Character business card
Zhu Zheqin
Age: 48 years old
Origin: Originally from Changsha, born in Guangzhou
Occupation: musician, known as "soul singer"
"Walking through that small river, have you ever heard that there is a girl she once came..." Singer Zhu Zheqin, because of this song, became a hit in the Youth Song Contest, and then, Zhu Zheqin's "Sister Drum" album was marketed in 56 countries around the world, with a cumulative sales of three million copies, known as "the only Chinese singer who has been internationally recognized", and later she also became a United Nations Goodwill Ambassador.
However, just when her singing career was in full swing, she suddenly disappeared from public view. What has she been doing all these years? A few days ago, Zhu Zheqin appeared in Taikoo Li, Chengdu, and a reporter from West China Metropolis Daily conducted an exclusive interview with her.
On January 23, 2016, Zhu Zheqin appeared in Chengdu.
Zhu Zheqin closed her eyes and meditated, and the ethereal song blurted out.
Inheriting and carrying forward the national handicraft industry is Zhu Zheqin's wish.
Appear in Chengdu and recreate the natural sound
On the afternoon of January 23, at the scene of the "Seeing the People's Livelihood Experience Salon" in Chengdu Fangsuo, Zhu Zheqin appeared in a black dress, and her long hair was pulled up high behind her head. Flashes came from all corners, and in front of the camera she, pinning a laughing monkey brooch, carrying a vanil bag.
This time to Rong, Zhu Zheqin's identity is not a singer, she came to cheer for her brand "see the creation", and the folk art products under it have been settled in Chengdu for a year. Before the opening, Zhu Zheqin skillfully arranged flowers and decorated the autumn porcelain vase on the counter with Lamei.
At the event site of the day, many fans after the 60s and 70s came to support the scene. The host reminded her that it was time to share the music, and the audience responded with the warmest applause. Fans are looking forward to her singing voice and recreating the style of "A Sister Drum" that year. Zhu Zheqin, who has never followed the rules, did not sing her new songs or famous works, but invited all the guests to improvise a musical work: she used her collection of Indian instruments as the base tone, handed over the Nepalese copper bowl to four guests to strike, and after creating a musical atmosphere, she encouraged the audience to make a "whine" sound. With the "sound field", she closed her eyes and meditated, and the ethereal song blurted out, she held the microphone in one hand, and waved the other hand up and down with the change of tone.
As soon as she opened her mouth, some viewers only cared about appreciation and forgot to continue to cooperate with each other. After improvising a short piece, she encouraged the audience to speak generously: "Music is for pleasure, not for awe, don't be too stingy, sing it naturally!" "The number of participants increased sharply, and the volume increased instantaneously. Zhu Zheqin was very satisfied, and continued to close her eyes to create, she used the sound of natural sound to thread the needle and lead the audience to carnival. After the song, someone sighed: "It turns out that music can be so free and broad, I never knew that I could sing so freely." ”
At the sharing meeting, when talking with the guests about the aesthetics of life, Zhu Zheqin was infected by his dialect and suddenly burst out an authentic Sichuan dialect: "You say, talk about thi." Some viewers showed a shocked expression, but the question of hardcore fans said a broken sky: "You studied vocal music in Chengdu, and the "Yellow Child" record was filmed in Huanglongxi, do you feel cordial when you return to Chengdu this time?" ”
Zhu Zheqin smiled slightly, and generously admitted that his fate with Chengdu was very deep. "When we first created 'A Sister Drum', we went from Chengdu to Tibet to collect style, and later set up a brand, and the first counter was also located in Chengdu. As you said, I like Chengdu very much, the people here are very kind, the soil for creation is very good, and the people I love are also in Chengdu. She has rarely had a scandal since her debut, and the last sentence seems to be meaningful.
Soul singer, a singer who became famous
Zhu Zheqin was born in Guangzhou, the family has 4 brothers and sisters, she is the third oldest. She confessed that she was not overly disciplined as a child, and she was free to pursue her preferences. She grew up in the compound of the Guangzhou Municipal Party Committee, was in poor health and often fell ill, lying at home all day when she was 5 years old. Dad made a radio, and she fumbled for the button herself, looking for "channels with music." She is very musically gifted, and when she goes to the yard to listen to model plays, she can imitate them when she returns.
"My mom said I was born the best crying child in the delivery room!" Speaking of childhood, Zhu Zheqin tilted her head, her eyes flashed, and the corners of her mouth rose slightly, like a child.
