Journey into unknown country

US fiddler delights in role as Oklahoman music ambassador in sister province Gansu

Oklahoman fiddling maestro Kyle Dillingham has always taken pride in being an American musician who brought bluegrass music to Dunhuang city in Northwest China’s Gansu province, a meeting point of the East and the West for centuries.

What awed him most was that, after centuries of cultural exchange, there were still things to share and learn in a part of the world where his fiddle has made as strong a connection with Chinese audiences as it does in the United States.

It happened on a trip in 2017, when Dillingham brought his Horseshoe Road band to represent Oklahoma and the United States at the second Silk Road International Cultural Expo in Dunhuang, with additional concerts in Qingyang, another city in Gansu, and in Xi’an, capital of neighboring Shaanxi province.

Dunhuang is home to the millennia-old Mogao Caves, a UNESCO World Heritage site that showcases the cultural integration and mutual learning among different civilizations along the ancient Silk Road.

“I remember talking to the president of the CMA (Country Music Association) and just expressing how proud I was to represent traditional American music, country music and bluegrass for the very first time, adding to the thousands of years of interaction and cultural exchange from the East and the West in that city,” he said.

Now after traveling to China 13 times and a hiatus of three years due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Dillingham said he cannot wait to go back to Gansu, the sister province of Oklahoma, to play for his friends and fans. The sistership was started in 1985 by Oklahoma Governor George Nigh and nurtured through music diplomacy.

“I can’t stop thinking about the people and the friends that I’ve met, and how disappointed I was that we didn’t get to meet in 2020,” Dillingham said, of the 35th anniversary year of the friendship between Oklahoma and Gansu, and the fourth anniversary of the signing of a sistership between Edmond and Qingyang.

Dillingham was honored as Ambassador of Goodwill at the Oklahoma Hall Of Fame that year.

“I was like, the second it’s possible to go back to China, that’s when I want to go because I’m so ready to go see my friends,” he told China Daily.

Dillingham first picked up a violin when he was 9 years old and, at age 17, featured twice in the Grand Ole Opry, the definitive live country music showcase in Nashville, Tennessee — the spiritual home of country music — where he made his debut as a guest artist in July 2019, introduced by country music hall of fame act the Oak Ridge Boys.

After receiving a bachelor’s degree in instrumental music performance, he has fiddled his way to more than 40 countries, earning himself the title of “Oklahoma’s Musical Ambassador”.

His connection with Gansu dates back to 2015, when he was invited to provide the entertainment to a delegation from the province’s office of foreign affairs, who were visiting Oklahoma to celebrate the 30th anniversary of sistership between the state and Gansu.

He started with traditional American fiddling, drawing “lots of applause but not a strong connection”. Then he started playing a Chinese song, The Girl From Dabancheng, which caught the delegation off guard.

“Suddenly, they all began to sing along with my violin, and they were clapping and singing,” he said. “When it finished, everybody stood up and started really talking and engaging. It was just a fantastic moment.”

It was a performance that secured him an invitation to perform at a New Year’s Eve concert with the Lanzhou Symphony Orchestra in Lanzhou, capital of Gansu. The following year,

he was invited back for the first Silk Road International Cultural Expo.

The musician from Enid, Oklahoma, said that he believes the sistership forged in 1985 is “a match made in heaven”.

Some consider Oklahoma a “flyover state” for travelers, just as Gansu has not been a priority destination for many tourists. Both places have a pace of life that is a little slower and more relaxed, Dillingham noted.

In addition, Gansu has a lot of ethnic groups, while Oklahoma has at least 70 Native American tribes.

“I started seeing all these parallels and realizing that, even though we’re over 7,000 miles (11,265 kilometers) away, we are so similar in so many ways, and I didn’t want to leave. I loved everybody I met and just had so much fun,” he said.

For Dillingham, there have always been learning experiences and “aha” moments during his trips to Gansu, which lay bare the vast diversity and

different levels of development of China.

“I’m still finding and tasting new foods and learning about a new tradition, or discovering a different kind of tea ceremony or a different way of life,” he said. “It’s just astounding that, after thousands of years of history, there’s still an opportunity to share something new with one another.”

He added that when people visit big cities, which have become increasingly homogenized, they start leaving traditions behind. While visiting Beijing and Shanghai means that a person has been to China, setting foot in Gansu is really visiting the country, at least, in terms of getting close to its traditions.

“When you’re in the smaller, more rural parts of the country, I think you’re getting the pure form of tradition,” he said. “I’m having a more pure encounter with Chinese culture, traditions and customs.”

In 2019, Dillingham and his team conducted their Silk Road and the Fiddle Sister State Tour through China, giving concerts along the ancient Silk Road in the cities of Qingyang, Lanzhou, Tianshui and Baiyin.

“Without the Silk Road, you would not have the traditional American fiddle culture that I have grown to love,” Dillingham said, noting that the origins of the violin can be traced back to Central Asia.

It was along the Silk Road that this bowed, stringed instrument made its way to the Arabian Peninsula, onto the Mediterranean, and into Europe, to Italy where, hundreds of years later, it eventually evolved into the violin, which was exported to every continent, including North America, according to Dillingham.

“There’s a thread that connects us all, and there are nuances, but in the end, what we find is that all the people will connect and share so many things they have in common, and we can learn about various traditions and cultures,” he said.

Dillingham added that he hopes cultural exchanges between China and the US will help improve relations between the two countries.

“My hope is that it does help, and I think that, in a time like this, especially when politically, there are tensions. It’s a moment where cultural exchange and music diplomacy can really shine,” he said.

On a 2013 visit to the Chimei Museum in Taiwan, a private museum that boasts the world’s biggest violin collection, Dillingham had a chance to play some of the world’s most valuable string instruments.

It came at a time when he had just launched the “Broken Beyond Repair” project, recording albums of music played on broken violins from a friend’s “big box of deserted violins” to bring out the value and beauty of the “brokenness” in the instruments, the repair costs of which are prohibitive.

Dillingham said that, when he played those broken violins, he was surprised to hear sounds that were new, haunting and beautiful.

“In that moment, I just stopped, and I started laughing to myself,” he said of his visit to the museum. “No matter how hard I try, I’m not going to be able to replicate the sounds of my little broken violin on this $16 million instrument, and, of course, the opposite is true.”

He said he realized that no one violin is better than another, as people might think, but they are just different.

“What’s really required is not for the violin to change or for us to fix the violin, but … to see and discover the beauty that was in each one of these broken instruments,” he said.

On a philosophical note, he added, “We all have our brokenness. And yet we still have value.”

Instead of passing by the brokenness — people begging, a tent city on a street corner and impending maladies, for example — and becoming numb, people can always set out to do something, one piece at a time, just like picking up a broken violin and playing music, he said.

Dillingham said that he wrote a song on the 2019 tour to celebrate the sistership between Oklahoma and Gansu. He performed the song, Old Friends, while on tour, using zhongruan, a lute-like traditional Chinese instrument.

It was a composition that merged American musical roots with traditional Chinese folk music, with the refrain: “Sing with me; drink with me; share with me. I’ll soon be gone, but I’m coming back again.”

He said that, if economically motivated, he would be focusing on the major cities, rather than going to Gansu.

“But, I can’t stop thinking about all my friends. And I really want to go back,” he said.