The Surging News reporter Qian Lianshui
"Won't that hat fall off when he wears it?" This is the perspective of a fresh person, and people who are used to this hat will not think about this question at all. The little black hat was as natural as it was on Zhang Weiwei's head. On the evening of October 23, he performed at the Shanghai Symphony Concert Hall, and the co-musicians had three major rock pieces plus two sets of trumpets and string quartets, which can also be regarded as a fresh re-examination of Zhang Weiwei.
As an excellent musician for half a lifetime, through the beautiful pharmacy, river band, wild children and other bands, Zhang Weiwei debuted as a singer at the age of thirty-six, released an album, and then quit all the bands, threw away and picked up the accordion. His music is concise and simple, subtle and rich, low and repetitive, and he not only bears the code of the 90s folk song generation, but also does not want to do so, and seeks up and down, making people feel close.
Zhang Weiwei is good at writing, and has always dissected herself with the keen vigilance of a writer - which part is rational, which part is emotional, whether to follow the rules, whether to indulge the direction of desire. If a person is ruthless with himself and analyzes it inwardly, he will cause pain and admiration from others. Zhang Weiwei is so to herself, released a new album, satisfied? Put down the accordion and practice the guitar, are you happy? Withdraw from the collective asylum of a person, scared? Haven't been on stage for a long time and are eager?
He has a lot of contradictions, and as he goes, he solves them. Since July and August this year, Zhang Weiwei, who has not performed for a long time, has finally emptied her belly and is hungry. The concert is named "Kites and Birds", from a lyric in "Orphans of the Mist": "To the left and right, kites and birds, standing on the wilderness to see the sky darken..." There is also a song in "Silver Hotel", "Brother said, brother you see, we don't look like a kite with a broken line." (Two Brothers)
The kite is wired and flies in the chapter. The bird is ropeless and rushes straight into the sky. The accordion and string quartet Rabah's "A minor a cappella flute suite" opened with the audience as nervous as Zhang Weiwei, as if they were in full view of the exam, and the audience was solemn. After playing one song after another, Bach gave himself the challenge and wish to come true, "To pass through this stage is to spend the darkest moment of life." Next, he sang his own songs "Vase" and "Truth", "Let Go of Yourself". The tone, color and melody of the song are all the impressions of the folk song Zhang Weiwei for a long time, sad, bleak, confused, the horse wants to return to ancient times, and the flowers are eager to dry and wither. The clarity and harmony of the strings turns into butterflies flying, and the clear order of Bach's world disintegrates.
The string quartet and the band's "Shamu li" can be seen as a transition. Strings, electric guitars, basses, drums, trumpets have appeared one after another, layer by layer, front tight and loose, swinging, swinging, swinging into a broader musical space.
Before the performance, he wrote an article saying that he had always longed for the psychedelic atmosphere, but he had not been able to show it, and this time he met with this group of local musicians in Shanghai. After the transition, the synthesizer loops and spirals, and a team of people on stage is very similar to the band that appeared in the old movie, with a strong sense of being in the past. Trumpeter Feng Yucheng was originally improvised, he provided very beautiful and innocent things, and he maintained a bit of detachment when groove was at his peak. The distance is far away, I can't see clearly, I always feel that when Zhang Weiwei is blushing and bulging, a trumpeter seems to be still calm, which is really rare.
That night there were two kinds of Zhang Weiwei, one that we are more familiar with, singing Soviet-style songs, tight bites, melancholy melodies, and exquisite little musical sentences interlocked. A kind of openness, the tide rises and falls, weaving illusions. The environment for the handover was originally designed for acoustic instruments, and they were plugged in, and the electric noise flowed overhead from time to time. The voice was muffled, the ears sometimes played, missing Guo Long's hand drum, and I didn't know where I was.
Or listen to Zhang Weiwei herself, the accordion, Bach, the past, the low valley, Beijing, the picture and color of music, the relationship between people and musical instruments, hunger and fullness, how to leave a single, where does music go.