When Zhu Zheqin was 7 years old, he was admitted to the Choir of the Children's Palace in Dongshan District, Guangzhou, and was selected to sing duets. This choir is the predecessor of the famous Little Skylark Choir. At that time, for weekend rehearsals, her parents would give a dime of pocket money, she would use 8 cents to get to and from the car, and two cents of balance to buy a popsicle. However, if there are classmates who meet, she would rather walk with everyone, and the extra money can also eat popsicles together. "Rehearsals are not hard at all, singing is the happiest, it's a very pleasant experience." The third and fourth grades of primary school performed in the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall, and when she was in her 10s, she recorded for the first time, talking about these "achievements", she was afraid that the reporter would not believe it, and added a sentence "I am the top student in our class"!
After the college entrance examination, she studied in the Chinese Department of Guangzhou Normal University and was a loyal reader of Dostoevsky. After graduating from college, it was natural to pursue education like other classmates, but in her heart, the desire for music was increasingly strong. As a result, she decisively gave up her work within the system, participated in the Youth Song Contest, and became famous in one fell swoop. It was 1989, when others were still using music to talk about love, and the public did not know what "environmental protection" was, Zhu Zheqin sang the first environmental protection theme song, telling the story of a female college student who died to protect the red-crowned crane; in 1992, her "Yellow Child" was considered to be the first music poetry album in China; in 1995, "Sister Drum" was released worldwide as the first concept record in China.
In 2014, at the 14th Chinese Music Media Awards Ceremony, Zhu Zheqin became the biggest winner with her new album "Moonrise", winning three awards: "Best National/New Century/World Music Album", "Best Female Singer" and "Top 100 Media Most Watched Female Singers of the Year".
I met Sichuan and Tibet, and I had an epiphany in life
Zhu Zheqin's singing voice at the Youth Song Contest attracted the attention of Sichuan composer He Xuntian. Two people who are equally obsessed with music have since hit it off. Professor He Xuntian "Pharyngeal" helped her re-establish the standard of vocalization, to turn her body into a best instrument. In 1992, the two collaborated to complete "Yellow Child".
He Xuntian has always wanted to make an album about Tibet, and Zhu Zheqin, who grew up in the south, is also full of fascination with Tibet.
In Tibet, there is a legend that the skin of a pure maiden can be made into a drum for worshiping gods, the human skin drum. On this day in the He family, He Xuntian's brother and lyricist He Xunyou agreed to use music to narrate the story. What's the name? He Xun clapped his hands together: it was called "Sister Drum", and the two immediately said goodbye loudly, and then the three of them began to discuss the trip to Tibet.
In 1994, Zhu Zheqin rented a car with the He brothers to enter Tibet and traveled to the Wolong area, and the characters in the Sichuan-Tibet area appeared one by one. Previously, Zhu Zheqin had always felt that Chinese painting was freehand, until she looked at the distant mountains and white clouds skimming outside the car window, and she sighed that "ink painting is realistic". She was touched by a group of old people at the gate of the Jokhang Temple, who were dressed in tatters, but they sang so happily, "It turns out that human life can be connected with nature."
Thus, there is the later "Sister Drum", in this song, Zhu Zheqin's singing voice is ethereal, clear and free, long and mysterious. On the one hand, the traditional Tibetan religious doctrine, that is, the concept of "reincarnation of life and death", is used to dilute the cruelty of the sacrifice of young girls; on the other hand, it is also aesthetically looked at this cruelty with the sense of transcendence of modern people over this tradition. Thus, the "Sister Drum" in the song is a splendid aesthetic landscape of the history of death, in which the pre-modern obscurantist cruelty is flaunted by the smudging of the brilliance of contemporary cultural poetics: the tragic and disappearing Sister is reproduced in the beautiful drum sound...
Gao Xiaosong once said that he thanked Zhu Zheqin for bringing inspiration to his creation: "Her music and creation encouraged and inspired many works and many people, and if I had not heard her "A Sister Drum", I would not have created "All Things" for Satingding, and her music was the origin of the original creation. ”
The album "Sister Drum" was later released simultaneously in 56 countries and regions, becoming the first Chinese record in the history of international records to be released globally, and Zhu Zheqin became an international singer.
Life is a turning point, inheriting folk art
For Zhu Zheqin, Chengdu is a turning point, after visiting He Xuntian and entering Tibet to collect wind, not only music, but also the whole life has changed. "Suddenly I expanded my horizons, I had a big picture, and I saw the world and the times I was in."
After the fame of "A Sister Drum", Zhu Zheqin's musical style began to change fundamentally, and the song contained more elements of ethnic minorities, and the voice was mysterious, simple and ethereal.
