Ningxia River, two points, east of the Yellow River, west of Helan Mountain...
Many years ago, Su Yang occasionally heard a very primitive black music, and the melody in it reminded him of the folk songs that would be sung in front of and behind the house when he was a child. He was not impressed by other melodies, but the most important sentence"Ningxia River, two pointed ends, east of the Yellow River, west of Helan Mountain" is always lingering in his ears. Later, Su Yang re-adapted this folk song called "Ningxia Chuan".
Su Yang, a folk rock musician from Yinchuan.
He grafted, improved and deconstructed the forms of Northwest folk music and traditional music and art such as "Flowers" and "Qin Cavity" with popular music, and created a new musical language through the theories and techniques of Western modern music.
Many people know Suyang because of "Ningxia Chuan". This song has a dialect singing voice, folk song tone, rock temperament, and has a kind of roughness and cheerfulness unique to Northwest Hanzi.
Celebrity Face to Face
Interview | Su yang
Suyang mixes folk songs and rock's unique musical language, attracting the attention of many international literary and art organizations. In 2016, based on years of understanding of folk music in the Yellow River Basin, Suyang launched the "Yellow River Now Stream" cross-border art creation project, transforming the inspiration he received from folk songs into music, text, painting, video and other artistic creations. After that, he also received invitations from the United States, Brazil, Colombia and other countries.
Su Yang: At the beginning of the year, we actually had a performance in Brazil, and we didn't translate the lyrics in Brazil that time.
Tagawa: Just sing Chinese?
Su Yang: Right. But I felt like Xi'an. There were about 20,000 people that night, almost all of them were locals, and their tone words were, ah, ah, ah, he would sing with you. They are particularly sensitive to the rhythm of the scene, and he will jump wherever there is rhythm. I think why it is called "Yellow River Now Flow", the original intention of "Yellow River Today Flow" is actually more focused on the folk culture and folk art of the Yellow River Basin. We know our ancestors, they used to have this way of singing in this land, so how can this expression be heard by more people, in fact, my music has been influenced by folk songs for so many years.
After "Ningxia Chuan" was written, Su Yang found a Qin Opera Company in Yinchuan to make a premiere. The performance unexpectedly received praise from the audience. Su Yang felt that he should take a good look at folk music. In 2003, Su Yang, who had been "rocking" for many years, stopped performing and began to go to Xihaigu one by one. He searched for folk artists, and over the years he collected a lot of folk music. Perhaps even Su Yang himself did not expect at that time that those folk songs that had long been left behind the times, and some melodies that grew out of the soil, completely changed the direction of his creation.
Tagawa: Can you still remember the song that you think touched the most? What was that scene like?
Su Yang: There are a lot of them, for example, once I went to find Wang Dexian, he is a flower singer from Gansu, he sang a lyric, I was very impressed, he said, the sparrow flew to the back of the bow, that is, when people pulled the bow, the sparrow flew to the back of the bow, saying that I did not shoot at the target with my soft hand. He said that your words were on my heart and lungs, and my legs were soft and I did not step on the stool.
Tagawa: That's what you said, the so-called way of Bixing.
Su Yang: I deeply feel that the rock lyrics we saw before are really very different. It inspired me later, and the particularly moving moment they painted, probably made me feel for years that it was worth exploring. In fact, what I really feel is that the charm of expression is that they don't need to go to school, and others teach him how to sing, so they use this most natural way, with a certain emotion, to sing.
In the book "The Sound of Earth", Su Yang recorded his search for folk songs in the countryside. During that time, he visited many folk artists.
In order to listen to these old artists singing, he visited the door over and over again, tirelessly explaining his intentions. Those who stand on the top of the mountain and sing are ordinary farmers and inheritors of intangible cultural heritage. With the deepening of his understanding of folk songs, Su Yang began to integrate Northwest folk music such as Flowers and Qin Cavity into his music.
Su Yang's work "Xianliang" mv
Tagawa: What do you think is that connection between music and your life?
Su Yang: This is something I've been thinking about, so make connections. Everyone's life needs to be expressed, in fact, folk songs have played this role before, what he sang is not particularly prescribed, it is a melody, and anyone can throw lyrics into it. In fact, the formal point of saying is called lyrics, which is actually what you want to say. Some dialects, I still like, for example, in my Yinchuan, the area where I live, may not have heard the word "Ga" for about ten years, why speak it vividly, spoken language is not necessarily uncultured, really, spoken language it is sometimes even much richer than the text language. The relationship between the two of them is that they are good friends on the surface, but in fact, they have lovers and boyfriends and girlfriends, that is, they have a good relationship, in fact, there is a cute meaning behind it. Our Ningxia dialect is called heartache, what is heartache? That is to say, cute and liked, but you say that cuteness and like are not as vivid as the two words of heartache. This is the intensity of spoken language's expression, and I personally think that it is something greater than the text. I feel very impressed, I feel that it is what I have seen, I recognize, the life I have experienced, the breath of the land that I can smell, I can feel.
In 1976, because of his parents' work, 7-year-old Su Yang came to Yinchuan from Zhejiang. In the gentle south, Su Yang spent his youth in this rough outer border city.
Su Yang: At that time, they were all supporting the Great Northwest, and my father and my mother both went around 1958, when they were the first to build Yinchuan City. My parents were in a place called a nitrogen fertilizer factory, and I still don't know what nitrogen fertilizer is used for, but it must be fertilizer anyway. That factory is not big, about two or three miles from the place where I live.
