Su Yang at 4Live

When surfing, I found this Su Yang. Later, I was even more thrilled to see him being featured at length on some CCTV music channel. Guess this particular musician must have weighted much significance in the current music scene here in China. Then, weeks ago, I found out that he would be in town to perform at 4Live. Seizing the opportunity, I went with a Shanghainese friend He Feng to see him performing last Sunday on June 3rd, 2007.

Constituting 4-member musicians, they were enough to occupy the rather miniature stage while half of the thin crowd of fans was up close and getting personal in front of the stage to see him live. Still considered a crowd pleaser with thrifty verbal interaction but very engaging in his singing all the way, Su Yang's fans would sway and gyrate in unison, jumping and hopping all around as the music intensified, and spewing infrequent wooing and wowing or sporadic loud cheers.

Never confounding, slurring and hardly soaring, he sang with brittle, supple and detectable enunciation. With innate but personable Ningxia accent or dialect, he would sang kai or open as kay-i, and lai or coming as lay-i. He randomly sprinkled songs with hei-yo, hei-yo, e-yo-hei-de-yo as repetitive catchy renditions. This must be the apparent vernacular Ningxia tune that naturally creeps from his embracing heart and easily seeps into his rhythmic songs. Su Yang is from Ningxia (that could possibly literally mean Quiet Summer), out in Northwest China.

Reading from lyrics, Su Yang sings about life in Ningxia, about the tough and seemingly impoverished life tending to the unrelenting yellow earth, and about the trying life of cave living. His songs celebrate life and aspire good life. When getting into perseverance and unremitting lifestyle in general, he lyrics speak about genealogical family orders from generation to generation, telling in summary the reminiscent and joyful family activities. Also, he sings about his father's tragic passing but being optimistically perceived as the rising phoenix from fire.

During the very brief break to quench thirst, he explained with great pride that he was hailed from "elow the Helan Mountain and by the Yellow River". In Below Helan Mountain, every line of the lyric expounds with impact about his youthful time in Ningxia giving way to the inevitable aging by the blowing wind.

With Shan-dan-dan flowers as subliminal metaphor, and like any others facing the ever changing life and nostalgia, he laments the temporal beauty of things and people around him, and when the drab hinterland being slowly ruled over by the unforgiving contemporary lifestyle.

One definitely in reggae beat, Su Yang reformats his rock and roll very easily with regional folksy tunes. Su Yang is essentially contemporary but not really representative in regional musical characteristics, besides his definitive regional lyrical forms.

From the TV show, he has been performing around China and has been trying to make it in Beijing. However, to see Su Yang performing live is completely different from what I had seen him being dramatized on CCTV. Rather minute in frame, Su Yang is of course very real on stage.

A guest singer Li Zhi came from Nanjing on the same day to support his fellow musician friend. As another singer with his very individual singing style, Li Zhi sang two songs while Su Yang played guitar for his friend. Friendship and support abound.

For the hour and a half show at 4Live, the entrance cost RMB40 while the Suntory beer cost RMB30. Before the show ended while Su Yang was performing his last few songs, and right before taking off for the night and at the door, I bought two CDs by Su Yang, Xianliang (literally Virtuous and Able) and One and Only Ningxia.

Pictures above show two of the CD covers and a few selected album interiors. The album Xianliang aptly depicts the distinctive Northwest yellow earth lifestyle in general.

Jeremy

Hai Shanghai

June 5th, 2007