Location: Bookworm, Chengdu 9pm to midnight or later.
Buy an EP or Premium Charity Package
Listen to Dave and Abigail’s interview on NPR’s All Things Considered
Party! Abigail and Co. will play track from the album they have been recording for the past month, details of which follow.
Cost: only what you spend at the bar!
Abigail Washburn & The Shanghai Restoration Project Honour One Year Anniversary Of The Sichuan Earthquakes By Melding Post-Earthquake Soundscapes With the Voices Of Relocated School Children and Their Faraway Families For Benefit Album ‘Afterquake’.
National Multi-Media Museum Exhibition Planned For 2009 & 2010
Digital & Limited Edition EP CD Available May 12th
Portion Of All Proceeds to benefit Sichuan Quake Relief
In honour of the one-year anniversary of the Sichuan Earthquakes, two pioneers in entirely different genres – folk and electronica – have merged to increase knowledge and understanding of the continuing aftermath of the earthquake. More than 88,000 have died, with upwards of 5 million left homeless or relocated. A portion of the proceeds from this EP will benefit the Sichuan Quake Relief organization. Afterquake is a collection of raw, remixed field recordings of post- earthquake soundscapes as well as performances by relocated children and their faraway parents captured and produced by Abigail Washburn and Shanghai Restoration Project creator Dave Liang, in cooperation with Sichuan Quake Relief. Currently in the Chinese countryside, they will complete the entire record start to finish in two weeks’ time.
The collaboration was inspired in 2008, through Abigail’s volunteer work for Sichuan Quake Relief where she performed in ‘relocation schools’ with kids from pre-school to high school – most of whom were relocated from mountain villages to schools in new locations far from their families. “The children and teachers expressed intense grief at the loss of home and family,” says Washburn, a former Sichuan resident featured in Newsweek for her “weirdly wonderful” blend of Chinese culture and American-roots music. “I wanted to return and record their stories and songs in their own voices.”
A kindred spirit was found in collaborator Dave Liang, whose Shanghai Restoration Project combines the sounds of traditional Chinese music and old 1930s Shanghai jazz bands with the Western sounds of electronica. His project has been featured on NPR, KCRW, KEXP and the Beijing Olympics. Soundscaping the aftermath of a devastating earthquake the expectation would be music with a heavy heart, but the sounds of the children are uplifting and inspiring. A relocated boy is featured singing a ballad about missing his mom over the sounds of his parents rebuilding their house with rubble from the old one, and a 7th grade girl performs a Qiang minority song inciting everyone to dance.
Tibetan sisters recite the bedtime mantra their mom would sing to them over local samples of Sichuan Opera percussion. Playground sounds – ping pong, basketball, jax, handclapping games – are set to hip hop grooves, and the earthquake sounds are emulated by the students intense hums, looped into beat.
Afterquake will be available May 12th as a digital EP and limited edition CD, exactly one-year to the day of the earthquakes.
shanghairestorationproject.com // abigailwashburn.com // afterquakemusic.com
