"The more we look at these cultures, the more we understand the people and their music, it gets more and more difficult to see boundaries between them," the 46-year-old Ma says. For him, music is about communication, learning, epiphanies, sharing; different cultures go in different directions and develop diverse preoccupations, but a deeper commonality links them. As one scholar involved in the project puts it, the Silk Road is about "both transnational music and local musical traditions." Ma, it seems, also believes in an even higher power for the art form, a power to make universal connections and an ability to influence people and cultures toward mutual harmony and away from division and strife."
Harmony of Cultures by Philip Kennicott in the Washington Post