Gong Linna, who does not live in the city today, said in an interview that she needs to draw inspiration from nature to sing. The picture comes from the respondent's Weibo
The bullet screen of "Rap Listen to Me 2" reads: "Gong Linna plays rap, don't you?" When she cooperated with four rappers in the show to perform the Chinese-style rap "Soaring", many netizens "turned to powder" and even held a grudge against the defeat of this song. This is just like her epitome in the field of public opinion: everyone thinks that a professional singer like her should be cold and niche, but she uses her works to tell everyone that she is not alone and self-congratulatory, but will actively embrace the changes of the times, willing to break the boundaries of various music, and hope to collide with works with higher singing. Gong Linna and her husband Lao Gong "combined swords and bibi", and used a fusion and innovative musical style to verify that Qu Gao was not necessarily high and widowed. In an exclusive interview with a reporter from the Beijing News, she said that art must be innovative to have vitality, and if it is always sung exactly the same as what Master taught, there will be no new audience. Music creation must have the perspective and technique of the current era in order to have more resonance with the current audience.
01.【Immortal】
Why can't rap be "Chinese style"?
The prejudice in the human heart is a big mountain. Even if there have been fusion and innovative musical works "Nervous" and "Fahai You Don't Know Love" that have been widely circulated before, in the minds of many people, Gong Linna is still a singer in the niche art field, and it is not in line with the rap that has grown from the popular street culture. Therefore, she was a little surprised when she received the invitation to "Rap Listen to Me 2" and asked the director team why they invited a person who made Chinese music to participate in a rap variety show. "They said they wanted me to bring Chinese style to rap, and then I could create Chinese style rap with rappers." This sentence really touched me. The Chinese new art music I want to do is an original, artistic, skillful, and multi-style music genre. I think that only by broadening your horizons and constantly learning and integrating can you have more empathy with the audience. ”
Gong Linna graduated from the Department of Ethnic Vocal Music of the China Conservatory of Music, and was sent to the college seriously. But she and her husband, the German musician Lao Gong, have been committed to the innovative singing of Chinese folk songs, trying to integrate various traditional and popular musical elements into musical works. Just like their album "Quiet Night Thoughts", it contains both "Nervous" and "Will Enter the Wine" taken from ancient poems, as well as "Sad Desire" and "Lullaby" that are directly lyrical. "I am very open to the old gong and we accept every element, whether it is ancient poetry or popularity."
Gong Linna performed "Joker Monologue" on "Rap Listen to Me 2". The picture comes from the respondent's Weibo
Innovative attempts are always accompanied by controversy. "Rap Listen to Me 2" has a singer improvisational rap DISS: "I came to participate in "Rap Listen to Me" today, not "Funny Look at Me". Gong Linna said that from the beginning of singing "Nervous", some people thought she was funny, but she did not care about such "offense", she cared about the integration and innovation of music to collide with interesting works.
In her opinion, rap, which originated in black street music in the United States, is deeply loved by young people today, and this technique can be completely integrated with the Chinese style. In the program, she cooperated with Li Stick and four other rappers on the Chinese style rap "Soaring", each of whom used their own timbre and skills to perform a fairy role: Nuwa, Erlang Shen, Sun Wukong, Lei Zhenzi, Nezha, telling Chinese mythological stories in a rap way. "Soaring" is refreshing, and many netizens who initially thought that she was "incompatible" with rap have also changed their views. Gong Linna believes that music should also break some boundaries and give singers more space to create. Just like at first, others said that she sang folk songs, and later said that she sang the "Divine Comedy", constantly labeling her, "but I have been thinking, for me it is the first work, whatever it is, just express the work..."
02.【Myth】
"The Myth of Mountains and Seas" has a skill first and then a song
Gong Linna released a new album "The Myth of Mountains and Seas" in 2021.
Gong Linna had the idea of tracing Chinese mythology in music for a long time. Since 5 years ago, she began to think about what kind of musical method to express the myths and stories in the "Classic of Mountains and Seas", and finally launched a new album "The Myth of Mountains and Seas" on March 8 this year. The album contains 10 songs of different styles, each with a difficult vocal technique. She hopes to use different techniques to show the personality characteristics and unique voices of different ancient divine beasts. One of them, "Dijiang Chaos", with a fast pace of 270 words a minute, is a very test of lip service kung fu, and is evaluated by netizens as having a "fast mouth rap" style, such as "fairy tale version of "Nervous"". Gong Linna told the Beijing News reporter that the creation of "The Myth of Mountains and Seas" actually has a lot to do with the suggestions of fans.
