The famous singer Dedema died: the steppe nightingale flew away

"I was shocked to hear that Mr. Dedema had passed away. Now, my father, Alatten Ole, Teacher De, Teacher Huohua, the three founders of "Beautiful Prairie My Home", can be reunited in heaven. ”

Mongolian musician Keqinfu did not expect that he would become the first person on the whole network to release the news of the death of singer Dedema to the public. On the afternoon of November 28, 2023, he learned the news of Dedema's death through some Mongolian musicians, and after confirming with her family, he posted the news on Weibo. Soon, the news sparked shock and collective nostalgia. Mongolian singer Tengger released the news of mourning her for the first time, and netizens described Dedema's singing voice with words such as "steppe nightingale" and "natural sound", regretting her departure.

As one of China's most well-known mezzo-soprano singers, Dedema is unique in the music scene with her unique Mongolian style and deep voice. Due to vocal range limitations and other reasons, the number of mezzo-soprano singers is not large, and there are even fewer with superior vocal talent and unique style. Therefore, Dedema has always been as dazzling and precious as gold in the music scene.

Singer Dedemar

Many fans will feel that Dedema, who is as pleasant as the sun and the breeze, and has this good voice, her life must be smooth sailing. But in fact, Dedemar's life has been stumbling, and she was not born with such a unique voice. She had worked hard between different singing methods, and was in her early thirties when she became famous, and suddenly fell seriously ill more than ten years later. Behind the song full of natural beauty and happiness, pain and confusion always accompany her.

But this "steppe nightingale" never gave in. She left home to study at an early age and experienced setbacks, but the grassland has remained in her music. She kept singing nostalgia, and also left a large number of songs about the grassland, such as "Beautiful Prairie My Home" and "Father's Prairie and Mother's River", which continued to circulate. After Dedemar's death, some people said with emotion that the first time they perceived the grassland as a child was not in the photos, but in Dedema's singing.

"The Wind on the Prairie"

Musician Koqinf's family has a deep relationship with Dedema, his late father, composer Alatenole and Dedema maintained a long-term cooperation, Dedemar's famous work "Beautiful Prairie My Home", which is a song composed by Alatenole, and since then, the two have collaborated on many songs. When the two worked together in Inner Mongolia, it was often Alatengole who wrote the songs, and then rode his bicycle to Dedema and sang them for her. Later, Dedemar and Alatenole supported each other in their later years, although they did not get together often. In 2011, when Alatenole died, Dedema rushed to the memorial service, when she was already inconvenient and needed help, but she still insisted on seeing her old friend for the last time. "They're people who value music a lot. Koqinfu told China News Weekly that the friendship between the two elderly people was maintained by music.

"Beautiful Prairie My Home" is a well-known song that embodies the precious friendship between Dedema and the songwriters. With this melody, people can also go back to the early days of reform and opening up more than 40 years ago and hear the echoes of the times. Around 1978, cultural creation gradually picked up, and the music industry was no different. At that time, the works of Hong Kong and Taiwan singers such as Teresa Teng and Liu Wenzheng had quietly spread in the mainland, and the audience was also looking forward to the emergence of some non-slogan-style songs that expressed personal feelings. At that time, the creators decided to actively follow the trend of the times and began to create new styles of works. In 1977, the composer Alatten Ole composed an original new song with Mongolian music characteristics based on an old lyric by lyricist Huohua, "My Home in the Beautiful Grassland", after the song was written, several singers, including Dedema, performed the song, but it has not yet become popular. Later, Huohua changed some lyrics in the song that were too heavy with traces of the times, such as "Walking in the Clouds of High-voltage Wires", and replaced them with words that depicted the grassland scenery, hoping that the new work could be closer to the hearts of ordinary people.

At that time, many singers who had been silent for many years were waiting and fighting for opportunities. At the end of 1978, a party was held at the 10th Canton Fair held in Guangzhou, in which a female singer in her thirties from the north appeared to sing, at first, her tall appearance was incompatible with the aesthetics of the locals, and even caused laughter from the audience, but when she spoke, her low and deep voice, the beautiful and steady typhoon conquered everyone, the singer was Dedema, who was working in the Inner Mongolia Opera Troupe at that time. That night, she sang three songs, among them, this new version of "Beautiful Prairie My Home" received the most and warmest applause, and the local media began to praise this new and beautiful voice with a large space.

