Monkey: Journey to the West (2008)
A circus opera in Mandarin, by the pair who made Gorillaz.
The novel was performance long before it was a novel — so put it back on a stage with acrobats, and let the score do the storytelling.
Music is how you get into things, and nothing else on this list is trying to reach you that way.
What it keeps and what it changes
Keeps: the episodes, as a sequence of set pieces; the album moves through the story the way a suite moves through a symphony.
Changes: the medium completely. There is no narrator to lean on: what you get is Chinese instrumentation, electronics and voices, and you assemble the rest.
Whose story is it?
the production’s. This is the pilgrimage as spectacle, and the Monkey in it is a physical performance more than a character.
How much time does it ask?
22 tracks, released 18 August 2008.
℗ 2008 13 Limited, under exclusive licence to XL Recordings.
Where to find it
Other ways to get it: The production, from its festival ↗
Not sure this is yours? Take the quiz →
More ways west: The Anthony C. Yu Translation, revised (2012) · Julia Lovell’s Monkey King (2021) · Arthur Waley’s Monkey (Grove Press, 1958)