Two years ago, after quitting all the bands, Zhang Weiwei went to Beijing once, trying to find the source of the passionate power of her youth, but did not find it, and watched a movie alone and cried herself. Back to the old place, but I couldn't find the old thing, "except for the bell tower, no one knows me." He wrote lyrics when he went out of the movie theater, and there was a very old-fashioned sentence in the chorus: "No one can stay for anyone." The new song is called "Beiping", the prelude is very loud, has the meaning of the era song, he especially likes.
Zhang Weiwei entered that state again, practicing hard and writing songs in her sleep. Whether the curve of life is about to rise again.
The Paper: After the show, I asked my friend, why do you want to listen to Zhang Weiweila's "Fugue Art"? She said, because it's cute, those who do classical music are as cute as he is. Do you think that with an expert like Richard Galliano, why should you listen to little Zhang Rabah?
Zhang Weiwei: Galliano's "BACH" is an album that I particularly like. These were some of my favorite pieces from yesterday. It's really a dream come true. People who love instrumental music always want to play music on stage.
In my heart, in addition to the singer's part, there is also a part of the player, or I still like to play pure instrumental music. It was also very troublesome for me, so that I could not devote myself to the instrument, nor could I devote myself to writing songs and singing. So, that's it.
Listening to me pull, the audience's feelings may be multiple, not as pure as pure players. Maybe the audience will attach something themselves, it's hard to say. This is the behavior of the individual anyway.
The Paper: When did you start to be obsessed with Bach, and why Bach?
Zhang Weiwei: When I was a child, my father forced me to learn piano, and the piano primary tutorial had small fragments of Bach as etudes. My dad told me that this was Bach, Fugue, the Twelve Averages. I didn't like it at the time, because the children really couldn't understand it. It's a very special type of music, not so emotional, so beautiful, not something melodic at all. But in the mind there is this person and the fugue, the twelve average laws and other things.
Later, I slowly grew up and began to understand why this music has passed four or five hundred years, and it can still have such a high position in the hearts of all performers and music lovers, because it is too powerful. Basically, Bach's music can be played and studied for a lifetime.
I've always loved listening to classical music because I went to school at the Xi'an Conservatory of Music for a while when I was a child. It was small, and the environment left a very deep impression. During the day, the building of the piano room is all a small room. Walking into that building was full of people practicing, one person for an hour, from morning queues to evening closing. That scene was beautiful, so simple, practicing an instrument every day, so I've always admired those who practice classical. Then I didn't go down that path, and at the age of sixteen or seventeen I started to like rock 'n' roll, guitar.
Like the string quartet, especially like, is a particularly good band form. There are also Central Asian and Arabic plucked bands, rock bands, Argentine tango bands, Eastern European gypsies, are all good band combinations.
The string quartet is a very beautiful combination, just four people, is a very extreme thing. Its sense of form and content is particularly elegant, and there is a deep musical culture behind it. When I was asked to perform this time, I directly thought of the string quartet, which is also easy to put together with folk songs.
The Paper: Nine days of rehearsal, is it from scratch, or is there a general direction in advance? On the scene of the fourth section, how do you consider, how to evaluate?
Zhang Weiwei: The rehearsal lasted for nine days, but the preparation began more than a month before the performance. I came to Shanghai on September 12, determined the band team, performed one in a small performance, and began to prepare separately. The orchestra was slightly later in arranging, with the quartet's arrangement prepared first. I do a demo in Yunnan, send it to the string teacher, and he will make it up. At the same time, I communicated with the band with a general arrangement, because our band arrangement is not fixed in advance, and generally likes to touch people during rehearsals, so the next nine days of rehearsals are mainly in the rehearsal. The strings are all lined up, mainly looking for breathing, skilled in these.
The first of these four sections is an accordion piece of mine, a guitar piece. The accordion is Bach's Alamand, and the guitar is a song of my own. This begins with "Kites and Birds". Bach's compositions are particularly rigorous, and you only have to pull this path particularly well, fully understand his work, and interpret it perfectly.