In fact, this opportunity to perform was won by Dedema, who was eager for the stage. At first, Dedemar's name was not on the list, but at her request, she finally got the permission of her superiors to form a duet with another female singer and go to Guangzhou. It just so happened that on the night of the performance, a female singer in charge of solo singing in the performance fell ill, so Dedema was "ordered to be in danger" and got the opportunity to sing three songs solo. Perhaps because her voice and interpretation are too close to the song itself, but also because of her own persistence and coincidence, in the end, the fate of this song is also firmly bound to Dedema.

Like a gift of fate, actor Dedema's singing career has changed. In 1979, "Beautiful Prairie My Home" went to the whole country with Dedema's voice. In that year, Dedema went to Beijing to participate in a number of performances for the 30th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China organized by the Ministry of Culture, which was warmly welcomed by the Beijing audience, and the media called him a "brilliant singing star". The following year, the song was selected into the list of 15 excellent songs recommended by the Ministry of Culture to the whole country, and was selected as a vocal music teaching material for the United Nations Asian region. She began recording records, tapes, performing nationally and even overseas. Whenever she sings lyrics and melodies that vividly describe natural scenes, such as "horses are like colorful clouds, cattle and sheep are like pearls", her wine-like voice can immediately transport people to the breezy prairie.

In the following ten years, Dedema has become a famous singer from an unknown little singer, active on various stages, everywhere, whether it is a local herdsman on the grassland, or an audience in the city, can become her avid listener, in the process of performing in the countryside, even herdsmen stopped the vehicle to give her hometown specialties, to express love. Listeners who listened to Dedemar's performance at the time recalled that Dedema's voice was like the wind on the prairie, "with a kind of contagious power that pierces through the years."

A nightingale singing among the thorns

Dedema once appeared on TV with the famous mezzo-soprano singer Guan Mucun of the same era, and the two have known each other since they were young and often sing each other's songs. Dedema once half-jokingly said that she always wanted to learn something from Guan Mucun, "although she didn't teach me, I learned a lot of things." At that time, Dedema felt that he was good at singing melodious Mongolian tunes, but not good at singing fast songs, so he began to learn to imitate the cheerful rhythm of Guan Mucun's "Playing the Tambourine and Singing", and finally learned to be decent, which has a unique flavor. Although "stealing from school" is a joke, it also seems to reflect Dedema's tenacious and challenging character. Her unique golden voice was also brewed in the midst of various setbacks and challenges.

In 1947, Dedema was born in Ejina Banner, Alxa League, Inner Mongolia, and joined the Red Culture Task Force "Ulan Herdsman" to sing and perform for herdsmen when he was young. In 1964, at the age of 18, Dedema was escorted to the vocal music department of the newly established China Conservatory of Music to study. At this time, she began to encounter the first dilemma in her life: before entering the China Conservatory of Music, Dedema had studied bel canto singing in Inner Mongolia, but after arriving at the China Conservatory of Music, she changed to national singing, which caused great damage to her voice, and she was very uncomfortable with this transition. As a result, throughout her youth, her voice has been hovering between high and low notes, unable to find the right state. This is almost devastating for a young singing learner.

During that time, for most people, it was not going well, and they could only take one step at a time, even Dedemar, who was lucky enough to enter a higher education institution. In 1968, Dedema returned to her hometown of Inner Mongolia, and for more than ten years, she worked in song and dance troupes and opera troupes in Inner Mongolia, Ningxia and other places, which can be regarded as avoiding the chaotic social environment. But when she returned to the ethnic minority areas, she found that her academically trained voice was not liked by the locals, and it was only when she sang the long Mongolian tunes of her hometown that the audience recognized her more. Stubborn, she was unwilling to give up her singing career, so she began to try to find the feeling and method of singing national songs as a child, and began to have a greater sense of achievement. But because of many changes to her singing style and too diligent training, her vocal cords had problems, and later, her vocal cords grew polyps and she was almost unable to sing, and finally underwent two surgeries to repair them.

