Harmony from a musical exchange

When J. Lawrence Witzleben went to Shanghai recently to attend an international symposium, he couldn't recognize the city where he studied for two and a half years in the early 1980s.

Though Shanghai has changed radically in the past 30 years, however, Witzleben was still able to see a Silk and Bamboo performance - a form of traditional folk instrumental music from the Yangtze River Delta region - as he did 30 years ago.

"I found that Silk and Bamboo music is still quite active in Shanghai, and every day you can find some place where people play it," says Witzleben, who is a professor of ethnomusicology at the University of Maryland. However, the best musicians are older now and "very few people who are 20 years old are playing the music."