Release the Cheerfulness, China: Ground Up 2

by hiram lucke

Release the Cheerfulness, China… is the wonderful document passed on to the listener by Jason Kopec after traveling with a backpack full of recording equipment throughout the country from April to July of 2005. These are field recordings from an ethnomusicologist—or "audio ethnographer" as Kopec calls himself--in the strictest sense of the term (and if that doesn't make sense, think Alan Lomax, the man who helped create the field by traveling the world with a tape recorder). The recordings on the disc range from actual musicians playing traditional instruments to street performances by singers; from the eerie sound of monks' chanting to the sound of a traditional Chinese opera (and the first untitled track—all 16 tracks are untitled—sounds like a recording of the ocean).

Unlike most of the Sublime Frequencies series (which are wonderful in and of themselves), this feels much less like someone sending you a recording of the radio while they move the dial in a foreign land and more like a journey through somewhere you may have never been. You discover your surroundings through sound; an audio postcard if you will. The album is more akin to the Smithsonian Folkways extensive collection of ethnomusicological recordings (the Music of Indonesia 20-CD series being a personal favorite) than to the Sublime Frequencies in this regard.

The sounds are clear and vibrant. There have been several times during a track that I'll have to take my headphones off to see if someone is talking to me only to find that it was someone within the recording. My only complaint is that I would have liked more liner notes explaining the place/instruments recorded, but this is a minor flaw with an otherwise excellent recording (and probably because I have a promotional copy… damn promotional copies).

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