The question of how to use her voice has always bothered Dedemar, who has been thinking about how to change for more than ten years, and has the courage to try, but because of this change, and because of various unexpected conditions in her body, she has paid a huge price. Around the 80s of the last century, after "a song became famous", Dedema's career seemed to finally become smooth, but the health problems never ended. In 1983, Dedema suffered from allergic asthma, and she once again thought she couldn't sing, but after a few years of recovery, she became active again, and spent about ten years with a stage and applause. In February 1998, Dedema, who was over 50 years old and suffered from high blood pressure, went to Japan to perform in order to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the normalization of diplomatic relations between China and Japan.

In any case, every time it suffers a blow, this "steppe nightingale" can quickly regain its vitality with perseverance. After being paralyzed, Dedema slowly regained her ability to sing under the arduous workout, and after only a year, she returned to the stage, announced that she had basically recovered, and slowly began to hold concerts, publish albums, and complete all these things even if she was unable to move. In 2009, when Dedema, who was in her sixties, sang the new song "Blue Ma Lotus", she was still insisting on learning the skills of other musicians, and she liked the relaxed singing style of Taiwanese mezzo-soprano singer Cai Qin, and also tried to imitate this song, and said that she was not satisfied with her performance. However, to people's ears, Dedema's golden voice has not been damaged with age, and it is impossible to imagine the suffering she endured behind this beautiful singing.

Children of the steppe

In 1999, Taiwanese poet Xi Murong, whose ancestral home is in Inner Mongolia, returned to Inner Mongolia to find her roots and fulfill her wish for her recently deceased father. At this time, Dedema, who had just recovered from a serious illness, saw Xi Murong's image on TV, perhaps because she had just recovered from her illness and was psychologically fragile, Xi Murong's search for her roots also evoked Dedema's nostalgia, she described the scene at that time as "She cried on the screen, and I cried under the screen". Later, Dedema Bento asked the composer Ulan Tuoga to find Xi Murong, and the three met and chatted very speculatively. When they met, Dedema said to Xi Murong: You can't forget your father's grassland, your mother's river, this is a particularly good song, can you write a lyric (inspired by this)? Xi Murong has always liked Dedema's singing, so she agreed to the request, and handed over the work after three revisions, including the sentence "I am also a child of the grassland", which moved Dedema very much.

Later, the chief Mu Rong's lyrics "Father's Prairie and Mother's River" was composed by Ulan Toga, sung by Dedema, and broadcast through the party, which gained a high degree of singing and brought the moving to the hearts of more people. This song records the strong grassland complex in Dedema's heart. She left home to study and work as a teenager, but she has already left life on the grassland, and can only reminisce about this nostalgia in music, which even she herself is not aware of, and only suddenly realized it when she recalls it in the future. Someone once asked her how many songs about the grassland she sang on a TV show, but she was not prepared, she could only say that there were about a few hundred, and she couldn't even count them.

In "Father's Prairie and Mother's River", a song vigorously promoted and performed by her, people can see and hear her strong emotions and understand her emotions and longing for her loved ones. The reason why the emotions in this song are so strong may be because "Father's Prairie and Mother's River" is Xi Murong's regret and her regret. Because in 1979, when Dedema had just become famous in the country, her father, who had started her singing since childhood, died of esophageal cancer, and she did not see her daughter's future achievements with her own eyes, which also deepened the regret and longing in her heart.

Later, Dedemar was very busy working all over the country, and although she often returned to the grassland, there were few moments to reunite with her family, and she always wanted to keep in touch with her hometown in some way. In 2022, after recovering from his illness, Dedema began to establish an art school in his hometown, specializing in music for the children of herders. In the process of preparing for the school, every time she returned to her hometown, she liked to smell the sheepskin, and put a small piece of sheepskin next to her pillow, although outsiders did not understand the taste, and even thought the sheepskin was very smelly, but she immersed in it and enjoyed it very much. Perhaps, this is a special way for her to stay connected to her hometown.

Now, Dedema, a "child of the grassland", can finally let go of his sick body and return to the grassland. And the green grass and flowers, cows, sheep and horses in her voice will forever remain in those works related to the grassland and spread all over the world. The young, golden steppe nightingale really flew back to that beautiful steppe and returned to her home.

(Reference: "Dedema - Ethnic Minority Singers from the Perspective of Musicology", by Yao Hui)

Reporter: Qiu Guangyu