There are a lot of different layers that make travel to Asia so enriching, and music is a good example. Obviously the Lady Gagas and the Justin Beibers have huge followings, but the reach of global superstars is eclipsed by their local counterparts. The local songs are the ones that you hear over and over again - in buses, in restaurants, then again as cellphone ring tones - until eventually, even though you don't understand a word and have never actively thought about the song, it locks itself in your brain. For all its dependency on words, music has the ability to transcend language.
Of course, that also poses a bit of a problem when trying to figure out what you're listening to. Once, while hiking in China, I chased down a guy with a musical cellphone and took a picture of the screen that displayed the title of the track he was playing. Another time, at a restaurant in Burma, I bounded over to another table and asked what was playing on the radio. The result is a dozen or so tracks scribbled in the margins of my journals, sometimes no more than unintelligible symbols in the local language. As I searched them out on Youtube, I arrived at some conclusions about my taste in music (or Asia's taste in music), and you'll probably do the same when you give them a listen.
Faye Wong - Chess
Music flooded the halls of Leshan Foreign Language School every day as students returned to class. The administration changed up the selections every few weeks, ensuring that students got their balanced listening that included Rolling Stones Gimme Shelter, Lady Gaga's Bad Romance, and a rather profane Eminem number. Here's Faye Wong, who is apparently a pretty well-known name in the Canto-pop world (sorry it's a crappy version).
Chopsticks Brothers - Lao Nan Hai
Another song from school, this one I was committed enough to practice a few times to enrich my karaoke repertoire. It's apparently a nostalgic look back at growing up in the 80s, but really, how would I ever be able to verify that?
Tian Lan Lan
At karaoke one night, someone sang this real crooner about Tibet and the loss of the homeland and there was all this footage of trucks coming in and building a new road. I'd go as far to say that some of the best music in China comes out of Tibet. I didn't ever manage to track the song down, and it might be one of those things that is lost forever. Here's the closest I got.
The Bodyguard - Teri Meri
I had no idea, while watching the Bollywood blockbuster The Bodyguard, that a simple night at the movies would connect me with so many people on the subcontinent. I heard this main theme song, and a few of the other tracks, everywhere. You'd be in a town without a road in Uttar Pradesh and you'd hear the music coming from a stereo. If I was at a grumpy restaurant I could whistle this song and everyone would go crazy. Even in Nepal, on a bouncing bus to a remote kayak school, I yelled out "Bodyguard" and it was cued up in a few minutes and people were singing along. It's one thing to read that Bollywood sells one billion more movie tickets than Hollywood in any given year, but it's another thing to experience it up close.
Aung La - Apologize
Burma had a surprisingly developed music scene, with Burmese equivalents of every genre. It's always strange to hear rap in a different language, and even stranger to hear a Burmese equivalent of Nickelback. I wasn't biking in Burma, so I heard a lot more music on public transport than I did in some of the other countries I visited. This one came up at least once on every bus ride.
