"River" Bar (2002) Photography / Anna Isa Martin
Zhang Weiwei at Huoying Home in Beijing (2004) Photography / Anna Isa Martin
During the rehearsal of "Wandering Song", (from left) Guo Long, Xiao He, Wan Xiaoli, Anna, and Zhang Weiwei
(Continued from version 10)
Our veins
In fact, you can reach far behind you
Zhang Weiwei: Guo Long and I, we both participated in the Xinjiang band. We know the music of Kazakhs the most in China's independent music circles. Including the lyrics, you have to know Kazakh music, its folk songs that narrative, that is really a treasure.
I think our veins can actually stretch far behind us, as far as four or five hundred years ago. We used to have a band called IZ, and Mamur sang a song that was 500 years ago by the Kazakhs, our favorite one, "Mount Samar Khan." It was World War II, and the Soviets had put together an army of many Kazakhs, and a Kazakh soldier on the front line remembered a mountain in his home and wrote this song. For us folk songs are this thing, its source, the thing it presents, is really closer to the vast earth, to people.
Guo Long: The Kazakh singer is called Akan, which is directly translated as "poet" instead of "singer". The troubadour, so it is particularly literary and narrative, he just uses music to set off his thing, he is not a musician in the current sense.
Zhang Weiwei: Akan also has a translation of "the person who delivers the message." Because in ancient times, on the grasslands, herders did not have newspapers, radios and other such things, how you passed on the news information to the past, it depends on these people. These people he is wandering, and he lives by this. They can sing, they can play the piano, they sing fixed tunes that are common to every tribe. He went from this tribe to the next tribe, and the next tribe naturally asked how the tribe was now, where my brother was and where my sister married.
He used his technique, with these cards, with his ability to process words, to pass on the affairs of that tribe to this tribe. In the way you play and sing, because you just sit there and say it's not interesting, as soon as you sing it, it's different. To this day Arkon still exists in the Kazakh world, and there is also an annual Ark assembly.
The Hui people have a flower assembly, you praise a girl, you have to sing her to the best, use the best words. A flower nursery rhyme that we especially liked when we were children said, "Girl you can, wear a bodybuilding pants, and there is an OK embroidered on the pants." This lyric suddenly defines the image of a Hui woman in the early 1990s. Its poetry is not the poetry of words, it is a deeper poetry of the situation, which is what folk songs should pursue.
The world of Arkon is vast, because of the language barrier, we can't fully understand it, and the lyrics of Mamur can't be translated. It was originally a thing full of earth power, a particularly large thing in life, but it was described in the most straightforward words. If you think about it, it would be a pity if it became "folk songs and poems" and "poetry and far away".
It is symbolized, defined by the youth of the city as a small thing escaping urban life. When you are pregnant with this thing and pass through the underground passage and see an old man selling flowers, you cannot have any feelings. Because the old man who sells flowers and the underground passage are the same things you have to escape from, just like this city. What you really want is "poetry and distance".
But if you are following the angle of the folk song, when you stand in the underground passage and look at this old man who sells flowers, the whole world is in front of you, and the greatest compassion, the greatest touch, the greatest beauty is at that moment. I think that's what I understand folk songs to do, so I feel like I haven't done a good job.
Stop just for that
Remove all the pressure from your body
Beiqing Daily: I just wanted to ask, why don't you stay with the "wild children"?
Zhang Weiwei: It's been a year and eight months since I left. Mainly their own state needs to be adjusted.
Beiqing Daily: You said that "wild children are two words - rehearsal."
Zhang Weiwei: People who make music should practice their instruments and practice their voices every day. Just like a person who sings Peking Opera, every morning he has to practice those movements, hang his throat or something, in fact, the same. We rehearsed every afternoon, ending from 2:30 to 6:00, with a half-hour break in between, and actually three hours a day. It's easy for a job.
People who are engaged in art always feel very loose, and there is a slight sense of normal work, and others always say how you are so diligent. You see everyone works early in the morning until night, we don't do anything, our process is actually quite comfortable.
Beiqing Daily: Is it because the training is too boring? I'll just say, watching the documentary you enjoy the rehearsal.
Zhang Weiwei: You have a fixed time with everyone every day, which is actually quite good. I left mainly my own problem, these years of creation is a bit bottleneck, I want to change it myself.
The main reason is that it has been continuous for many years, and the throat is seriously unbearable. I started working at the age of 19, started singing in this industry, and I never stopped for more than 20 years until I was 42 years old. When I sang to the last performance, my throat hurt, and the previous year's check was that the mucous membrane of the vocal cords fell off. Then it has no way, nor is it irreversible, and it can only be saved.
Beiqing Daily: After more than a year of rest, is it mainly to write and compose music?
