From China to Appalachia: An unlikely musical fusion that's got young people hooked

Some combinations sound strange but work really well together. Take pickles and ice cream, French fries and milkshakes, bacon and donuts.

Three musicians stumbled across a musical recipe with ingredients that, at first, seem like they don’t belong together. Grammy Award-winning folk artists Cathy Fink and Marcy Marxer teamed up with Chinese musician, Chao Tian and mixed American and Chinese folk music. The combination blended as naturally as peanut butter and chocolate and led to a new album titled, "From China to Appalachia."

This meshing of two old forms of music is attracting young audiences.

The collaboration began when Tian was the artist-in-residence at the Strathmore Music Center just outside Washington D.C. Fink told Morning Edition’s Leila Fadel that she invited Tian to her home for a jam session with Marxer.

“Chao had apparently never been to a jam session, and Chao actually thought it had to do with food, like Jam on bread. When she got here, I said, ‘I'll just pick a tune and we’ll play along with each other.’ And it took about two tunes for her to just move into a different mode and get into the idea of collaborating and improvising.”

Tian had never improvised before and she said the experience changed her musical career.

“That was my first jam session ever. I really enjoyed it. Once I got into this improvisational world, I never went back.”

Marxer says the three musicians meshed so well, they decided to start doing concerts together. Fink and Marxer play banjos and other string instruments. Tian’s primary instrument is the Chinese hammer dulcimer, which she said has been around for centuries.

"The Chinese hammer dulcimer is an instrument that was originally introduced by Western Travelers in the late 16th century to East Coast China. I feel a deep cultural connection when playing Appalachian music, which has many commonalities [with American folk music] in scale, format and instrumentation where I can catch glimpses of Chinese folk songs.”

The trio thought people would enjoy their collaboration but they never imagined how audiences would respond.

“We had a fantastic time,” Marcy Marxer said. “But [we couldn’t believe] the reaction of the audience. Some Chinese Americans came and then our folk people came and it was electric. So, then we realized it was more than us bonding and having a great time.”

Fink thought it would be a good idea to make a video promoting their concert tour. They played one of their favorite tunes, “Glory in the Meeting House,” a mash-up of American and Chinese folk songs. Fink posted the video on TikTok, and faster that you can pluck a banjo string, the video went viral.

“It shocked us,” Fink said. We threw it up on TikTok and the next day it had a quarter of a million views. But the great thing was it sold out all of our shows. It brought a whole new audience and they have loved the collaboration.”

Most surprisingly, the audiences were full of young people who had seen the TikTok video. Two young fans drove more than five hours to attend a concert. The crowds also had many Chinese immigrants.

“They're familiar with those Chinese tunes that I introduced to Kathy and Marcy,” Tian said. “And every time I can see they're like, Whoa! Those are songs that we grew up with. And it's really a new moment for them to see how a banjo, how a mandolin, how a ukulele can represent those Chinese folk tunes.”

Fink said that at a time of growing tensions between the U.S. and China, their collaboration has become, “a great metaphor for how music and cultures become [a form of] people-to-people diplomacy.

Marcy Marxer credits the power of music for bringing people together. She said, “It’s all so simple, you'd think people would hang out with artists more.”