In everyone's life, there is always a moment of sudden call. To say that the call may be too mystical, "deciding to do something" is a more accurate expression. Yang Guanglei, who is a professional musician, has always been proud of his academic genre until he heard Pakistani musician Asif Ali Khan at the Expo.
"I couldn't understand when I first heard it. I couldn't sing every note he sang." Later he learned that the area turned the 12 average rhythm into 23. "Those differential sounds are in the cracks of the piano keyboard. In our opinion, they are not accurate, but they sing them so well." During the meal, Asif sang with him one by one, "Thus can I keep up a little."
In this way, the deep-rooted things in growth are completely broken. "I am convinced. It turns out that things passed down by word of mouth can bring us completely different worlds, and once these things are bound by modern technology, they will cause great problems."
At that moment, he decided to continue to do something that he was about to give up - to do world music .
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2008-2010, Yang Guanglei, a member of the system, began to do Shanghai World Music Week with the support of the Shanghai World Expo Bureau. At that time, he was still working in the Shanghai Light Music Troupe, a national second-level actor, specializing in musical singing and leader , and an operation director. "I also got admitted to Group C of "The Phantom of Opera". Unfortunately, the actors in Group A were almost completely unsuccessful, and Group B could not wait for the opportunity, let alone Group C..."
Before 2008, there was no "world music" in China's official vocabulary. In the West, the word "World Music" is mainly based on a Western perspective and was discriminatory at its beginning. It originally refers to ethnic/folk music from all ethnic groups around the world (especially non-developed regions). It became popular all over the world in the 1980s for the promotion of "non-Western music".
With the changes of the times and its broad and vague definition, music with the color of ethnic music can be classified as "World Music", so the condescending meaning of Western civilization gradually fades. This term has become "no judgmental listening standard", expressing the cultural diversity of respect and recognition among all ethnic groups.
This year, the Shanghai World Expo Bureau discovered that Chinese folk music can also be classified into this category. Under the formal proposal of experts and scholars such as Professor Tian Qing from the China Music Research Center, Teacher Xiao Mei from the Shanghai Conservatory of Music , the concept of "world music" was born. As early as 1851 when Indonesian participated in the first World Expo in London, England with "Gamelan" in , the proud people at the heyday of the industrial age began to realize that in addition to the crystallization of science and technology, there is also the unique voice of the nation.
Indonesian Canadian Meilan Band participated in the 2008 Shanghai World Music Week
This year, there is also the Chinese Dong ethnic song
The 2010 Shanghai World Expo opened. Yang Guanglei discovered that in addition to some Asian countries and regions, they brought pop music, such as South Korea's Super Junior, and Hong Kong China's Aaron Kwok . Most countries and regions brought symbolic local ethnic music.
During the World Expo, he "slept" in the European Pavilion for more than half a year. The one who impressed him the most was the Georgian national treasure group "Rustavi Choir". "Most of the choirs are conductors to stand up, and others stand according to their position. Everyone in this band is on the stage one by one, and I have never seen such a rigorous way. They all took the sword and bullet (empty shell) on stage. After the stage was played in the middle of the night, they started walking on the stage. When the introduction of the first male high school main melody passed, there was a harmony that resounded through the sky. That feeling was too shocking."
Coincidentally, Yang Guanglei met this band again in a 500-year-old church in Bergen. "The host at that time introduced the band like this: When their singing sounded, the devil and the angels came back to listen and pray!" At the 2013 World Music Season, he invited the band again, and the performance location was specially selected in the oldest religious building in Shanghai - the International Chapel of Christ.
Time precipitates memory, but music has its own magic."I try to get in touch with locals every trip. When I hear local music in the future, I will immediately think of this place, just like I am back in this country."
Rustavi Choir
Like the smell, the music has the magic of directly evoking memories and imagination. All of the above made Yang Guanglei decide to continue World Music Week after the end of the 2010 Shanghai World Expo. After leaving the support of the Expo Bureau, he decided to continue World Music Week.
