Yo-Yo Ma: Earth's Most Charming Male? | Asian American Issues

alling Yo-Yo Ma the world's greatest living cellist is like calling Monica Lewinsky Bill Clinton's favorite intern. Some dimensions don't reduce down to adjectives. But if you were an alien tasked to bring home earth's most charming male, Yo-Yo Ma would head up your short list. And if you were a promoter trying to come up with a surefire class note for a mass media spectacle like the Olympics or the Oscars Yo-Yo Ma would be your man.

     Ma's status transcends his 14 Grammies and over 50 albums during a professional career that began at age five. He isn't so much a musical icon or even a cultural icon as the very icon of culture itself. It may have something to do with the rapturous way he bows his 300-year-old Montagnana cello, as though channeling the spirits of Bach, Brahms or Beethoven. Or the fact that he has high society feeding ravenously out of his long-fingered hands. Or the infectious delight with which he feeds it cultural confections that meld Bach cello suites with Kabuki, ice-dancing or garden design. Or his ability to move, within the space of a single year, among albums featuring Appalachian fiddling, Tango and Baroque.

     And what Asian American hasn't noted Ma's collaboration with composer Tan Dun on the haunting score for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon as well as his ambitious Silk Road Project to recreate musically the cultural movements along the old trading route between Europe and Asia?

     It doesn't hurt either that at 46 Yo-Yo Ma has the looks and the energy of a man half his age. And is it possible that, despite all his success, he still wears what looks like the same oversized glasses he wore twenty years ago?

     The worst epithet he's ever faced is being tagged "Sexiest Classicial Musician" by People.

     Yo-Yo Ma was born in 1955 in Paris to a singer mother and a musicologist father who set about with great determination to create a cello prodigy. At age six Yo-Yo showed enough promise to raise the eyebrows of violinist Isaac Stern. The following year the Ma family relocated to New York. At age nine Yo-Yo was enrolled in the Julliard School and studied under cellist Leonard Rose, a close friend of Stern's. For college he chose to receive a broad liberal arts education at Harvard instead of attending a music school. He graduated in 1976. A year later he married Jill Hornor, a violinist he had met during a performance at Mt Holyoke when he was 16. She was two years older. By the time he won the Avery Fisher Prize in 1978 Ma was a dozen years into his career as an internationally acclaimed cellist. He continues to perform regularly to packed houses around the world and is one of the world's leading classical recording artists. The Mas live in Cambridge, Massachusetts with their two children, Nicolas, 18, and Emily, 16.

     Is Yo-Yo Ma the world's most charming man? Or the most annoying? Or both?

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WHAT YOU SAY

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Ya know, I completely agree with Getting Very Tired Of AC. What IS with all the negativity, AC? It seems like you're the one with some very big issues you need to deal with. Yo-yo Ma is very accomplished..like every other person here agrees upon but you. He can play whatever he wants. He excels at what he does and that's the cello. THE CELLO. Okay? I don't think anyone in the world doesn't know that Yo-Yo Ma is Chinese. He doesn't need to play an Asian instrument to show that he's Asian. Sometimes people's comments and complaints get pretty gooddamn ridiculous. There are tons of Asians who play the piano, the cello, the violin, and any other so-called Western instruments you can think of. Are they all sell-outs? Give me a break!
Rolling my eyes
Sunday, March 17, 2002 at 00:42:49 (PST)

It may be useful in some instances to compare Ming Tsai to Yo Yo Ma. However, one cannot deny that asian food styles are more accepted and prevalent throughout the world...than ancient chinese music. Hence, Yo Yo Ma has a greater barrier in terms of starting a collaboration to introduce Chinese music forms in the first place.

I will not dispute that Chinese music history goes back further than recorded western music history. However, I question whether there is much in the way of recorded ancient Chinese music (written or something else). I want to know if anyone knows how Chinese music progressed over the last several centuries. If there is no record of this, then it is useless to even to attempt much comparison. Its useless to say Chinese music has a history that goes far back but have no record or details to show for it. If there is, I'm sorry I'm skeptical...but its hard to do that type of research nowadays even if you are so inclined.
KM, 24
Friday, March 15, 2002 at 09:32:39 (PST)

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Ahankara,

Point 1: I will agree. Looking at his history both parents were classical musician and he was most like just born into the world. His sister was an accomplished violinist and is now a practicing pyshician.

Point 2: I've heard the same things. I don't really listen to any of his performance and only seen 2 interview of him on TV in my lifetime. His persona on TV leads nothing to indicate that he a sellout or some evil person trying to undermine asians.

However, my point is basically, I can understand him using classical western music to promote himself to icon status he is today. It is more marketable than chinese classical music. I'm also very glad, he is one of the few talented asian performers, that is not subjectively catagorized as a "technically superior, but souless/emotionaless performer" which a lot of asian performers are placed under. As if asian are androids with no emotions.

But other than writing the musical score of CTHD, I am not aware of him promoting asian culture in general. Besides the fact he is of asian descent.

Unlike Ming Tsia, tv cook, who accomplishment and background are somewhat similar to Ma Yo Yo, but in a different field. Ming Tsia promotes the Asian Cooking. Some are dishes are fusion, some dishes are traditional. But unmistakenbly asian.

So ad lib-ing from a famous Malcolm X speech...This uncle tom plays not like the image of my forefather. I don't not acknowledge his grammy, which is not in the image of my forefathers. I do not need the accomplishments of the uncle tom, which only emphasis the oppression of the white massar....yada yada.

I don't believe that just because Mr. Ma is asian and successful, that he need to overtly uphold or promote asian culture. But it is a point of contention some asians like myself have.
AC Dropout
Thursday, March 14, 2002 at 11:19:40 (PST)

AC, I've grown up surrounded by musicians, from people who simply love listening to people who make their living at it, and never once have I heard anyone state, suggest, or accidentally imply that "western" music was inherently better than "eastern" music. I think that most people who would be so ignorant just simply know nothing whatsoever about Asian music and don't think about it. I think that Getting Very Tired simply meant to indicate that you have no right to assume that Mr. Ma intentionally chose to play classical music in order to rise to fame, especially given that #1 he was probably playing classical music in lessons before he had any particular say in what he played or didn't, and #2 he frequently collaborates with a wide variety of artists from an equally wide variety of cultures and by no means confines himself to Classical western. And some of us just feel drawn to particular musical styles, which has to do with individuality, not ethnicity, and you've no right to call anyone a sellout for doing something they excell at and clearly enjoy.
Ahankara
Thursday, March 14, 2002 at 01:58:28 (PST)

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