My own song playing guitar and singing folk songs, always right, as long as my feelings arrive, the speed, the number of beats, the melody of the singing, its broken sentences, including the change of the lyrics paragraph, can be changed on the spot with that moment, like a very free thing.
My intention, the first two songs are kites and birds, throughout the scene, refers to the freedom and rigor of the people who make music, the choreography and the unorganization of things. This is a line set when the title was taken.
This is also the pattern of the string quartet and my collaboration, the first two Bach songs, the last three are my own songs. The first two songs need to be very standard, and the last three songs are actually completing a linear thing. When I sang the last three songs myself, my heart was very free.
The band has its own presentations and also has its own chord collaborations. String collaborations are made up with the band in advance, and many of the bands are improvised when they perform, like "The Story of Wednesday", and the solo in the middle is purely improvised. Except for my singing and my guitar, the rest of "Rice Shop" is improvised. The trumpet is improvised from beginning to end, and it is agreed to the trumpeter in advance, that is, try not to standardize it, and many things are put away to break.
Trumpeter Feng Yucheng is very powerful and is a very old graduate of the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. After graduation, I did not do classical, did jazz orchestras, blew trumpets and effects after leaving, made very psychedelic music, and jumped in and out of many fields. I like him a lot, and the first time I heard him blow, I added his WeChat. He was in charge of the complete "flying" stuff in the band.
The Paper: I feel that there are two kinds of songs on the spot, one is the Taste of the Soviet Union, the bite is tight and sad, and the other is loose and cheerful, and the arrangement is very swaying. The two songs seem to be expressed in different ways, and is the intention of the arrangement also a little different?
Zhang Weiwei: The music I listen to is more mixed, like you said about the Soviet flavor, because I especially like Eastern European music, gypsy music, and Central Asian music. The Soviet Union included this large area, and at that time the famous folk songs of many regions were changed to Soviet songs, and they must have been influenced by this as a child. I often have this kind of thing in my songs, it's a little bit sad, a little revolutionary romantic.
You're talking about cheerfulness because I especially like road-like songs. When its rhythm comes together, it has the sense of a scene driving on the highway. I'm an avid three-beat fan, and most of my songs are three-beats. The three beats are also sad, but its sadness is a little clearer.
Making music, writing songs and arranging music, you all need to mix these yourself. The tracks of a performance, the tracks of an album, and the songs written at each stage all need to be mixed. It's like if you want to find the dark at this stage, and the one that pops up sunny will not play it, and vice versa. Most of the time it comes randomly, but when it comes to the final presentation, there will still be rational distinctions.
The Surging News: The lyrics of the new song are actually not very clear to hear... The song of "Beiping", or the state of loneliness and ignorance, how can it be? "People can eat, fresh can be full", is it not so, even if they eat enough, people's various desires are always difficult to satisfy?
Zhang Weiwei: "Beiping" is a song that I particularly like, and my friends also like it. This song was written during the Spring Festival of the previous year. All bands quit the previous year and stopped performing. At that time, the state was not very good, I had doubts about the performance, I had doubts about many things, and I felt that I could not get out of the predicament and had to stop. The mood was very bad, I couldn't see the direction, I didn't know how to continue on the road of music, self-doubt.
It is the normal trough curve, and the curve of life has reached the time of falling. During the Spring Festival, I didn't want to stay anywhere, nor did I want to go back to Lanzhou, so I went to Beijing alone. There are very few people in Beijing during the Spring Festival, and I spent three days in Beijing on the fifth day of the fourth and fifth days of the first year.
I especially like Beijing, when I was young, I stayed for many years, and I have a spiritual sustenance for Beijing, and that place is like a source of passion and strength. When I was young, I was so excited, I always felt that the place would still give me those things. As a result, It was particularly desolate in Beijing, because friends were not there, and the Spring Festival was not very good to disturb people. I didn't take the initiative to contact anyone, and went to be more lonely, especially lonely.