Before this, there was an episode that made him inflate his confidence. After the Expo, Guangya will invite him to hold the "Music Journey on the Silk Road" music festival. Yang Guanglei invited 18 troupes and performed 28 shows, making his first pot of gold.
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But it is really a "horrible" thing to do when you really have your turn to make a music festival. In 2011, "all the misery fell into this year."
Before Shanghai World Music Week used the security of the Expo, regular army, and safe. In 2011, Yang Guanglei found his own security. "More than 10,000 people came to the scene with more than 800 tickets, and there were scalpers throwing tickets at the door."
"On May 18-21 of this year, Shanghai had rain that had not encountered in the same period of 80 years, and all the audio equipment was soaked in water and scrapped." Yang Guanglei and his fiancee Gao Xia owed huge sums of money to the equipment supplier and could only ask for help from their families. "My mother was so angry. Their generation thinks that houses are the only thing left for children to settle down." After
paid off the compensation, the equipment supplier worked with Yang Guanglei until now. The long-term trust soaked in the flood, and the habit of becoming a vegetarian in the first half of the year of the music season (not strict), not participating in any gambling activities (including stocks), hoping to spend all your luck on praying for good weather in the music festival, are all later stories.
Yang Guanglei's home has some foundation. His grandmother Song Wenzhen is a descendant of the famous Song family. She once buried many gold bricks under her home. Grandma went to look for her again a hundred years later, and naturally she disappeared. In the turbulent era, they moved from Ningbo to Shanghai to Jiujiang Road, which was located in the British Concession. The land later became the location of the Liberation Daily.
There is a small thing he always remembers. When he was a child, his family had a dinner party, and he and his grandmother went to buy groceries. "Grandma wore a big diamond ring on her hand, and the ring holder was 24K gold. With a hook on the plastic bag, the diamond rolled under the manhole cover. It can be seen, but it is necessary to lift the manhole cover up." The old lady glanced at the manhole cover and pulled Yang Guanglei home. "Let's go, many people are waiting for dinner."
When the grandmother came home, she said about the ring, "My aunt rushed out." Like the gold bricks under the house, the diamonds were naturally picked up by others.
"My grandma is such a person. She told us that our descendants should pursue what they want to do and don't worry about the future, because the blessings left by our ancestors are enough."
Yang Guanglei's grandfather and grandmother
Yang Guanglei's mother and stepfather are another story. Yang Weili, a mother who doesn't want her son to be too risky, had a big adventure across the country with her husband in the 1980s.
"My stepfather Zhang Jian was the leader and conductor of the Zhejiang Crosstalk Light Music Troupe (now the Zhejiang Provincial Folk Arts and Acrobatics Troupe). In the 1980s, his mother and he took the national band team to tour with stars such as Mao Amin, Liu Xiaoqing, and Lin Yilun. Every year, he went home after the fifteenth day of the first lunar month." He strongly empathized with "The Tadpole Looking for Mom" and his deep hatred of various "Lullaby" came from this experience. "It will take a long time for mothers to see each other again after singing the lullaby."
In that era of rashness, people still couldn't tell the difference between touring and touring, touring agents and "holes". Yang Guanglei's parents' adventure can write a rich oral history.
"In China, parents who have suffered hardships and risked risks often do not want their children to take hardships and risks."
His mother once worked in the Armed Police Art Troupe
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"Now I think that only world music is meaningful, and there is nothing to set up a company. Working for people is definitely happier than running a business by yourself."
From 2008 to 2019, the Shanghai World Music Season held 14 sessions (now known as Chevrolet World Music Festival. This year's music festival will be held in Shanghai, Chongqing, Foshan and Wuhan from September 7 to 24). Their existence has always been unique, and it is obvious that it is impossible to make a living.
