Here you are.
- “Sound is Touch” and Beijing Opera
I’ve been trying to define what holds this blog together. I care about fabric, clothing and the processes that bring them to me. I love music. Music is like fabric, and vice versa. I guess that’s it, then.
I added something to that effect to my “about” page, and almost immediately, my coworker Brittany starts playing a segment from WNYC’s Radio Lab called “Sound is Touch”, from a show called “Musical Language”…
The show explores the relationship between language and music. Intonation and music. Chinese tonality and pitch-perfection. Music and the mind. Soooooo well done.
This is the stuff I’m here for.
[singlepic=90,200,,,right]The part on Stravinsky reminded me of my first reaction to Beijing Opera. Since I first encountered it a few years ago, Beijing Opera has been hard for me to appreciate at any level, let alone watch for 3 hours. It still sounds either harsh or cartoonish to me, or cloying. As far as I can tell, this is by no means uncommon.
Now for the experimental portion of this blog: Today’s postsong is a selection of Beijing Opera—an aria from Xia Jia Bang called, appropriately, “Mental Battle”. Listen to it after you listen to the sections of the above Radio Lab piece on Chinese tonality, and then the section on Stravinsky. What am I missing about this music (besides not understanding classical Chinese)? Why can’t I parse it yet, musically? Do I just need to give it some time to sink in?
For anyone who’s learning Chinese, teaching Chinese, blogging about China, doing business in China, studying in China, or going to the Olympics in China, you may eventually find yourself staring at a colorful Tom and Jerry scene, with masked characters howling, and someone you need to impress is asking you what you think. You should be honest, but maybe you can train your ear a little so you honestly don’t hate it.
There may be a few parts I’m starting to like.
- Wear Milk?
So there I was, minding my own business, when this Seattle P.I. article befell me:Fabric options have expanded thanks to innovations in processing that can convert unexpected candidates such as milk, seaweed, pineapple, corn, bamboo, yak and the ever-green hemp into soft, alluring textiles… ::full article
Milk? Yes it’s true. The idea of fabric made from milk protein has been around since World War I…
…when the Germans, interested in other sources for fabric, discovered milk’s potential for cloth, he said.
“People observed that when milk dries out it makes a tough film. There’s a potential to make fibers out of that,” he said.
After getting rid of milk fat, the milk is curdled and the proteins are separated and concentrated into a viscous solution, he said.
That solution is forced through a capillary and is then hardened into a solid fiber that can be spun around a bobbin, he said.
It requires 100 pounds of skim milk to make 3 pounds of milk fiber, he said.
For those reasons, including its durability and the proliferation of other fabrics such as polyester, he said, milk fabric never really became popular.
One maker, in China, is Cyarn Textile:
Cyarn milk protein fiber dewaters and skims milk, and manufactures the protein spinning fluid suitable for wet spinning process by means of new bio-engineering technique, and new high-grade textile fiber is made by combining them. In April 2004, it passed Oeko-Tex Standard 100 green certification for the international ecological textiles.
Now I’m confused on whether the process skims milk (leaving drinkable skim milk and fiber as a biproduct) or turns skimmed milk into fabric (leaving nothing drinkable). If it’s the former, there’s an obvious by-product synergy waiting to happen.
Now what was that about seaweed and pineapple?
- Xiao He and the Beijing Scene
Graham Webster at Transpacifica is paying attention to the emerging underground music scene in Beijing. Four years ago, when I was studying at Peking University, I found it hard to find musicians who were making music I wanted to listen to. There were a few, to be sure, who mostly played angry punk or hip-hop.
There seems to be more going on nowadays. Here’s a song from an album Graham sent me by emerging freak-folk musician Xiao He (小河) called “If you Believe (如果你相信)”.
