The "XINJIANG, TAKLAMAKAN & KARAKORAM", the first production from the TRANS-AEOLIAN TRANSMISSION, is a research (field-recordings + video shooted) in the Xinjiang area with Uyghurs musicians (shamans, bards and Dolans), then reconstructed with computers and electrical instruments, going into a Neo-Shamanistic Post-Industrial music. On stage, two musicians are playing a documentary/fiction/road-movie/concert on an edited film shot in the depths of the desert of Taklamakan, up in the mountains of Karakoram as well as in the deep-hearts of last cities of the Silk Route. An incredible Post-Industrial New-Shamanistic music. An adventure/creation between Kashgar, Marqit, Iarkam and on the Pakistani, Tajik and Kirghiz borders.

Concert on a Road-Movie.

A creation supported by the Cultural Office of the French Embassy in Beijing. The Premiere (concert) took place at the Zajia Temple in Beijing during the  Croisements Festival, the Premiere (concert + film projection) at the Mayakovsky Theatre, Dushanbe, Tajikistan.

Video extracts

- Kashgar 13

- Qara Kun

- Kumskar

- Extracts in concert+screening

- Premiere at Mayakovsky Theatre, Dushanbe, Tadjikistan

- Movie

Some  past events : Konya (Djalâl ad-Dîn Rûmî), Ik (TR), FMM Sines Festival (P), Musée des Confluences (F), Festival R.I.O. (F), Croisements Festival (PRC), Jardins Efemeros Festival (P), OFFEST (MK), Resonator Festival (DK), Théâtre Anthéa Antibes (F), Festival du Monde Arabe de Montréal (CAN)...

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HOW, WHEN, WHERE

In 2012, during a tour in China François R. Cambuzat & Gianna Greco remained enthralled by the Muslim and Shamanic Uyghur music discovered accidentally in Urumqi. They begin then an exploration and a personal réinterprétation of these musics of rise, pondering and trance.

December 2013, 20 degrees below zero. A first authentic exploration is made in Kashgar and its region, preparing the fulfillment-adventure. Kilometers turn in the meter: Taklamakan is immense. The contacts are made, notes collide, hearts are taking off. In the middle of winter François R. Cambuzat & Gianna Greco film the first images, edit them after their return in Europe. " Kashgar 13 " is then a first vision of this journey in Xinjiang.

Back April & May. Field-recordings, research and archiving, recordings, compositions, demolition, development and postindustrial misappropriation of archaic musical techniques of the ecstasy, the trance and the flight, comining avant-rock and electronics up with the muqams of Dolan People. An improvised then recomposed music, a neo-shamanistic and postindustrial ceremony. Besides recording and composing music, François R. Cambuzat and Gianna Greco film hundreds of hours of this adventure-creation which will be edited in an awesome Musical Road-Movie : « Xinjiang, Taklamakan & Karakoram ».

« Xinjiang, Taklamakan & Karakoram » is supported by the Cultural Office of the French Embassy in Beijing.

Live in concert-projection :

François R. Cambuzat : field-recordings, composition, voice, guitars, video, electronics

Gianna Greco : field-recordings, voice, bass, video, electronics.

On a projection of videos shot in wandering in Xinjiang.

About the creation :

The research project (collect, filing and study) that Mr. François R. Cambuzat proposes to devote to the “Neo-shamanism post-industrialist” in the Uyghur Autonomous Region of Xinjiang, People's Republic of China, deserves all our attention for the following reasons. As an anthropologist of the Uyghur religious cultures and in particular of the syncretism Shamanism-Islam, I can only encourage another approach complementary to the work which I could undertake to understand the question of the shamanism in Xinjiang, and that of Mr. Cambuzat appears completely relevant to me and original. Mr. Cambuzat would like, indeed, to make discover, through his experiment of musician, this shamanic Uyghur music of devotion which pushes men to search through a “transe” (input in “oneself” or left “oneself”) the contact with a “terrifying” invisible (by its beauty or its horror). This invisible, in the Islamized shamanism of Xinjiang, is populated by beneficial and malicious spirits that the shaman can charm and allure thanks to his musical instruments (drum, viol or lute) and his songs. Mr. Cambuzat thus intends to clarify the interior, as a musician and not as a ethnomusicologist, the operation of this chamanic music, the role of the instruments and to determine the influence that those could exert on the profane musics, while resting on a collaboration with groups of young Uyghurs musicians. Let us note, while passing, that Mr. Cambuzat has solid competences in Eastern music and Sufi music (studied in Tunisia) which constitute an invaluable asset for this project, insofar as the crossing between Islam and shamanism, in Xinjiang, is more precisely a crossing between the shamanism and the Sufism. The final interest of Mr. Cambuzat for this music which seeks, he indicates, “rise, sweat, blood, tears and poetry”, which often cultivates the dissonance and which serves as many therapeutic cures, is “to recompose” this one with traditional instruments, electrical instruments and computers and to give it a new direction and more widened listening. I thus bring, consequently, a firm support for this original project and innovator which crosses the study, search and the artistic creativity.  Paris, June 26-2013.

Thierry Zarcone - Research Director at CNRS, Group Religions Societies Secularity - Sorbonne, Paris, France

About Kashgar 13 :

"I am standing in the Spanish sun, crying my eyes out at the beauty and majesty of this glorious evocation (Kashgar 13). So absolutely breath taking, it is the most heart breaking/heart repairing tribute to life, love and creation you have ever accomplished.Thank you so much for your spirit, energy & love. Your existence justifies my own. Thank you again, with tears of joy... Your sister, Lydia Lunch."

Review from Resonator Festival 2022, Odense, DK :

"Resonator Festival in Odense is well underway now on its fourth day. There is music from all over the world, and the selection is exciting and tightly curated. When you go into a festival like this, the biggest task is not to arrive open, but to stay open and be ready to have your expectations turned upside down and still remain receptive to everything that comes your way. After all, it is about being transported far away from little Funen and then still finding yourself where you are going. That concept takes Trans-Aeolian Transmission to heart.

Trans-Aeolian Transmission is French Francois R. Cambuzat on guitar and vocals and Italian Gianna Greco on bass and backing vocals. Together they have been on several musical educational journeys and documented it on film and with their music. This evening they play for the screening of their film "XINJIANG, TAKLAMAKAN & KARAKORAM", which tells about their encounter with the shamanistic Uyghur musicians from the Taklamakan desert in northwestern China. The project seemed to be to get as far away from Western influence as possible, document a musical culture in the midst of its extinction, and then interpret that culture and experience through their own instruments.

It is impressively composed, edited and synchronized and an experience in itself to witness how the two musicians complement and nourish each other's performance across the stage. (...) It gives the hard music an extra alienating shell, and the concept is precisely to pierce and melt down borders - the borders that the two witnessed on their journey. The concert succeeds when Trans-Aeolian Transmission actually plays together with the shamanistic musicians and when all sounds and images merge and the canvas melts away – when the wall of projections disappears and the boundary between recording and live sound is abolished. Elsewhere, the experience literally lifts when we take a flight over the mountains of western China, which in the sepia tones of the footage look like mummified human skin. It is both strangely alienating and strongly alluring at the same time. (...) The trance finally fulfills its potential, and the beauty looks past at the very end."   Jesper Noddeskov (DK)