HK musician starts Beijing World Music Week

Gypsy violinist Kim Angelis from the United States. Photo provided to China Daily.

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"Last year, we invited a few world music masters to perform in Beijing. For educational purposes, we focused on letting those musicians display their ancient and rarely-seen instruments to the audience. This time, we want to show a different side of world music, which is much more creative and combines different cultures," Jiang says.

The only Chinese musician performing at the event will be Lin Di, a Shanghai-based pipa player and vocalist. She met French musician Jeremy Lasry in 2007 when they worked together to do a new version of the old Shanghai song, Xiang Xi He Pan, for the Expo 2010 Shanghai.

Under the invitation of Tree Music, the two formed the band Swing Shine and play reinterpreted 1930s Shanghai swing music. They have recorded two albums, which combine pipa (Chinese lute) with gypsy guitar - the two instruments represent Chinese culture and French-style jazz.

"Swing Shine will offer the audience the beauty of mixed-blood music," says Lin, 39. "Shanghai and Paris shared the same golden age of swing jazz back in the 1920s. It's exciting to bring this atmosphere back."

Lasry has been performing gypsy guitar as well as electric guitar since he was 15. "The biggest challenge was to make two kinds of music sound natural and modern all together and to adapt French songs into the Chinese language," he says.

"We want to introduce gypsy jazz style to Chinese people and bring Chinese music and instruments to the French people."

Lee says that since many artists play all kinds of music, they are reluctant to define themselves. One of the best examples is Ray Lema, the Franco-Congolese pianist, whose music is "an amalgamation of his own extremely varied cultural history".