recensie 7014/15
09 July 2006


Nanwoka: Folksongs of Yunnan’s Ethnic Minorities
Pan 7014/15

Five stars

World music generally denotes a suffocating sealed system of manufactured stars: listen to this extraordinary double-CD as an antidote. Its valiant Chinese recordists have combed the jungles of southwest China to bring back a musical cornucopia: polyphonic songs of village life showing influences from Tibet, Mongolia, and even Laos and Vietnam. The voices sound much younger than their chronological ages - the liner notes are meticulous - and they have a beguilingly Edenic freshness. Love and loss are leitmotifs, often expressed in poetically oblique form. “The wind blows over the crossroads”‚ sings a girl vacillating between two lovers, “but I don’t know which road to follow”.

Michael Church
The Independent




Chosen as World music choice of the month in the September 2006 issue of BBC Music Magazine by reviewer Michael Church.