Who are some artists that play traditional Chinese or Japanese music?

October 14, 2013 9:27 PM

I would like to build a Pandora station around traditional-sounding Asian music. Flutes, harps, shamisen, koto, guanzi, erhu, etc. Basically, I want to create the kind of setting that you might find in a quiet tea house. Or the ambient music you might hear watching a movie where a monk silently tills the monastery grounds. But, to get started, I need to provide some particular songs or artists from which I want to build the station. My practical knowledge of music from that area of the world is practically nil, so I could a helping hand. Thanks!
posted by JimBJ9 to Media & Arts (5 answers total)

Best answer: You might want to start with the Yoshida Brothers and Jia Peng Fang.
posted by Tanizaki at 9:57 PM on October 14, 2013

Came in to recommend John Thompson for his work on the guqin and found we already had an FPP about him.
posted by mykescipark at 10:31 PM on October 14, 2013

Response by poster: Hmm.. no luck on John Thompson; he's not listed in Pandora. I added the Yoshida Brothers and Jia Peng Fang (and also Kitarō, who popped up as a recommendation). I'm mostly getting just general classical or New Age-y sounding music, with no distinctive Asian feel. Almost all the recommendations that I'm getting are for video game composers, which is not what I'd like to station to be about. Ah well.. I'll keep at it. More suggestions are welcome!
posted by JimBJ9 at 7:57 AM on October 15, 2013

Guan Pinghu, Zha Fuxi and Wu Jinglue are some of the more celebrated guqin players of the past century. I don't think they recorded anything that would be thought of as crossover today. Zeng Chengwei, Gong Yi and David Mingyue Liang are more modern (i.e., still alive) guqinists that might be worth looking out for as well.
posted by Dim Siawns at 9:20 AM on October 16, 2013 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: Thanks everyone. Unfortunately, the majority of the good suggestions aren't available for selection in Pandora, so I'm missing out on a lot. However, I did get a few and I've built a station around the following: Li Xiangting, Kitaro, Yoshida Brothers, Red Buddha, Deuter, Zhou Long, Kayhan Kalhor, Chou Wen-Chung, Frank Steiner Jr., Lei Liang, Zhao Jiping, Cheb Basle, Vivian Fung, Chen Yi, Ying Quartet.

I'm still getting a lot of unwanted new age meditation music and western symphonic music, but I'm thumbs upping and downing as I go and it'll hopefully start getting refined. It's a good start. Much appreciated!
posted by JimBJ9 at 2:11 PM on October 16, 2013