That year, the movie theater was playing Han Han's movie "Flying Life", and when I watched it, I cried. I'm not touched by the movie, I don't particularly like the movie, but I've reached that point, and I can give it a break. Lyrics were written on the way out of the cinema. Its chorus is: "No one can stay for anyone, and the tears they shed in the movie are very fake, and the real ones are very fake." ”
In the movie, the actors are shedding tears, they are fake, acting, but what you feel is a very real feeling. Your tears are real, but you know that they are driven by something set, so it is fake and real, and real is very fake. This song is like this, the words are very short. I originally wanted to use it as a motivation to deepen and write more, but then I felt that it was unnecessary, and a few words were enough.
Its first sentence is: "Honey, do you know that this Peiping, except for the bell tower, does not know me?" "I especially like the bell and drum towers in Beijing, especially the bell tower. The drum tower is the style of the Manchu people, especially red and special flowers. The bell tower behind the drum tower is a Ming Dynasty style, with a very simple shape, the color is the color of the original wall, simple and thick, and it looks particularly comfortable. There is a homestay next to the bell tower, and every time I go to Beijing, I stay in that homestay, and I can see the bell tower at the window.
Beijing has changed a lot in recent years. We felt like we were there many years ago, the streets, all the stuff was gone. Only the bell tower still knows me. That's it, it was the mood of that time, falling alone, leaving the collective, and pushing himself into such a situation.
People's desires are certainly unsatisfied, and it is not interesting to be satisfied. It's like eating, you especially like to eat a dish, you go to the restaurant to eat three at a time, after eating you don't want to eat this dish again. That's what desire is all about. It's just the pleasure of not getting it.
My desire for life is not too high. My life is very simple, I like to eat very simple things, and I don't eat many things. There are also not too many material needs. My desires are all in what I want to do. I turned from musician to singer at the age of thirty-six, started very late, and came out with my first album.
As soon as I debuted, I was no longer a child, and the point of gaining satisfaction was no longer simple. The first album didn't give me satisfaction. I haven't gotten that feeling until now. Stopped for two years, and now I want to, like eating, the feeling of not eating for a day. Now I especially want to perform, I especially want to rehearse, to do new things.
This performance was born in this context.
The Paper: For a while it seemed like giving up the accordion and changing the guitar, how to pick it up again?
Zhang Weiwei: When I stopped performing the year before, I was actually planning to give up the accordion. At that time, because I couldn't find a state of performance on stage, I wanted to stop and blame the accordion. After a year and a half away, I basically didn't touch the accordion, I have been practicing guitar, and I bought an electric guitar, and I plan to turn to the guitar. But at the beginning of this year's performance, from July and August, it seemed natural to have to pick up the accordion again. Recently, I have been practicing the accordion every day for more than four or five hours a day.
Some of them are predestined, and my relationship with this instrument is like a marriage between people, you can't do without him.
I like a single life, the rules of life, the choice of making friends, and the boundaries are very clear. But this is not at all true for musical instruments. Musically I am not like this, I just like a lot of instruments, guitar, accordion, ud, dongbula, electronic music, a while ago also bought a hip-hop drum machine, electric guitar effects.
I always tried to persuade myself to focus on an instrument, but there was nothing I could do about it. I just like a lot of instruments and don't plan to stop myself. I just wanted to think that my ultimate choice was not an instrument, but from which perspective to look at the music. Look at the music from the pure point of view of the player, or from a more spectator point of view. Because music is not something about the instrument itself, but something of synthesis.
It's like an arrangement, and my arrangement intent is that it's based on a sense of march, like the rhythm of an older road movie. There is rhythm, but it is relaxed, not urgent, and it is an open scene. I want it to have a sense of picture, and the color is for the picture to serve. Every instrument and melody is a color.
That's my understanding of the arrangement, the music I want to make. So the more instruments I like, the more I know about them, the more I know about the diversity of colors, the possibilities that it can present in the whole framework. So maybe my confusion is not confusion at all. What I can't choose, I don't have to choose.
Editor-in-Charge: Chen Shihuai
Proofreader: Yijia Xu