You are listening to the Ouverture to our program "Sindbad the Sailor ", concert recording, Graz, 20.7.2008

Sindbad is the legendary seafarer and adventurer in the tales of 1001 nights.

Latest research suggests that the stories about Sindbad are also based on the historic naval adventures of the Chinese admiral Zheng He,
who undertook (like Sindbad) seven large-scale expeditions from China to South-Eastern Asia, Sumatra, Java, Ceylon, India, Persia, Africa, Taiwan
and the Arab countries. He might even have discovered America long before Columbus.
Zheng He belonged to the ethnic group of the Hui and was a Muslim.

The Chinese town of Canton (Guangzhou) is the point of departure for the „Silk Road of the Sea“, on which by the early first millennium
merchants were entertaining trade relations with India, the Arab countries and even Western Europe.

Ibn Khurradadhbih, postmaster in 9th-century Bagdad, described the regular transactions on this route:
„Those merchants speak Arabic, Persian, Greek, Latin, Franconian, Spanish, and Slavonic languages.
They travel from West to East and from East to West.“ - Centuries before Marco Polo!
In the course of the following seven years, musicians from the cultures bordering the Seven Seas will meet in places
from Europe to Singapore and tell the stories of Sindbad the Sailor.

The first port will be called at in 2008: Chinese musicians from Canton, the port of the Silk Road,
encounter Arab artists from Sindbad’s hometown Bagdad.

The old tale will be told anew: music, dance and projections will carry us away
to the time of the great Chinese admiral and the Arab ancestor of all seafarers - Sindbad.