Zhang Weiwei: I have been playing the accordion, but I have not touched the accordion for a year and a half. Originally I wanted to write well and make a public name. As soon as you start writing, you find that it is still a pattern, and someone will remind you that your public account should be updated regularly.
Beiqing Daily: To run it.
Zhang Weiwei: Yes, otherwise no one will watch. After more than a month, I felt another pressure. I stopped just to remove all the pressure from my body, so I didn't change my name. But I keep writing.
Beiqing Daily: You wrote very well.
Guo Long: Don't write as homework, write when you have it.
Zhang Weiwei: I must come out of that state of work. I don't know why over the years, I don't know what to say, whether it's a band or an individual, everyone is starting to make running themselves a more important thing. It's not that it can't be operated, but it becomes a more important thing.
If we have a company or something, this is certainly no problem, there are a bunch of people doing these things. And we are actually all personal, and once the mind becomes more specific to this, it is strange. Over the years we have unconsciously entered this thing. Because everybody's in here, and then you think it's right, it should be like this.
Originally we were all performing alone, or two or three people, friends together. Now it's all about teaming, lighting, sound, VJ, the band has to be big, drums, bass, guitar and whatever, because there's a music festival for you. In recent years, it has changed a lot for us as independent musicians. One is internal change, and there is also external change.
I can't be passive
Always following the world
Zhang Weiwei: There are many reasons for the bottleneck of creation, on the one hand, I have reached a certain stage of my age, and the set of things that I am familiar with in the past, the techniques and expressions you have used, are tired of. So how to write songs is not good. It's not that the song is bad, it's that the set of things is tired of—the way the lyrics are written, the harmonies used, all of these things.
Then there is the disturbance that people and things bring to people. A lot of times people are coping with things and coping with people. The relationship between people and people has changed, not as simple as before, everyone can sing well. There are a lot of troublesome things at the beginning.
In fact, there are some things that I don't think we have thought about, whether it meets our own needs? Where do we go in times like these? In fact, we didn't have the time and didn't think about it. And then sometimes it's a little passive, it's not that you're walking with a thing, it's that the thing is taking you along.
So my choice at this time is that I want to take off everything that should be taken off as much as possible, whether it is the relationship between people and the relationship of things. I'm going to take myself to a relatively early state. And then I can think for myself, what the hell is going on? I can't passively follow the world all the time.
Beiqing Daily: Very good, very good.
Weiwei Zhang: Right? I don't have the power to change the world, but I have the power to change myself. I only have this one ability, so I have to get this ability back. I've been doing this for a year and a half. It's basically done now, so I'm happy right now.
Beiqing Daily: Well, I'm afraid you're depressed again.
Zhang Weiwei: No. The year before was a little depressed, very depressed, standing on the stage and not knowing what I was doing. I loved music so much, I was doing it from a young age, and at the end of the day I was on stage and I didn't know what I was doing, and then sometimes I ran away. However, the performance experience on the stage is very rich, and others can't see it. The kids at the bottom were clapping and looking at us with the same kind of eyes we watched as children perform by the people we liked. Then you feel particularly ashamed, you feel that you have lied to others, that is particularly uncomfortable.
The year before I stopped all the performances, I gave myself a task - if I stood on the stage again, I must be released, not finishing the work. If you're the one who gets the job done, don't stand on the stage and don't lose face on it. Don't deceive others, don't lie to yourself.
Beiqing Daily: That performance tomorrow night, is it considered that you are back on the stage after a year and a half?
Zhang Weiwei: It was last week when we re-emerged on the stage. Last week we were in Shanghai, three days.
Beiqing Daily: I saw someone write it under the public name, the title is "Middle-aged Folk Male Singers: Nursery Rhymes, Folk Songs, and RepairIng Life".
Zhang Weiwei: It was the first official performance in this year and a half. It was a plan for me to talk to The River. I sang three of my own songs—two new ones, and "Rice Shop." Covered a children's song from his childhood, "Little White Boat". Then I sang two songs with everyone. He also served as an accompanist for some of the songs of their "Ballad Hunting" band. Exceptional.
Three days is particularly tiring, every morning at nine o'clock to get the theater, it is all the day of the performance of the day to complete, the process is particularly complicated. Because there are many people fighting together, in the end, everyone has to sing together and rehearse. But those three days have been immersed in the beauty of a kind of stage.
Nothing was expected at all
Suddenly those two summers came
Beiqing Daily: You and Xiaohe, Wan Xiaoli, Anna five people, the "river" band was established in 2018, has there been no performance or rehearsal between these two years?
Zhang Weiwei: Without this play, "River" would be the most relaxed band in the world. Because these songs are all very familiar to us, they are our own songs when we were young, or some songs that everyone used to like. So singing these songs and performing these songs does not need to be rehearsed, and the rehearsal will make it go down.
