An ongoing chorus festival in Beijing gives a platform to music drawn from the rich cultures of China's ethnic groups, Chen Nan reports.

Yi ethnic group musician A-tie Shuori from Yunnan province plays the musical instrument yueqin. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)

The annual China NCPA August Chorus Festival is set to take place from August 3 to 21 at the National Center for the Performing Arts in Beijing.

The highlight of this year's festival are choruses from over 10 Chinese ethnic groups, such as the Yi, Dong, Lahu and Zhuang.

We travel around the region looking for singers and musicians, especially talented children

Yalungerile, leader and conductor of the Inner Mongolia Youth Choir

Over the course of the festival, 23 choruses were scheduled to deliver 13 shows at the NCPA, including performances by 31 singers who are inheritors of intangible cultural heritage. However, due to a recent spike in cases of the coronavirus pandemic, as a precautionary measure, three shows have since been canceled.

"Being a school choir has been a long tradition for Chinese people. We have choirs in primary schools, high school, colleges and even in kindergartens. It's a popular art form enjoyed by people of all ages, including senior citizens, for whom singing in choruses is a major form of entertainment after retirement," says Wang Luli, deputy director of the programming department of the NCPA. "Chinese ethnic groups are known for their versatility in singing and dancing. We have many art forms from Chinese ethnic groups that are listed as national intangible cultural heritage items. Among those valuable art forms, choral singing is well-known."

Wang adds that the festival, which started in 2009, has built a large fan base among Chinese music lovers, especially fans of choral singing.

This year, the festival was opened by the China National Symphony Orchestra Chorus, which performed under the baton of conductor Wang Linlin, with a repertoire including Song of Guerrillas by Chinese songwriter He Luting and On the Hopeful Field by songwriters Chen Xiaoguang and Shi Guangnan.

On August 18 and 19, shows by five ethnic group choruses from Southwest China will perform some of the oldest songs from their respective cultures. Highlights will include a chorus, from Poya village in Yunnan province, who will perform the Poya songbook, an ancient collection of folk songs written in hieroglyphic symbols on a piece of hand-woven cloth, and originated in the village. In 2011, the Poya songbook was added to the list of national intangible cultural heritage.

Kazak ethnic group musician Haoxi Kelide plays the musical instrument dombra, a long-necked lute with two strings. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)

Singers from the Dong ethnic group of Liping county, Guizhou province, will also bring their folk music, including the polyphonic Dongzu Dage ("grand song of the Dong people") choir, which was listed as a national intangible cultural heritage in 2006.

"When you visit the villages of those Chinese ethnic groups, you listen to songs and watch them dance. There is a saying that: 'they sing when they learn to speak and they dance when they learn to walk'. It's a natural gift," says composer Liu Xiaogeng, who was born and raised in Yunnan province's Luquan Yi and Miao autonomous county. He graduated from Yunnan Arts University as a composer in 1981 and has traveled around the country collecting, researching and adapting ethnic music into songs for choral singing. So far, he has collected over 6,000 folk songs from ethnic groups in Southwest China.

"It's a pity that some of those ethnic folk songs are disappearing because the people who can sing them are getting old and are dying. Many of those folk songs have mainly been passed down as an oral tradition, which means that there are no written lyrics or musical notes. It is crucial that they are put down on paper, recorded on CD or in videos, and adapted into songs, which are teachable," says Liu. "The value of those songs goes beyond music itself. They need to be preserved because they provide accesses to the origins of the cultural identity of those ethnic groups."

On August 20 and 21, veteran conductor Wu Lingfen will perform with the China NCPA Chorus at a concert featuring musical works adapted from Chinese folk songs, including One Bamboo Pole is Easy to Bend, a folk song traditional to Hunan province, Ascending a Hill to Look at the Plain, a folk song originating from Qinghai province, and Clouds Flying in the Still Sky, a folk song from Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region.

One of the canceled concerts was to be a performance by the Inner Mongolia Youth Choir, which was set to perform traditional Mongolian ethnic folk songs, such as Beautiful Grassland－My Home, Father's Grassland and Mother's River, Four Seas and the Hanggal Concerto.

"The choir sings a cappella－with no conductor and no accompaniment," says the choir's leader, conductor Yalungerile. A member of Mongolian ethnic group, she graduated from the department of composition and conducting at Shanghai Conservatory of Music in 1987 and later obtained her master's degree as a conductor from the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing in 1998.

In 1987, the conductor founded the Inner Mongolia Youth Choir, which is dedicated to promoting folk music of the Inner Mongolia autonomous region. Besides adapting local folk songs into a choral singing style, the conductor also gathers Mongolian ethnic musicians to display traditional Mongolian ethnic musical instruments, such as sihu (a four-stringed bowed instrument) and morin khuur (horse-headed fiddle).

"We travel around the region looking for singers and musicians, especially talented children. Since 2007, every three years we recruit new students to our chorus to train them as professional musicians," says Yalungerile.

The other two shows that have been canceled include a performance by seven ethnic group choruses, that were supposed to perform under the baton of conductor Hu Manxue on August 10, and a performance by Gong Linna on August 15, who planned to perform songs based on Chinese poems that depict the 24 solar terms－the traditional Chinese calendar that summarizes different seasonal phenomena－which were written by her German husband, songwriter Robert Zollitsch.

Contact the writer at chennan@chinadaily.com.cn