NEW TW IST ON OLD STYLE



对话先锋PIOONNEEEERR

NEW TW IST ON OLD STYLE

An interview w ith Chinese New Art music pioneers Gong Linna and Lao Luo

对话歌手龚琳娜和她的音乐伴侣老锣

G ong Linna （龚琳娜） and her husband Lao Luo （老锣，birth nam e Robert Zollitsch） are pioneering a new genre of m usic that m erges the m any varied folk m usic traditions of China w ith m odern m usical techniques. Her televised perform ance of the word less song “Tante” went viral in 2010 due to its im pressive vocal range and original tw ist on traditional Chinese opera. Lao Luo is a Germ an-born com poser and an expert in Chinese m usical styles.

At w hat age did you begin singing？

Gong： When I was five years old, in m y hom etown Guiyang, Guizhou. I was in kindergarten, I spent seven years in a children's singing group, singing every weekend and singing folk songs on stage. I learned Miao and Dong songs. When I was 12 I went to France to attend the International Children's Music Festival, where I sang folk and pop w ith roots from m y hom etown. There were children from all over the world, from p laces like Poland and I saw different kinds of m usic. After I saw that, m y dream was to be an international singer.

So what did you do to m ake that happen？

Gong： I saw Peng Liyuan, the first lady, at a big concert singing on TV. This m ade m e think, ‘I wan t to com e to Beijing'. I cam e to Beijing to attend the Chinese Conservatory of Music when I was 17.

Was the school w hat you expected？

Gong： It was as I expected, I learned m any m usical techniques. I scored the highest m arks, was the best studen t at the school, bu t after school—this was when m y dream s broke.

How so？

Gong： I cou ldn't find m y voice. My voice was like anybody's. In school, I was there to study, everyone was the sam e way. But when I was on the stage singing I saw everyone was in the sam e clothes, w ith the sam e songs. And there was one show, on TV, w ith just recorded p layback and no real singing. I was not happy. It wasn't real. When I was a child, I liked singing very m uch. If I am to be a professional singer, I want to sing for real, not as a fake.

Was there any tem ptation to do things the easy way？ To just go w ith things？

Gong： My m other was very happy w ith this kind of way, but I was not. In m y heart I was very sad.

How did your paren ts feel w hen you decided to take a differen t app roach to m usic？

Lao： It was a ten-year fight.

Gong： Now they agree. Now they understand m ore, and they love our m usic. In the beginning, for the first th ree years, she didn't even want to listen.

So what w as your first step after those early perform ances？

Gong： I had to find som eone to help m e m ake real m usic. I had to find a com poser. So at that tim e I listened to different m usic and different concerts. I asked around about who knew good com posers.

Lao： It's worth m ention ing that at this tim e, in 2000, she was already quite fam ous in China, she had won second prize at the m ost prestigious TV singing com petition, so she was fam ous.

So what w as the first song you and Lao Luo p layed together？

Lao： At that tim e I was in Beijing to find m usicians for collaboration, because I had been working w ithChinese m usicians since 1993, in 2002 when we m et I spent quite a bit of tim e looking for m usicians.

Gong： I didn't know him （Lao Luo）or his m usic then. The first tim e we p layed, we were together in a room and there was nobody else. He p layed the zither and I sang. When he p layed, it gave m e a lot of inspiration. That was the first tim e I had sung im provised m usic. We played m usic for three hours w ithout speaking. Som etim es I cried, som etim es I laughed. When I was a child, I always p layed for the audience, bu t this was the first tim e I p layed for m yself. I didn't need a show. It was for m e. After the three hours, m y whole body felt m ore open. I was so happy.

Lao： She le ft fam e behind and we started collaborating together. We tried to tou r, we had concerts in China and in Germ any. That was the beginning. It was very hard to get any kind of concert show s here in China.

Gong： The first song w as ca lled “Free Bird” and I w rote about how I wan ted to be free like a bird. He （Lao Luo） had invited m e to Germ any, where he lived in a Bavarian forest—I grew up in a Chinese city, where there are always people. For m e, this tim e was beau tifu l.

So how was the public reception once you decided to go w ith your own m aterial？

Lao： Whenever we had concerts, the audience w as en thusiastic, that rem ains true today. The difficu lty is not convincing the audience, the difficu lty is convincing the p resenters and getting funding for arts. What we do is not so m uch in the entertainm ent sector, it's not so comm ercial. A lot o f p resenters are not sure o f what w e are doing, it's new. Her way o f singing, com bin ing a lot of singing and classical techniques, didn't exist be fore. Everybody had a lot o f questions, and there is not a wellestablished concert scene. There are m any venues, but not m ature programm ing of concerts.

Do you find that peop le aren't sure abou t how to classify your m usic？

Lao： A lot of the genre borders are im ported, not traditionally Chinese. Rock or jazz, they're a ll im ported. The borderline betw een c lassical and fo lk m usic in the past was very different to what w e see today. We sim ply don't accep t the border crossings, for us the space is open. It's accepted in som e m usic scenes that w hat w e do covers everything, from traditiona l to pop to rock and c lassical m usic. We think this is what China needs—not being need to put in to im ported cages o f gen res.

Gong： We decided we wanted to choose the base, the root, as Chinese m usic. I am interested in that. At the beginning I thought about w hat was new, m any Chinese singers sing opera or pop or jazz, I don't like that way. I want to find m y cu lture's new voice.

Do you describe what you do as a gen re or reject the concept entirely？

Lao： We need to label what we do som ehow. We've labeled it Chinese new art （中国新艺术）m usic. Of course, any label is difficult. For us, this label has three elem ents—it's Chinese, it's m usic of the 21st century—all too often, when you say som ething is Chinese peop le think it's traditional. This is new. The art part describes our attitude toward m usic. We don't want this concept of art to be som ething far beyond norm al people. We don't like that. But we need to have a m ore artistic approach in the whole Chinese m usic scene, we see this as very im portant, that's a part of this concept.

What have been som e particular perform ance highlights during your career？

Gong： The m ost recent concert was called “The Five Elem ents of Love”. Everything, the lighting, the clothes, the philosophy, the concept, the m usicians on the stage, everything was perfect. Another concert, while I was in Am erica, I perform ed w ith a New York ensem ble, Bang on a Can, the m usicians were perfect. I am a Chinese m usician, but this was working w ith Am erican com poser who com posed things for m e about Chinese m usic, it was reall in teresting for m e as it was in Chinese and English.

Are som e singing techniques m ore difficult to m aster than others？

Gong： Traditional ways are not so difficu lt, but singing his （Lao Luo' songs is really difficu lt.

Lao： A really innovative thing she is doing in her m usic styles is tha one singer just sings in one color but she p roduces m any different voca l co lors. In China there exist m any different w ays of p roducing voca l sounds, what she is doing, and this is new, she is learning lots of different ways of producin sound. Most folk singers sing m usic from their hom e region, an every opera singer has one sort o role： old m an, young m an, official girl, this kind of thing. There is one special singing technique for each role. What Linna is doing is studying lots of ways of m aking sound. She is turning it in to an ar form.That is what is really excitin M ixing differen t opera sounds in one voice, this is som ething whic didn't exist before.

Gong： I'm very interested in voice techniques—I listened to everything from pop through to traditional singers. I want to lear m ore, and know m ore. This is m y way. - DAVID DAWSON