During the epidemic last year, she decided to start the production of the album "Myth of Mountains and Seas", so she asked fans through various channels what kind of album they wanted to hear her sing. "The feedback fans gave me was that they wanted to hear 'surprises'. What is a surprise? They say it's a difficult trick. I was inspired by it all at once, heck, I can sing the images of different divine beasts through different techniques! Previously, she had been struggling to find a suitable entry point to express the story of "Shan Hai Jing" with music. So, she sorted out ten difficult vocal techniques that fans wanted to hear, and sent them to the old gong who was blocked by the epidemic in Germany, asking him to compose music with these ten techniques. The music of "Dijiang Chaos" that Gong Linna got was almost all musical notes, as fast as the pipa plucking music.
She spent a whole day repeatedly figuring out the melody composed by the old gong, while beginning to re-read the Classic of Mountains and Seas, she saw a divine beast called Di Jiang recorded in the book, also known as chaos, which had no seven tricks, and the round one could be turned around. She felt that this divine beast was very suitable for presenting with the technique of lip service kung fu, and quickly filled in the words of the chorus part of "Chaos chaos, chaos chaos..." and then filled in the lyrics of the remaining part according to the description of it in the Classic of Mountains and Seas. "You must know that Lao Gong is not a song written for Emperor Jiang Chaos, he wrote it from the perspective of skill. And I actually found the chaos beast from the point of skill. I thought this creative process was particularly interesting, and said to the old gong: You know what? You're writing a chaotic story. ”
In addition to singing "myths", Gong Linna has also created works with the theme of 24 solar terms and ancient poems in recent years, and cooperated with the children's choir to perform offline. The picture comes from the respondent's Weibo
03. [Divine Comedy]
"Nervous" is like a stepping stone
From "Nervous" to "Golden Hoop Stick" and "Fahai Doesn't Understand Love", many people know Gong Linna's name, indeed because of the so-called "Divine Comedy". The emergence and popularity of the term "Divine Comedy" at that time represented the shock brought by musical forms such as "Nervousness" that broke the previous appreciation experience. Everyone was stunned, and they could no longer describe it in a language they were familiar with, and could only "borrow" a word to carry complex emotions that were difficult to say. The popularity of the "Divine Comedy" opened a door to understanding the art of music, but some people entered from it, and some people stayed at the door of the curiosity. For Gong Linna inside the door, "Nervous" is also like a stepping stone, knocking on the door of a wider world for her and letting more audiences know about her music. "'Nervous' helped me open the hearts of the audience. The fact that such difficult and artistically highly artistic works can be widely circulated made me realize that the audience's acceptance is actually very broad, and it also made me feel more firmly that the difficulty should not be an obstacle for the audience to appreciate music. ”
The fame of the "Divine Comedy" also benefited from the social spread of the Internet age. Gong Linna believes that she is very lucky, born in the Internet age, "Nervous" has the opportunity to let more people hear and accept. In her view, the Internet era is an era of interaction, in the past, singing a song can only ask the opinions of friends around her, now you can hear everyone's voice on the Internet, even if you don't know them. "These opinions are very important and I can constantly revise myself accordingly. Of course, there will be some insults on the Internet, which sometimes makes people breathless. But it is a double-edged sword, from which to choose information that is useful to you. After "Nervous" became popular, many netizens responded that they could not learn it after listening to it ten thousand times, so she and Lao Gong decided to create a song that everyone could learn by listening to it once. In 2012, "Fahai You Don't Know Love" was launched, and the overall technical difficulty was lower than that of "Nervous", and a chorus was designed to be easier to sing.
"Fahai You Don't Understand Love" is based on a traditional Chinese story, which also has a projection of Gong Linna's personal feelings. At that time, the elders of Gong Linna's family had doubts about her choices in love and career - her husband Lao Gong was German, and Germany was far away from China; in order to do Chinese new art music, she gave up the "iron rice bowl" in the system... Although the times have changed and the choices of society have become more diverse, the older generation still does not understand the choices of the younger generation. "Fahai You Don't Know Love" is to stand in the perspective of young people and respond to the doubts of elders in a humorous way. More broadly speaking, this song is also about maintaining oneself but not being tough in the face of doubt, and can communicate in an optimistic and humorous way. "I think today when we use music to tell traditional stories, we must have the perspective of the current era, so that we can resonate with the audience today."
Yang Lianjie, a senior reporter of the Beijing News
Senior Editor Tian Kaini Proofreader Wu Xingfa