Traditional Chinese music is enjoying renewed appeal with younger audiences
Performers from the Shanghai Kunqu Opera Troupe greet their online fans after a livestreamed show on March 16 to mark the 19th anniversary of Kunqu Opera’s listing as a UNESCO “oral and intangible heritage of humanity”. Over 600,000 people watched the show. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)
Sometimes you have to travel to appreciate your own. Sometimes, waking up in a foreign land gives you precious insight into your own country.
Fang Songping is a well-traveled musician. While he was at home with his father, pipa player Fang Jinlong, he preferred Western rock.
It was the hulusi — a gourd-like instrument — that really changed his life. He happened to bring it to Los Angeles, where he studied music. His classmates were fascinated when he played music with it. A new horizon then opened up before him.
According to a recent report, young Chinese people are turning their attention to the traditional arts, with more and more listening to traditional Chinese music.
The report was released by Kugou, a leading music streaming platform, on June 2, under the guidance of the China Association of Performing Arts. Kugou has been highlighting traditional music along with other forms of Chinese intangible cultural heritage. It garners more than 400 million active users monthly.
The report focused on genres of traditional Chinese art, such as operas and folk music, and also analyzed users’ age differences and locations. It found that more than 100 million people tune in to traditional Chinese music every month.
The top three most popular types of traditional Chinese operas are listed in the report — Yueju (or Cantonese Opera), Peking Opera (or Jingju) and Huangmeixi.
It also pointed out that the renewed popularity of traditional music is a result of the rise in social media and online networking, and through collaborative efforts made by traditional musicians and opera performers. For example, Peking Opera artists from Shanghai Jingju Theatre Company once recorded for a Chinese video game that centers on exploring Chinese food.
Pipa player Fang Jinlong, father of Fang Songping, has been devoted to preserving and promoting traditional music among the youth for years. He has attracted lots of young fans on his social media platforms.
His 12-minute performance at the New Year’s Eve concert on Dec 31, 2019, livestreamed on video-sharing platform Bilibili, made him an online star, receiving warm feedback from the young audience. He adapted pop songs with traditional Chinese folk tunes and played dozens of musical instruments, including the pipa and erhu. His show also incorporated elements from Chinese martial arts culture, American folk music and Japanese anime.
His livestreamed performance was accompanied by a 100-member symphony orchestra under the baton of conductor Zhao Zhao. Throughout the show he was seen talking with the other musicians and communicating with the audience, imparting knowledge about the instruments or the music. Viewers in turn were able to interact with the performers and with each other by leaving instant messages onscreen.
Fang Jinlong, from Anqing, Anhui province, said: “I have been a musician for 42 years and released nearly 40 albums, but previously my music wasn’t all that popular among younger listeners. It made me think and inspired me to change my music.”
Chinese traditional musician Fang Jinlong (left) plays pipa with his son, indie musician Fang Songping, on guitar, in popular reality show Gems of Chinese Poetry. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)
The musician, now in his late 50s, was first introduced to music by his father, also a pipa player in a local Huangmeixi opera troupe. He started to play liuqin (a four-stringed Chinese mandolin) at 6 years old. Before graduating from primary school, he could play more than 10 traditional Chinese instruments.
“I didn’t expect that the show on Bilibili would receive so much attention. I am very proud of it. Traditional Chinese musicians are constantly trying to come up with new ways to promote the genre. My idea is to fully display the versatility of the music in a fun way,” said Fang Jinlong.
The process of experimenting with his music and making it popular among young audiences is “like that of an experienced chef sensing how different ingredients will change the flavor of a dish”, he said.
“I taught myself to play all those instruments to better understand traditional Chinese music,” added the musician, who also co-founded a female band, Sweet 18, in 2003. The band is known for their creative interpretation of traditional Chinese musical instruments and their adaptation of famous Chinese pop and folk songs.
Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the Fangs released a song, Illuminate, an instrumental piece composed by the younger Fang on which his father played nine instruments, including the pipa, guqin, and shakuhachi (a Japanese flute).
“Music can bridge cultures and connect generations,” the father said, adding that they hope to introduce traditional Chinese musical instruments with a contemporary touch by livestreaming and playing pop songs from East and West.
Fang Songping, born and raised in Guangzhou, Guangdong province, learned to play piano and the pipa at 4 and also developed an interest in Western music as a child. He was exposed to a diverse array of Western genres, including R&B and rock, at the Musicians Institute in Hollywood, California, where he began studying in 2012.
Like many youngsters, he used to play “loud music” in his room at home. His father, on the other hand, did not understand and had no idea what he was listening to.
Having inherited his father’s musical genes, Fang can play a variety of instruments like the guqin and zhongruan (a traditional four-stringed plucked instrument), but he did not enjoy traditional Chinese music that much until he pursued his music studies in the United States.
Leaving China, he brought a hulusi, a Chinese wind instrument made from a gourd, which he played recreationally in college. The exotic sound the instrument made when he played it won him fans and requests to perform onstage. He then started doing research on traditional Chinese music and began combining its elements into his own compositions. In 2015, he returned to China and embarked on a career as an indie musician.
Today, Fang Songping works as the music director of a popular reality show, Gems of Chinese Poetry, which centers on traditional Chinese arts such as poetry, music, dance and paintings. He composed eight original instrumental pieces inspired by traditional Chinese culture, including chess and calligraphy.
Fang said that he and his father will be collaborating on music pieces for video games. He plans to release an EP of his own compositions this year.
“I am drawn to both Chinese and Western music since I am influenced by both of them,” he said.
The Kugou report mentioned that many young pop stars have been combining traditional Chinese music elements into their creations, offering their young fans the opportunity to enjoy traditional music while inspiring them to discover more about Chinese arts.
Chinese pop idol Zhang Yixing released his latest album, Lit, on May 29, which sold over 1.5 million copies within eight minutes through major domestic music streaming platforms. The 29-year-old singer-songwriter has been recognized for his ability to sing and rap in Chinese and English. The new record combines traditional Chinese and Western styles of music using a fusion of old and new instrumentation. The classic Peking Opera piece, Farewell My Concubine, featuring the love story of Xiang Yu, a warlord in the late Qin Dynasty (221-206 BC) and his concubine Yu Ji, was featured in the music video for his album’s title track, which has been viewed over
7 million times on YouTube.
The report also pointed out that Kunqu Opera, one of the oldest traditional Chinese operas, attracts over 100 million listeners who were born after 1990. These listeners have streamed Kunqu Opera melodies about 275,000 times.
On May 16, the Shanghai Kunqu Opera Troupe, together with Zhejiang Kunqu Opera Troupe and the Suzhou Kunqu Opera Troupe, co-launched an online show as part of a series of events to mark the 19th anniversary of the art being listed as a UNESCO “oral and intangible heritage of humanity” in 2001. The livestreamed performance had more than 600,000 viewers, including many long-term followers who have been unable to watch performances in theaters since the COVID-19 outbreak.
“We have achieved popularity among a young audience, especially those aged between 25 and 35,” said Gu Haohao, 47, president of the Shanghai Kunqu Opera Troupe.