In 2009, Zhu Zheqin became a United Nations Goodwill Ambassador, and she began a special research on ethnic minority music. She invited designers, artists, young musicians to visit Yunnan, Guizhou, Qinghai, Inner Mongolia, Tibet and other places to investigate the music of ethnic minorities, and at the same time, she also began to explore unique folk arts.
In 2009, she was the spokesperson for the One Foundation Sichuan Qiang Embroidery Support Program, and in 2010, she led a team to inspect folk handicraft projects. Witnessing the lack of folk handicraft heritage, she decided to protect folk art and improve the living environment of ethnic craftsmen. "Would you be happy if you lived in a society full of fakes and used shoddy products? In fact, to do folk art, in addition to protecting national culture, it is also necessary to act on the culture of people in this society. ”
From 2012 to 2014, she went to Guizhou many times to collect wind, and saw the hand-woven fabrics of the weavers in Qiandongnan and the hand-embroidered embroidery of the Miao embroidery girls, and she loved them very much. When she chatted with these craftsmen, she learned that behind these seemingly simple and simple works were complicated craftsmanship skills and huge time investment. It takes half a year for female workers to weave a piece of cloth by hand, and they need to go through more than 70 processes such as cotton, spinning, pulling, pulp, dyeing yarn, etc., and hand-embroidering a pattern, which contains dozens of stitching methods. Because the products could not be sold at a good price, local women were no longer willing to engage in these cost-effective jobs and went out to work.
Zhu Zheqin pays attention to these female workers who are engaged in folk art from a female perspective. On the one hand, she supports the purchase of pure handmade fabrics, invites designers to redesign according to traditional materials, and asks Guizhou embroiderers to embroider patterns by hand; on the other hand, she uses 10% of the sales profits for the "1+5 Inheritance Plan" to support folk master training and help belts, trying to let female workers regain embroidery needles.
As a result, Zhu Zheqin began to turn around, just like when she went from "A True Story" to "A Sister Drum", her steps must be unique.
In the ten years of Zhu Zheqin's "retirement", she did not stay away from music, and last year, she began to explore the art of sound.
"I'm not going to stop. Some people see a mountain, climb it, and stand at the top of it. Some people climb up and see another mountain. Zhu Zheqin said, "I don't give myself so many restrictions, do several things in parallel, but how to arrange and balance requires wisdom." ”
Character sketches
Born sensitive to spiritual purity
Looking back on several "cross-border" transformations, she summed it up with the experience of mountaineering: "I don't like to look back, nor do I take the road of repetition, I have been moving forward." Just like mountain climbing, when I climb one mountain and see another mountain in front of me, I'm going to go there. Art is boundless, and the human heart will give itself those rules and regulations. ”
Applying for the choir, giving up the iron rice bowl, and then going into Tibet to collect wind, searching for folk art, looking back and combing through these experiences and choices, looking, thinking, and leaving, she always withdrew from the tide and retreated, pursuing her inner world, "Since I was a child, I have been making ideas for myself, I know that I like God, and there are some things worth pursuing." Zhu Zheqin said.
On the afternoon of the 23rd, after hosting this private meeting as the host, Zhu Zheqin returned to the staff and bluntly said, "I really played beyond the norm, I was not good at speaking", and the excited expression was very similar to that of a child who won an award for the first time. In private, she is a somewhat serious person, not much to say, the voice is very small, she tries to answer the reporter's questions with concise and clear sentences, it is difficult to imagine that those penetrating songs, and the heavy responsibility of music public welfare and folk art inheritance, all come from the thin body in front of her.
Many people know her naturally sensitive physique, walking through the factory as a child, she was allergic, and when she grew up, she could only drink black tea, green tea, flower tea, and uncooked mineral water. She is also a person with a spiritual purity, can't stand certain sounds, colors, and cares about the placement of things. However, with such a fragile physique and a picky personality, she turned out to be a traveler. Climbing through the snow-capped mountains of Tibet, crossing the mine-strewn continent of Angola, visiting AIDS villages in Africa, sleeping in the wind, eating and sleeping, boating and driving are not problems.
From singer to vocal artist, Zhu Zheqin changed her position. She no longer chooses to be the focus of everyone's attention, but chooses to stand opposite and guide everyone to participate in the creation. More than 20 years after her debut, she is not prolific, but every musical work comes out, there are always some original originals, setting off a ripple in the music world. West China Metropolis Daily reporter Zeng Jie photographed Lei Yuandong