Hello.
I'm Dashyani Navanayagam, and welcome to the conversation where we hear the insights and personal experiences of two incredible women from around the world talking about a shared passion.
My guests today are two award winning women from China and Syria whose work crosses cultural and musical borders.
Wu man is one of the world's foremost players of the pipa, a four string chinese lute.
She's also a composer, educator, and passionate advocate for chinese traditional music and joins us from Beijing.
And with me in the studio is Maya Youssef, who is also, I should say, often hailed as the queen of Kanun, a 78 stringed Middle Eastern plucked zither.
Maya's music is rooted in the arabic classical tradition, but also crosses into jazz, western, classical and latin styles.
A very warm welcome to both of you.
Thank you for having us.
You both play stringed instruments, but they are very, very different from each other.
Wu man, why don't we start with you?
Describe to us what a pipa is.
Well, pipa is looked like pear shaped plucking string instrument with four strings and existed in China over 2000 years.
So it's a very, very, very old instrument.
And it came from, if I'm correct, it came from Persia to China.
Correct?
Yes.
Around 2000 years ago, was introduced to China.
Wow.
And, maija, talk to us about the kanye.