During the music season every year, it blooms everywhere in various public spaces in Shanghai (later entering other cities), and important events will also be performed at the Shanghai Grand Theater. No matter how precious and rare the musicians come, most of the events are free to watch.
does this with advantages and disadvantages. The disadvantages are obvious. The dispersed time and sessions and the open open-air stage are not conducive to cultivating audience stickiness, and the audience's orientation will be poor. The advantage lies in being able to reach a wider group of people. Yang Guanglei believes, "As long as it is good music, passers-by will definitely hear it and stop. There will be countless touching messages every time at the music festival, and there will be many audiences crying in a certain performance. "All these things promote the flow and continuation of this music form. During the non-music season, he and his company partners insisted on holding free concerts once a week in Lujiazui, Shanghai for many years. "White-collar workers pass by that space and hear music, their breathing frequency will change, really. "
performs, and it is never impossible to predict the audience's reaction. The world music practitioners in the music market, who are very niche in the music market, cannot avoid this problem. But reality often gives him confidence and other practitioners. Music does not distinguish between national boundaries and is not an empty slogan.
An example is what an employee of the "War Horse Era" (another company specializing in world music) told me. Recently, they held a music festival in the suburbs one and a half hours away from Qingdao, and most of them came for local residents. What surprised the staff was that when Sainkho, a female singer from the Republic of Tuva, was When Namtchylak appeared, the audience below not only wasn't scared away by her pioneering music, but also gradually became better and shook her body easily with her. No one could understand what she was singing, and there must be not many audiences who knew what the Republic of Tuva are, but people still had the ability to distinguish interesting music.
henghatu
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After doing world music for so many years, two orchestras left a deep impression on Yang Guanglei (of course there are more than two).
One is the "Henghatu" of Tuva Republic (Huun Huur) Tu). There is no need to introduce this band. They are the first and most important band for Tuva Music to go to the world. "Interestingly, when they first entered the Western vision, they all used ethnic instruments, and in the later decade, they all used Western instruments under the packaging of Western companies. Later you see that their instruments have all become national (except for a guitar), and they are all handmade by a member. "
The change process is also a response to the concept of "world music" self-adjustment and self-discovery in a mutational context, and the result is not bad. Yang Guanglei admires Henghatu's old men, and there is a question "asked them countless times" over the years: "How to maintain the state in different performance environments? "Once, the old men were in poor condition when they performed until their throats were in poor condition, and Yang Guanglei took them to Jiletang for a bath. "They told me that when they couldn't sing, they had to go back and stay for a while, and experience the vastness in their hometown again before they could continue to set off. "
There is also a drum band from Africa, named in the name of the country, called " Burundi National Youth Drum Orchestra". The drums they beat are only 25 kilograms, and some even reach 56 kilograms (because they were overweight, they left it in the company's office by gifts), and made of complete tree stumps. "During the performance, they can travel 200 meters, put such a heavy drum on their heads, and kick the drums on their heads with their feet one after another. After seeing such drum music and inspiration, don’t watch any other drums. "
Burundian drum music is a typical example of world music. It is not only drum beats and dances, but also sacrificial and blessing rituals passed down from generation to generation in this small inland African country. The sacred ritual like fossils contains a profound national history, which not only gives the audience awesome, but also has a rich space for imagination and exploration.
Burundi drum music scene
Yang Guanglei finally shared a short story, which is very interesting. It is also the Asif Ali Khan mentioned just now, who is the master of the Sufi Qawwali (a gradual traditional musical form).
The rich people in the Middle East like to express their love for him by throwing rings and gems on stage in the past, so when Asif learned that the performance in China was in public, he was very happy. Before the performance, he took off the fifteen or sixteen rings in his hand and prepared to accept the rings from Shanghai audiences.
"I didn't expect that I didn't receive any one, he was frustrated haha." The performance was crazy and captivating, and sang many tears from the audience. Culture is so different, but music is the same.
cooperated with the commercial land brand Xintiandi (Xintiandi provides performance venues), and after accepting Chevrolet title in 2016, the brand "Shanghai World Music Season" finally entered a stage of stable operation, and Yang Guanglei no longer needs to rely on and stimulate his parents.
In the upcoming music season, you can also try your luck on the spot. Maybe there will be an orchestra that comes from nowhere, taking you into another country in broad daylight with a strange and friendly voice.
