným hlasem propojují různé kultury způsobem, jako by k sobě odjakživa patřily,“ řekl o ní respektovaný výrobce kantele Hannu Koistinen.
Photo: Jussi Vierimaa
