SOLA

BLUES IN THE EAST

 The Broken Zither
  1/  Introduction                               (Sola)                        2.01
  2/  Boya's Adventures                          (Sola,Hassan)                 3.50
  3/  Meeting With The Woodcutter Ziqi           (Sola,Hassan)                 6.35
  4/  A Discourse On The Zither                  (Sola,Hassan)                 7.24
  5/  The Appointment With Ziqi                  (Sola)                        10.52
  6/  Boya's Lament                              (Sola,Hassan)                 6.54
  7/  Breaking The Zither                        (Sola,Hassan)                 6.18
	
 Married To Exile (A Story of Wang Zhaojun)
  8/  Beyond The Great Wall                      (Sola)                        4.09
  9/  The Goose                                  (Sola)                        4.31
  10/ Looking Back                               (Sola)                        3.56
  11/ The Nation's Boundaries                    (Sola)                        3.56
  12/ Oh Mother                                  (Sola)                        3.37

          Recorded at Greenpoint Studio, Brooklyn, New York
          Engineered by Robert Musso and Oz Fritz
          Mixed at Greenpoint Studio, Brooklyn, New York by Robert Musso
          Assistants: Layng Martine and Imad Mansour
          Produced by Bill Laswell
          Coordination: Tracy McKnight/Material Inc.
          Evil One: Bill Murphy
          Axiom: Peter Wetherbee
          Mastered by Howie Weinberg at Masterdisk
Liu Sola: lead and background vocals; Amina Claudine Myers: Hammond B-3 organ, piano, vocals; Wu Man: pipa; Umar Bin Hassan: storyteller; James Blood Ulmer: guitar; Jason Hwang: violin; Henry Threadgill: saxophone; Ralph Samuelson: shakuhachi; Ned Rothenberg: shakuhachi, woodwinds; Fernando Saunders: bass; Jerome Brailey: drums; Yukio Tsuji: Japanese percussion; Aiyb Dieng: African percussion.

          1994 - Axiom/Island (USA), 314-524 003-2 (CD)
Note: Bill Laswell does not play on this album.

REVIEWS :

Liu Sola is a Chinese musician whose radically distinctive sound incorporates elements of a number of seemingly incongruous influences, including Chinese opera, free jazz, funk, blues, and even Japanese Noh theater. Her debut Western release features a stellar lineup, including organist Amina Claudine Myers, guitarist James Blood Ulmer, drummer Jerome "Bigfoot" Brailey, saxophonist Henry Threadgill, and the Last Poets' Umar Bin Hassan. Produced by acclaimed fusionist Bill Laswell, the album is a typically eclectic pan-cultural experiment, but one that doesn't always hit its mark. When it does, as on songs like "Boya's Adventures," this bizarre collusive concept is as refreshingly original as anything released in the '90s.

Bret Love (courtesy of the All Music Guide by way of the Get Music website)