The Surging News reporter Qian Lianshui
There are two kinds of artists, one is good at summarizing experience, knowledge and thinking, and the other is doing their best to dig deepest and broadest into a theme. Suyang belongs to the latter category.
In recent years, he has been busy with the cross-border art project "The Yellow River Flows Now". Held art exhibitions, filmed the documentary "The Great Chorus", and established a legend for the people and songs of the Yellow River and the river.
Su Yang is a native of Ningxia, drifted north, played rock and roll, and did not break into any famous hall. Until a certain time, the sound of the hometown highlights the outline from the blurred background. Su Yang returned home, learned songs, and collected songs. More crucial than "collecting wind" is people. He took the time to get to know those people, to experience their lives, to read the joys and sorrows hidden in the wrinkles.
On the flowers, Su Yang could not sing the various immortals at the flower meeting. So far, I have participated in flower fairs everywhere, "I applaud when they sing, and they will point out when I sing."
But it's not without progress. After saving some fame outside, the heroes at the flower party will also sing a few songs of Su Yang. Su Yang's songs are not pure local flavor, and they can't learn that point, but everyone sings the taste of life, there is a feeling and hair, father, mother, brother, sister, life, death, each other can understand. Later, Su Yang went abroad to perform, and his words did not understand, and foreign audiences seemed to be able to understand.
The compilation of "Nine Songs" is also a project of "The Yellow River Flows Now". In addition to Su Yang, there are eight musicians who grew up in the Yellow River Basin, such as Zhang Qi, Zhang Qianqian, Liu Dongming, and Ou Jiayuan. This shows that the Yellow River is no longer just the source of Suyang's private memory and artistic nourishment. He went deeper and deeper, wanting to create a collective memory that was reconstructed offsite. The method is to invite colleagues who have drunk the water of the Yellow River to recall the river together, go deep into their own memories, and think of the smoke and dust in the present.
Zhang Qianqian of Qinghai changed the order of flowers to "Sorrowful Flowers". "Tengyun rode the fog, I smoked a cigarette/wine and poured down one cup after another." The subject of the decadent and affectionate folk song is rarely a woman, the keyboard melody is feminine and beautiful, and the bass is like smoke, constantly choking to the back of the head.
Liu Er's "Pulling the Soul Cavity", the black shadow comes from the folk songs that I have heard when I was a child. Folk funerals of ghosts and gods, when the drums finally converge with the female voice cavity, reality envelops the memory, "pulling the soul cavity to sing and cry the person who sent the soul".
Zhang Qi's "Planting Land Without Planting River Beach Land" is a hybrid, and the song is Gansu Hua'er's "Gama Er Ling", and the words are a flower he collected and recorded. In the space where the acoustic guitar is delicately intertwined, it flows through an amorous sheng river. The lyrics are very dark and humorous in this rainy season: "Cultivate the land, don't plant the ground on the river beach" "The rain on the river beach is the water that flows away." Zhang Qi sang thinly, "Come back slowly, my joint hand" called out. If it is a side painting, the brush is hard and bald, and there is only moist moisture in the white space. Through the water vapor to summon people to return.
Su Yang's own "Green Leeks on the Mountain" is tight and composed from Ningxia folk songs. When he opens his mouth, he outlines the high lines of the Gray and Black Mountains, and the Yellow River is played by drums and electric guitars. When writing the song, All Su Yang thought about was the onions and leeks in the courtyard of his hometown households, green and fragrant, and endless. When listening to the song, what comes into your ears is full of spirits and night.
The faint breathing of the horse-head qin and Chao'er pushed the traditional banquet toast song "Guangming" sung by Hu Ge jizhitu in Mandarin back to the past. After the Mongolian passage, the Chinese accent of Hu Ge Ji Ritu also changed. The words of the square change into a more uncertain shape of the native language. At this time, Chao'er really seduced the soul, and the instrumental music brushed the scalp.
Talk to Su Yang about this compilation album, what can be expressed in words, Su Yang tried his best to express. Where the language is not enough, let the music speak.
Su yang
The Paper: Your song "Green Leeks on the Mountain", I didn't expect the electric guitar to come out of the way. The feeling of this song is that the spirit of "Like Grass" is back. It has changed several times during the epidemic, at first you always feel that you have not caught, and then it is at what point that makes you feel caught?
Su Yang: The first question is so difficult? It seems that when I write a song, I don't know what to write, let the sound of the piano and the thoughts wander around, and slowly (sometimes suddenly) there will be something that touches me but can't say it clearly, and I will try to make it sound clear, this thing is not clear.
The Paper: Why does the "bird that broke through the cage" fly to yesterday instead of today or tomorrow? You said in your creative talk that the world is different. Where is the world different? Or is it just that the time is different?
Su Yang: I don't know why I felt this way at that time, but later I felt as if the world was still the same, but we felt different about ourselves and the world and time. If a bird can break through the cage, it can fly anywhere.
The Paper: The song of "Green Leek" is a Ningxia folk song, but the dialect content is very low, why? Filling in Mandarin in the melody of folk songs will change its taste, how to grasp the degree of this?
Su Yang: In fact, when writing words, I didn't think about these things, and the degree of grasp was also to see whether the words I wanted to say were formed as a whole with the melody and moved forward together.
The Paper: When you return to the Northwest, will you attend a flower convention or sing with people in private? What is the situation of your song in the local environment, right? What do the locals think?
