Silk Road - A Glimpse into China's Musical Past

The misery of people forced to build, and defend, China’s Great Wall produced at least one major benefit. The wall provided a safer place for traveling caravans (laden with silk, furs, pottery and rhubarb - a plant then-unknown in the West but highly prized for medicinal purposes) to export goods and return with imported gold, ivory and coral.

Ideas and inventions - like the magnetic compass (from China) and religion (from the West) - also traversed the Silk Road.  It was not easy to travel through deserts plagued with bandits and other inhospitable conditions

This video clip, from the Silk Road series, includes examples of Uighur music.  We also see ancient Buddhist ruins and caves, (including pictures of long-ago Buddhist musicians) plus cave paintings which show "angels" playing instruments.

From The Silk Road series, film 10, Journey Into Music: South Through the Tian Shan Mountains.