In 2020, it will be a heavy blow to the world's performance industry.
During the epidemic, all theaters have closed their doors.
Countless performances have been cancelled, postponed, stalled...
However, a group of theatertists and musicians who refuse to give up hope, a group of old friends who have known each other for twenty years, but under limited conditions, still persist in creating and singing...
This is reminiscent of the sarcasm epidemic 17 years ago, which was also heart-wrenching and caused the performance industry to suffer hard.
That year, the River Bar, known as the contemporary folk song "Mother River", Beijing's most famous underground musician gathering place, was unable to open because of the sudden "SARS" and was forced to close its doors.
Before that, this small venue of less than 15 square meters opened on Sanlitun South Street was once a paradise for Chinese underground folk musicians and the prototype of China's early livehouse.
Wild children, tongues, beautiful pharmacies, wooden push melons, buyi, Zhou Yunpeng, Xie Tianxiao, Wan Xiaoli, Xiao he, Zhang Weiwei and Guo Long... A group of Chinese contemporary original bands and musicians have had their most splendid time there.
Every night, there is wine, there is music, there are whimsical performances, all the literary and artistic youth in Beijing rush to the river bar, on and off the stage with music to fan the fire, some people climb on the table, some people fall to the ground drunk, some people uncontrollably rush to the stage to grab a musical instrument and join the performance...
Music flows like a river in a small space, and everyone's face is filled with fearless happiness.
Photo by Anna Isa Martin, "Distant relatives that, listen to me sing the yellow river ballad" Wild Child, River Bar
In the year that the River Bar opened, Anna, a French student who had just come to Beijing, came here with her friends and was immediately deeply attracted by this group of talented and interesting souls.
The first time she went to the River Bar, she happily took to the stage to play drums, play with these musicians, sing and dance together; she mixed with these folk singers almost every week, treating them as the closest and most important friends of her life.
2002 Anna sings at a river bar (Photo: Jesse Feng)
As a photographer, Anna also left a large number of precious photos to record their lives and growth in those youthful years for these "wild children" who later became the most important musicians in the history of Chinese folk songs.
And in her own youth, there is also Chinese folk music flowing through.
In 2002, Anna filmed a Chinese folk musician
Such a group of people turn the sky every night, and after drinking big, they always hug together, saying the vow of life and death. At that time, the most common words people said were:
"We're going to be together all our lives, and when we're old, we're going to find a small town in France, and we're all going to move there... Anyway, just such a few people, everyone likes, just stay together for a lifetime. ”
Photo by Anna Isa Martin, The Sound of a Beautiful Pharmacy, A Photo Studio in Sanlitun
However, the River Bar lasted only two years.
In 2013, due to the "SARS" attack, all the performance venues in Beijing could not continue to operate, the band lost the opportunity to perform, the singers had no place to stay, many people changed careers, many people left, and the rest of the people were also beaten apart, wild children, beautiful pharmacies, tongues... There are countless bands that have been disbanded.
China's underground rock fell from glory to a trough.
Photo by Anna Isa Martin, "The Water of the Yellow River Keeps Flowing" - Wild Child, River Bar
The years are also like a river flowing, and everything in the underworld has its own fate.
After twenty years of wandering and growing up, Anna, who is already Liu Ye's wife, Nuo Yi and Nina's mother, and has also become an artist in various fields of photography, music, film and theater, reunites these old friends who formed a deep friendship in the river bar.
In January 2018, with a concert called "Anna and Her Friends", the birth of "River Band" was announced.
Concert of Anna and Her Friends
Anna hoped that the "River Band" could perform on a broader stage and tour the country's "Wandering", so she invited Yan Nan, an outstanding drama of Yanghua Culture, to plan the musical drama "Wandering Song" performed by the "River Band".
After nearly a year of screenwriting, music screening, and detail discussion, the work was originally scheduled to be rehearsed in April 2020 and premiered in May.
But unexpectedly, the "new crown virus" sweeping the world is like a huge reef, trying to block the direction of the river rushing forward.
This time, however, everything was different.
Although the severity and influence of the "new crown" is far greater than that of SARS, the old musical friends who were closed and disbanded due to the "river bar", Wan Xiaoli, Xiaohe, Zhang Weiwei, Guo Long, and Anna, did not lose their temper and stopped this time, but the "river band" reunited more closely.
During the epidemic, they have been writing and singing every day under limited conditions, without losing confidence and hope.
Anna reread the script after the outbreak, and she felt that the spiritual core expressed in it was to "try to overcome". In her eyes, "Wandering Song" is like a real -- "fairy tale", allowing these old friends who have known each other for 20 years to continue their frontiers. She felt that everyone had given her a lot of warmth, and made her feel that there was hope ahead, both in her works and in real life.
This also echoes the ending of "Wandering Song", in which the five people in the play work together and eventually sail to a future full of light and hope.
Yan Nan, the screenwriter and director of "Wandering Song", also said: "This setting will feel empathy for people who have just experienced the epidemic. ”
So when the epidemic was finally brought under control, when the doors of the theater were finally opened, they immediately produced this musical drama full of fairy tale style and allegorical flavor, "Wandering Song".
Here are their attitudes to the world, their love of music, their cherishing of emotions, their search for dreams, their hopes for life... What connects these is the deep friendship that has remained unchanged after many years of wandering people and how many storms they have endured in the world.
