Canticum Novum - SHIRUKU : Sur la route de la soie (2023)

Illustrating the meeting between East and West and the values of transmission and sharing dear to all, Shiruku is a journey to the borders of traditional music which once accompanied the mythical Silk Road. Busy thinking that they are the center of the world, Europeans have difficulty imagining that, until the 17th century, their economy beat to the rhythm of a lung which was China, and whose wealth and inventions, silk with a compass, reached him via a capillary network of roads and passages grouped under the name, evocative of exoticism and oriental perfumes, of the “silk route”.
From Chang'an to Antioch of Syria, Constantinople, Venice, Spain, these routes bring together goods and ideas, explorers and missionaries, techniques and spiritualities, in one direction or the other, creating conditions unique exchanges, syncretism and enrichments.
In his invitation to a musical journey, Shiruku draws on key places in this millennial chain of encounters: the Spain of the three religions of the poet-king Alfonso X the Wise in the 13th century; Japan, mission land of the Navarrese Jesuit Saint Francis Xavier in the 16th century; Constantinople on the Bosphorus, eternal capital of Byzantine, Persian and Turkish heritage and their transmission to a fascinated West.