I think that early music medieval, renaissance, some baroque even is much more similar to the roots of more folk oriented music than people might realise. It was great playing with Kate on that 12 century piece as she is an early music encyclopaedic genius (and contemporary too but seems to steer clear of classical, romantic etc)
At any rate, there was so much that we talked about that I could relate to with my own roots in trad irish music. Especially in approach to playing and that in essence every musician in those old days was also a composer and that the divide that happened in the classical world didn’t really exist much then.
Dowland songs and Shamisen, Kyle, would be so beautiful, I think. You must do it! And I personally love anything like that which shows that so much music from around the world has more similarities than differences.
I recall when I was doing some Gaelic Immersion and Sean Nos singing in Donegal about 10 years ago. One of the songs we learned, Meilte Ceann Dubhrann, had a melodic path that reminded me of some old chinese songs I had heard. I mentioned it to my fellow students and I got that look that said, ‘what the hell are you talking about?’ that I often seem to get. And then, last winter when I was doing a motor bike tour way out in the mountains of Nan in northern Thailand, I met a big bunch of lovely people up from Bangkok. Well, we made a big fire and sat around for the evening and sang songs and dances etc. I sang that Irish song and the people all said, ’ wow, it sounds SO Chinese!’
Ha! Vindicated a decade later!
Loving this thread…
Especially 1:13 and onward had my attention. Very nice. 