Therefore, the performance they brought together, these music, will be like a rich and fragrant aged wine, the more people taste, the more intoxicated.
It will also be like a river that meanders and will not stop, flowing into people's hearts and nourishing people's hearts.
The musical drama, titled Wandering Song, tells a fantasy story about a futuristic world "long, long after":
When glaciers melt, sea levels rise, and land becomes islands, Anna plays a girl who wanders between the islands, salvaging old things from the bottom of the sea in hopes of harvesting memories and the warmth of home.
One day, Ann searches for a copy of The Wanderer's Diary in a shipwreck, and a mysterious and broken melody rings out, leading her on an unknown journey to find the "Island of Clouds", a home without cold, hunger, war and inequality.
An embarked on a journey through the "Island of Wind" where Wan Xiaoli was located, the "Island of Rain" where Zhang Weiwei and Guo Long were located, and the "Island of Sand" where Xiaohe was located, met the same wanderers as her, Listened to the stories and songs of everyone and the island, became partners with them, and also felt the warmth of the heart and understood the true meaning of home. A new world unfolds before their eyes...
In the play, Xiao He, Wan Xiaoli, Zhang Weiwei and Guo Long, the most important musicians in the history of contemporary Chinese folk songs, will jointly appear on the stage as theatrical actors for the first time.
They also did not expect that the first reunion after the epidemic, the first time they sang together on the stage, was actually in the theater of drama.
It was also a passionate challenge for them, a new voice and hope for their life and music, after precipitation.
One of the highlights of the play is that the "River Band" will sing 15 very moving songs live in the play. These include many well-known classics.
For example, Wan Xiaoli's "Lonely Bird", "All This Is Not As Bad as Imagined", "Fox", Xiaohe's "Love That Can't Speak", Xiaohe and Anna's "A Tree in the Forest", Zhang Weiwei and Guo Long's "Rice Shop"... There are also three new original songs tailored for The Wandering Song.
Each of these folk-style songs has been carefully designed to carry their friendship, soul, wandering and hope across twenty years.
△ Small river
In "Wandering Song", he played the "crazy man" on the "Island of Sand", just like this role, with the almost crazy behavior in the eyes of ordinary people, completed the creation of albums such as "The Flying Bird Does Not Fall on the Back of the Cow That Can't Run Fast", "Echo", "Footsteps Burst", "Fool's Love Song" and other albums, and launched musical actions such as musical portraits, echo actions, and rumor hunting plans.
△ Wan Xiaoli
Wan Xiaoli, who "can't say twenty sentences in a day", is a melancholy and silent "lone bird" on the "Island of the Wind" in "Wandering Song". All his styles have a strong humanistic color, the melody and artistic conception are very beautiful, simple and strong. Many songs such as "Lonely Bird", "All This Is Not As Bad as Imagined", "Gyro", "Fox", "Squeaky Quack" and so on have become representative works of the new folk era.
△ Zhang Weiwei
△ Guo Long
Zhang Weiwei and Guo Long, who have loved and killed each other since childhood, are interesting "two brothers" on the "Rain Island". The music has both old-school lyricism and rock and roll energy, and constantly blends accordion music from Eastern Europe with plucked music from Central Asia to form a unique musical language. In addition to the folk songs and even "Rice Shop", which is widely loved and sung by all music lovers, their "Silver Hotel" and "You Wait for Me to Return" are all well-received folk works.
How to put these dozen or so songs with strong personalities and completely different styles into a theatrical work? This problem has made Yan Nan, the screenwriter and director of "Wandering Song", think about it for a long time.
Yan Nan, who originally loved and was familiar with these songs, talked deeply with each musician, understood their personalities, listened to their stories, and finally decided to string together all the characters and songs through the experience of a wandering girl in each "island" with a fairy tale.
"A bit like 'The Little Prince' and 'Shepherd Boy Fantasy Journey', both fairy tale road movies, the girl in 'Wandering Song' meets all kinds of people on the way to find her home, and these different styles of music can be integrated." 」
"These few of them are good friends themselves, and the aura is particularly tacit, so the state of rehearsal is particularly pleasant!" The right people always have to walk together. As soon as Yan Nan said it, it was difficult to suppress the excitement and joy.
"The most interesting thing is that when we were rehearsing, we didn't really know when we would be able to perform, but everyone was fully engaged in it, doing something that didn't know what the future would be, like 'waiting for Godot', which was special! Before, rehearsals were for performances, but now rehearsals are enjoying the process, purely because everyone loves this thing, this is so much fun! ”
This is also the real feeling shared by everyone in the crew. Zhang Weiwei said: "In such a situation as this year, it is so happy to be able to work with good friends and make music together! Although we rehearse from 1 p.m. to 9 o'clock every day, which is quite tiring, I have been immersed in happiness these days. ”
Yan Nan, who is good at drawing comics and has a special artistic imagination, also specially designed a very fairytale stage with oceans, islands, docks, boats, suitcases, and rice paddies for this play.
So, it's not just a play, it's also a celebration of friendship and art intertwined, music and visual sharing.
This weekend, August 22-23, this "Wandering Song" carrying friendship and dreams will be performed at Beijing Poly Theater as the first newly created large-stage musical and dramatic work in Beijing after the resumption of work and production in 2020.
Sing to you, sing to me, sing to everyone who wanders in the world, but never gives up looking for love and hope.
Poster Design: Xiong Liang
END
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