Folk music crosses the Pacific as US and Chinese musicians collaborate

Resources: Global Times  Published: 2017/01/10

Just over four years ago, Chris Hawke and Kirk Kenney started performing old US country music in a back alley Beijing bar so tiny that they had to slide over while singing so the waitresses could open the beer fridge.

Now, they are preparing for their first show in the capital's National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA) - the most prestigious venue in China - a collaboration with musicians from the US' Blue Ridge Mountains and China's Stone Forest in Yunnan Province.

"I'd be terrified, if I thought the show was about me," said Hawke. "But from the beginning this was about bringing people together."

Lucky Yellow Weasels

Hawke's band started four years ago as the Hutong Yellow Weasels, named after the auspicious animals they often saw as they walked home from gigs through the historic hutong (small alley) districts of Beijing.

"When we started, we weren't really good players, but it didn't matter, because our shows were about people dancing and singing together, and listening to old songs that have been passed on through the generations. The songs themselves were really good, so all we had to do was play them faithfully," he said.

The band handed out song books to their shows so people could sing along, and led simple mountain dances, breaking down the walls that separate the audience from each other and the band.

"One couple danced at our show on their first date, and came back a year later thanking us because they're getting married," Kenney said.

After two years Hawke quit his job as a journalist to become a full-time musician. Hawke and Kenney have played in over 30 cities, recently with collaborator Paul Meredith - getting people to dance and sing at factories, fruit-plate-and-whiskey bars, a Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) guild hall, the Shanghai Disney staff dorms and high-brow museums.

They no longer have to gig four times a week to make ends meet, but instead play high-paying festival and corporate gigs.

Now Kenney lives in Shanghai and Hawke lives in a wooden courtyard home on the foot of a mountain near Dali in Southwest China's Yunnan Province.

"Since we no longer perform in hutong bars, and officials and corporate event planners associate yellow weasels with death, deceit and bad omens, it was time to change the name," explained Hawke.

"After our shows, a lot of younger people come up and say the dancing and singing together has made them feel quite 'high' or euphoric. That's why we renamed our band 'Mountain High.'"

Over time, Kenney and Hawke added Chinese folk songs to their performances. "Singing along includes people, and including people makes people happy, which was our main goal from the beginning," said Kenney.

Tradition pays

In the Appalachian Mountains, an industry has been built by city-dwelling musicians seeking out people who still play and remember traditional songs and dances.

Every weekend during the summer there is at least one regional music festival where people camp, jam and trade songs with each other, and listen to local musicians compete in contests. Some universities sponsor week-long summer programs, hiring the best traditional performers to teach classrooms full of fans of traditional music.

China does not have anything like this, so Hawke and Kenney turned to Wei Xiaoshi, a US-trained Chinese ethnomusicologist; Liu Xiaojin, who runs the music and culture preservation group Yuansheng; and Josh Dyer, a US fine literature translator whose passion is writing about Yunnan's ethnic minority music on his Tea Horse blog.

Dyer introduced Mountain High to Manhu, old friends from the Stone Forest village who have found a way to update the old songs and dances they grew up with and share them with the larger world. The members of Manhu created an ensemble using a number of traditional instruments such as the banjo-like sanxian, the mandolin-like yueqin, the double bass-like da sanxian and bamboo flutes, playing highly arranged versions of traditional songs that were formerly accompanied by perhaps just one of two the instruments. Manhu has been invited to the US to share its traditional music and dance.

Unbroken circle

During the summer, Hawke and Kenney go to the Appalachian mountains to swap songs at festivals and study at summer classes, including the Swannanoa Gathering, which Professor Phil Jamison at Warren Wilson College in Asheville, North Carolina, has helped lead for 25 years. Jamison approached Hawke about bringing his student band to China, setting into motion the collaboration of Mountain High, Manhu and Jamison's Jenny and the Hog Drovers, finalists at the prestigious String Band Festival in Clifftop, West Virginia.

For a week, members of the three bands learned each others' songs and dances in Xizhou, Yunnan Province, as part of the Linden Centre's artist-in-residence program. The time together, in a former wealthy merchant's residence turned boutique hotel, allowed the three bands to become friends and understand each other's cultures.

Tickets for the bands' shows at the NCPA on Friday and Sunday have sold out, but the bands will be performing at La Plantation in Beijing on Sunday, January 15 at 4 pm, and holding a pan-Pacific hoedown, featuring traditional Appalachian and Sani ethnic minority dances, that same evening at Beijing's Yue Space. Manhu will headline at Jianghu in the capital on Saturday night.

"We have been overwhelmed by the support and enthusiasm for this project, and hope to do these exchanges regularly," said Kenney.

Hawke, who is starting a residency program for Chinese and international musicians in his mountain courtyard home, said he hopes that this effort can be a step along the path of Yunnan developing its own festivals and summer programs, like those found in the Appalachian mountains.

"The fruit from Yunnan's rich musical heritage is ripe for harvest. Nurtured properly, these traditions could generate enough money to survive and thrive for generations."