THE GENIUS AND the predicament of Wu Man were equally evident when she arrived in America 14 years ago. Her pipa playing had won virtually every musical prize in China. But would anybody in the outside world care about the ancient, four-stringed lute?
'No, they didn't,' laughs Wu, sitting in her suburban Boston home. 'Everybody in America knew African music, Cuban music, they knew Siberian and Indian music. But Chinese music? Forget about it. We had no George Harrison or Ravi Shankar. Chinese music had no rhythm, no propulsion, no melodies.
'The sounds were so clangy. Chinese music was so ...' the 38-year-old makes a face suggesting she's just swallowed bitter medicine, 'so educational.'
With her recently released album, From A Distance, topping world music charts around the globe, she can take much of the credit for educating non-Chinese about the music of the mainland.
Her appeal was confirmed this year when United Airlines adopted her music as in-flight entertainment. This Saturday, she performs the premiere of a concerto in Taiwan by Hong Kong composer Chung Yiu-kwong.
A week later, she will be in New York to perform pipa works by three women composers for the first time.
Lou Harrison - who died last month after being part of the 'exotic' American musical scene for almost seven decades - had been a friend for many years. In his last year he wrote a concerto for Wu. 'Can you imagine?' she says. 'In his 80s and he worked so hard for me? We spoke for so long on the phone, and then he decided, 'Well, I'm not going to use a Chinese scale, and I'm not going to use a western scale. I'll make up my own scale.' Which he did, and which I recorded just this month.'