Certain musical phrases, combinations of notes, chord changes and rhythms appear consistently in the folk music of Hungary, Turkey and China.
As tribes migrated out of the Russian steppes thousands of years ago into Eastern Europe, northern China and Mongolia, they took their music with them. Ethnomusicologists have devoted decades to unearthing the remaining traces of this migration, musical clues connecting what are, on the surface, rather different cultures.
If they listened to Cicala Mvta's new album, "Deko Boko," they might lengthen this musical trajectory by a few thousand kilometers into Japan. "Deko Boko" is a musical exploration of the point where Eastern Europe meets the Far East. Band leader Wataru Ohkuma's clarinet, at once mournful and ecstatic, is the tour guide.