
Cellist Yo-Yo Ma on His Latest Profect, "Our Common Nature"
Clip: 5/2/2023 | 5m 58sVideo has Closed Captions
Yo-Yo Ma joins the show.
Can we enhance our humanity by deepening our ties with the natural world? Perhaps we can -- through music. The ever-inventive world-class cellist Yo-Yo Ma explores this union in his latest project, “Our Common Nature,” in which nature becomes his concert hall. Yo-Yo Ma joins Christiane from Chicago.
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Cellist Yo-Yo Ma on His Latest Profect, "Our Common Nature"
Clip: 5/2/2023 | 5m 58sVideo has Closed Captions
Can we enhance our humanity by deepening our ties with the natural world? Perhaps we can -- through music. The ever-inventive world-class cellist Yo-Yo Ma explores this union in his latest project, “Our Common Nature,” in which nature becomes his concert hall. Yo-Yo Ma joins Christiane from Chicago.
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PBS and WNET, in collaboration with CNN, launched Amanpour and Company in September 2018. The series features wide-ranging, in-depth conversations with global thought leaders and cultural influencers on issues impacting the world each day, from politics, business, technology and arts, to science and sports.Providing Support for PBS.org
Learn Moreabout PBS online sponsorshipLately, I've realized that the time that I spend in nature is what brings me back to something much bigger than myself.
I'm going to ask you a question.
It brings me to wonder.
Here's a question for you.
Who said this?
a shaman, a scientist, or an artist.
Nature has the greatest imagination but she guards her secrets jealously.
Christiane: I'm going to say it was a scientist.
Yo-Yo: you're so right.
[LAUGHTER] Yo-yo: You are so right.
Christiane what is your message?
Yo-yo: There are two groups of people that hold new knowledge and old knowledge and I'm fast nailted.
And these people are indigenous folk, natives and scientists.
I think we know so much.
We have such capacity but in fact, that capacity, what is the purpose for it?
If it is to advance humanity, that's one thing.
If we are talking about as your last flew said, interview said, there is a distinct erosion of trust and say why are we living and what is our purpose, to live, to care for and what is our job as individuals, citizens, family members to ourselves as well as to the world around us if we find ourselves as part of nature, we start to care for it the way we try to care for ourselves.
Christiane: We have some of your performance in Kentucky this past weekend.
Let's see you there at the mammoth -- Mammoth company cave -- cave national park.
♪ ♪ Christiane: It is extraordinary and looking at this.
It's all dark and you have the lights over the music and see the audience behind you.
You have said that this is not transactional for you.
You are making relationships and not going to end these relationships and pursue this and go on to other places, wherever.
What are you getting from the people from the people you encounter in these outdoor natural environments?
Yo-yo: Community building.
I think everybody we talk to, teddy Abrams, and Zach, the staging director, everybody to the park rangers, to the citizens to the guides said oh my gosh, you must do this for 1500 people standing around.
You need to tell the story of those caves.
Millions of years old.
5,000 years of history from natives and indigenous people to what its story is written in right in there.
But it takes a musical narrative to bring it into the heart and minds to the people who are listening.
The war of 1812, all the ammunition, Jefferson said, would be available from the saltpeter dugout from that cave.
It was the second largest visitor site in the United States in the 1800's after Niagra falls and so the descend events of the owners of the land and slaves as well as seven generation of slaves are the guides who are friends and leading the thousands of people who go into the caves every month and it tells a story of our country's history.
But much more so.
It goes way beyond.
That is one way of concretely using culture to show and to make us feel what a country's history is, but in relationship to our planet.
And I think, you know, to have that in concrete form, I think, changes lives and gives us a different perspective.
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Video has Closed Captions
Clip: 5/2/2023 | 18m 17s | Ben Smith joins the show. (18m 17s)
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