Su Yang: I have been to some flower clubs, and then I will sing with the flower singers, most of them listen to them sing, and learn to sing, but I can't sing them like that. I applaud when they sing, they point out when I sing, flower singers, locals, a lot of people will sing my songs, most of them like it.
The Paper: When using the tone of folk songs to fill in the lyrics for new songs, everyone seems to like to change the original male and female love that entertains others to serious and deep content, and the reverse is less. Is that for you? Why? Is modern life more depressing, and how much has it worn away people's spirit of entertainment?
Su Yang: The content of the writing depends on my feelings at that time, and the subject matter is not limited. Modern life does suppress and wear out a lot of things in the pursuit of efficiency.
The Paper: Hu GeJiletu's "Guangming" was sung back into Chinese after that passage, and the tone and tone changed. The music of the Han people often derives the melody directly from the language, and the rhythm also moves with the language. Now do you follow this rule, or do you have to challenge it from time to time?
Su Yang: You listened very carefully. At the beginning, we were all using the mainstream melody of Europe and the United States, using modern colloquial words, and later I have been groping in the rhythm of our spoken language and melody, basically obeying such a law, but it is not completely opposed to the cosmopolitan melody, and it needs to be adjusted with feeling in the process of trying.
The Paper: What is interesting about these nine songs is that they not only have the imprint of each person's life, but also the obvious imprint of the times. For example, Wang Yingtian's "The Great Embankment", a song can identify the context from Henan minor key, pop songs from the 1990s, Internet songs to square dance. The youngest Yan Zehuan's "Memory at Any Time" has traces of music talent shows. When I first decided to do the "Nine Songs" compilation album, did you envision this dimension?
Su Yang: When I first conceived it, I also hoped to be more diverse, and in terms of the age and expression form of musicians, they were all open and diverse. The participation of young voices such as Yan Zehuan and Wang Yingtian was a surprising attempt for the musicians themselves and for this compilation album.
The Paper: As part of "The Yellow River Now", in addition to being released as a record, what are the different ways to present this compilation album in the whole plan? Purely for yourself, what does it mean?
Su Yang: From the launch of the "Yellow River Now Flow" in 2016, to the exhibition, exchange and creation in several countries, to the "Big River Singing" movie in theaters last year, to the completion of the later "Nine Songs" compilation album, purely for myself, it is to constantly try the exploration of these similar fields and find the influence of the Yellow River root culture on our expression today. And these explorations are also based on personal expression and works as the most important part.
Just like the compilation album "Nine Songs", if we are all a grain of sand in the Yellow River, and every grain of sand is ourselves, this river exists. This time, at the beginning of the year, we originally planned the tour after the launch of "Nine Songs", because of the epidemic, so we had to think of other ways. However, whether it is the past of the "Yellow River Now Flow" or this compilation of "Nine Songs", when the work is completed, the meaning is already there.
The Paper: This cross-border project has achieved now, which part do you think excites you the most, and which part has the best public response? Is there a coincidence between the two?
Su Yang: Probably the most exciting thing for me was the performance at the Medellín International Poetry Festival in 2018. Although it looks the same as in China, it is in distant Colombia, and there is no barrier between stage and stage, which makes me feel that music, or art, is an independent language of communication.
Including later went to Nashville, usa, and collaborated with country musician Jim Lauderdale to perform and communicate, they all felt the same way. As viewers, they are not obligated to listen to what you say, they are here to feel and accept. But as me, there's an same drive to do different things, and that's probably the overlap of what you're saying.
The Paper: The synthesizer sound at the beginning of Ou Jiayuan's "Knotty Mountain" is very similar to the sound effects of science fiction films in the 1980s. Looking at the creation talk, the song is an old work he turned out more than ten years ago. This project encourages everyone to dig up memories, but if it is not good, the excavated memories lack resonance with today's people, and they are sent directly from the recording studio to a niche display space. How does memory resonate with today's people, specific to this project, what are your considerations as a planner?
Su Yang: I also had the same considerations as you, but then I found that what matters is people, that is, there is no pattern that must have resonance or no resonance, and niche and this resonance are not a topic. In fact, I found that many so-called niche musicians, their works will impress me even more, of course, this is not the opposite, or the most critical to people. The musicians this time are my personal favorite, their music can move me, I believe it will move others. As for how many people are impressed, that is a matter of market scope and needs to be discussed separately.
The Paper: Did you choose Ma Fei's "The Sun Shines on Milk West Village" because of your personal memory? Artists who lived in a romantic and impoverished quasi-commune life in Beijing never forget that life, have you also had it? Can you now clearly see life in North Drift through time?
Su Yang: I looked for Ma Fei because I liked his music, and there was no limit to what he wanted to write this time, what form he wanted to write. What I care more about is that he writes it, and he writes it seriously. He gave me a song at first, and then I still liked "The Sun Shines on Milk West Village" more. After listening to it I did feel that there were traces of his private memories, of his life.
We have all had similar lives, but these real-life experiences are not the most important, what is important is to express feelings or understandings in the work.
The Paper: I read Nandu's article about your story with Wang Laohan. At that time, you desperately wanted to keep Wang Laohan's song, but now, will you still make the same effort? What different ideas do you have now about preserving the voices that have passed away?
Su Yang: That was many years ago. Now if I have the opportunity, I will still make such an effort to keep that kind of singing, but I will take a different approach, such as directly negotiating a licensing agreement, paying the elderly, then things may be simple and easy to implement.
Editor-in-Charge: Chen Shihuai
Proofreader: Liu Wei