Tagawa: Do you remember the scene in front of you when you were seven and a half years old, when you went to Yinchuan and opened the door the next morning, can you remember what that reaction was?
Su Yang: It was very late at night, my dad rode a sophomore and eight-year car to take me and my mom home, and after I went in, my brother slept under a desk, and there was a dog-skin mattress on the floor, and there was a cardboard box next to him, which contained a lot of small picture books, and he was showing off his little picture book with me, and then my dad and my mom urged you to hurry up and sleep. I didn't see anything, it was a dark expanse, it was all bungalows. At dawn, as soon as the door was pushed open, it was very clean outside, it was a yellow land, almost impossible to see the head, it was completely different from the scenery and water in Zhejiang before I was seven years old.
At the age of 16, Su Yang was admitted to the technical school and became a substitute trainee in a chemical factory. After two days and one night on the green-skinned train, Su Yang came to Xi'an to go to school. In that industrial school, smoking and drinking in the sun, accompanied by the mesmerizing sound from the loudspeaker, Su Yang's life was not hurried. But the turning point sneaked in the cracks of life, and by chance, su yang, the chemical factory, began to connect with music.
Tagawa: You just said that you went to Xi'an, and you first came into contact with guitars?
Su Yang: Yes, I just went to school in Xi'an when I was sixteen years old, and I had a buddy who played the guitar very well, and I listened to someone play that Spanish bullfighter in the hallway that day, who in the 80s could listen to a whole person play that song? Basically, listening to the first two sweeps of the strings is gone, he played very well, and it was very wonderful, it shocked me at that time, and from that moment on, I followed him every day behind his ass. A man from an outside class bought a guitar for 30 yuan, and his father beat him and said you should sell the guitar quickly, or you would throw it away. He couldn't do anything about it, and later sold it to me.
Tagawa: Is 30 yuan expensive?
Su Yang: His guitar was a parrot brand, which was a famous brand at the time, and I bought it for 20 yuan, played it for a year, and sold it to him for 25 yuan.
Tagawa: So I'm curious, people often think that a certain person plays the guitar is very good, and then I like music, but how can you be so sure that I want to do music? Am I going to be a musician?
Su Yang: Where was this kind of ideal at that time? My purpose at that time was very simple, one was that I liked this too much, I just wanted to play guitar every day, I didn't want to do anything else, at that time, to put it bluntly, you belong to the lazy man's thought, you don't want to work, right? Don't want to go to work? In fact, it is like this, it is rather that kind of food, no food to eat to sell fruit or something, rather than go back to Yinchuan to find a place to work. Then in 1990 or 1991, I was really tired of running, and I ran back to Yinchuan in 1990.
With the mentality of "as long as you don't starve to death, you can do whatever you want". While learning guitar, Su Yang sifted sand at the construction site, constantly looking for opportunities to walk the cave. For a long time, Su Yang's life was full of ups and downs. In 1995, Suyang formed Ningxia's first rock band, Transparency Band. Influenced by foreign bands such as guns n'roses, bon jovi, and Horror Channel, he began to imitate and compose many songs. The band was also well-known in Yinchuan at that time.
Su Yang: In 1995, we formed a band of our own, and then we had a concert. In one of the biggest discotheques we had, that night was even more sensational, the youngest one was only seven years old, a kid, bare-headed, the whole audience was a mess, they had never heard so strong music, it was the first time in a city to be so affirmed, everyone thought, too powerful. It's like hearing a sound on a foreign CD.
Tagawa: But was life better then?
Su Yang: Not good, later scattered is also related to this, just look at the lively, old do not earn money. At that time, although it was written in Chinese, but the arrangement, orchestration, you listen to the kind of imitation of that kind of European and American music, this enthusiasm is destined to fade, you are actually not a rock star, or an imitation of the rock star, always feel that there should be a new thing.
In the end, Su Yang gave up imitating European and American rock music. After that, he began to explore more local ways of expression. In 2016, he launched the "Yellow River Now Flow" plan, and once again sorted out and created his years of accumulation. Now he was friends with the folk artists, and whenever he had time, he would go back to them to drink and sing.
Tagawa: You said that if you play rock and roll, this life must also rock, otherwise it is not called pure real rock, what kind of rock and roll state is your life?
Su Yang: I think I haven't paid much attention to the word rock for a long time now, just to get some good music.
Tagawa: I saw a documentary before, it said that people have commonality for good scales, it is calculated mathematically, it has a range, it is acceptable for us, it is elegant, beyond this range, for us it is noise, this so-called scientifically determined good sound, will you accept it? Or will you try to use this technology to create your music?
Su Yang: This question, I see it this way, the situation you just said is a rule that we are all abiding by, that is, I write a song, that is, you write openly, you don't have to think about this problem, if you feel that the song is comfortable, in fact, according to his method of measurement, it must be in his range. So I think it may be more about the commonality of emotions. It's just that you don't need to talk, people can understand, you don't even have to play subtitles, people can understand, I think this kind of music, for me, maybe it is good music. In fact, everyone says that such a thing as northwest folk songs has crossed the Yellow River Valley, let alone for foreigners, for Shanghainese, and Guangdong people, they are certainly not willing to listen. I don't think so. There is data behind our public account, our audience distribution, the most is Beijing, as if the third is Guangzhou, our second best box office should be Shanghai. So it is to consider what attitude we use to sing, what attitude to write songs, because with this attitude, there will be such a crowd.
Choreographer: Yi Fan
Editors: Liu Mengqi, Meng Xiaodu