Because it is more like the expression of folk songs, happy, it is happy; after drinking wine, it is the way it is after drinking wine; drinking tea in the afternoon, it is the way to drink tea. It's just that this time to become a play, the stage needs to be very certain, so we rehearsed for a month.
Guo Long: We are a band, it is not career-oriented, it is emotionally oriented. We are together for these people to be happy together, that relationship, everyone to do things together is very fun. There is no such thing as one, we are going to make the "River" band something...
Zhang Weiwei: Guo Long is right. Including this drama, others I don't know, at least for Xiaohe, Xiaoli, Anna, Guo Long, the five of us, it is not part of our career. I don't have the utilitarianism of my career, or any kind of attempt at this thing.
Beiqing Daily: So it's a souvenir of youth?
Zhang Weiwei: No, it is a continuation of our friendship. You can't do it all over again for another 20 years in this lifetime. This year is 2020, and by 2022 we will have known Anna, Xiaohe, and Xiaoli for 20 years.
Now in your 40s, the friends you know now can't expose all of their strengths and weaknesses to each other as completely without any obstacles as they did in their 20s, and accept each other. Making friends now won't go that far.
Beiqing Daily: Anna also mentioned it during the rehearsal yesterday, she said, "Not far from here, the little bar of that year." Help me reminisce about your time at the River Bar.
Guo Long: Fiery and chaotic youth.
Zhang Weiwei: And it is unattainable. It went through no design, and without any anticipation at all, suddenly those two summers came. It's actually very short, 2001, 2002. In 2001 we were staying at the River bar and Anna came in. Not just Anna, a bunch of people. A small bar, it was opened at the time entirely because it was too difficult to make a band in Beijing at that time. The band is so good now. At that time, there was no opportunity to perform at all, and independent music was a thing that did not exist in China at that time.
The bar was only 10 square meters at the time, and the bar was opened to sell some wine and make some money to feed the band. It was not given any expectations at all, and as a result, in those two years, it finally developed into a gathering place for the literary and artistic youth of Beijing at that time.
It happened to turn into such a place, because there was no such place at that time. At first, it was only because the people of the "Wild Children" band were Lanzhou people, when we came out to Beijing, with the strong local atmosphere, that is, to entertain friends. Today you entered this door, so how can I make the place steaming, let you feel the atmosphere. And I like that kind of thing, and I want to talk, play, and have fun with my friends at night.
Barren land, already lined with tall buildings
Yesterday was like a dream, like a shooting star
Beiqing Daily: I was taken there once by a friend, and I always wanted to know where it was on Sanlitun South Street now?
Zhang Weiwei: It is now Chaoyang SOHO. Isn't there a square in the middle of SOHO, next to a lot of restaurants, various shops, just next to the railing.
In July, a friend asked us to go there to eat, drink too much, and we kept looking for it at three o'clock in the middle of the night. The overpass was still there, so we fixed a position along the overpass and took a picture. The surrounding area had nothing to do with the old days, and we stood there, collectively reciting the lyrics of a friend (the stone band): "The barren land is lined with tall buildings." Yesterday was like a dream, like a shooting star. ”
At that time, it was all dilapidated family buildings, then there were trees, bicycle stalls for repairing cars, and then small restaurants, and the dishes in the restaurants were ugly and cheap.
Guo Long: I often eat there overnight. Often this kind of, you are in it at the time is not at all aware, feel very natural to play like that every day. When all of a sudden the "whoosh" is over, look back a little longer, oh, it turns out that it was probably the best time of your life.
Zhang Weiwei: Maybe it's good because you don't know it. This can be a memory, but it was already confused at the time.
It is in such a very special period, everyone has nothing to play, everyone is relatively underground, nameless and unprofitable. So it's easy to meet together, no one asks anyone, just to be happy. Singing is just singing, without any performance, without anything else. All are young, hormones are exuberant, and everyone is anxious to express themselves. It's chaotic and explosive, and it's full of hope for the future. It's a particularly warm one when they come together.
In fact, it is only two years, just two summers. It felt short and brilliant, like a big fireworks "banging" over Sanlitun. We were all a small gunpowder seedling in the fireworks, and as soon as the "bang" exploded, it passed.
Beiqing Daily: I was very touched by what you said. I have to admit that I underestimated the play "Wandering Song" at the beginning, and I even thought it was like a church party you played with Anna. Now that I understand the feelings between you and the time spent together, the photos that Anna took back then are actually a testimony to your youth.
Zhang Weiwei: In fact, we didn't say anything about believing this play. I'm here now, I'm going to distill it, I'm going to believe it. To believe in it is to beautify it with my feelings, with my expectations, with my yearning. I'm going to find something out of it and convince myself. Only by convincing myself can I stand on the stage and convince others.
Writer/ Reporter Wu Fei