Traditional Chinese music and culture, carrying centuries of emotion, offers not only spiritual relief, but also serves as an anchor of hope for people dealing with social and political challenges. Wang Yuke reports.
The entire techno soundscape is enveloped by thunderous beats and repetitive percussion — intense, rapid and charged with a muscular gravitas. It is so octane-pumping and dopamine-inducing that it feels like it could launch you off the ground.
With the effect crescendos getting higher, the very air seems to clench and condense at its apex. Then, suddenly, everything is sliced open by a lightning bolt of silence — suspended, chilling, decisive.
What follows is a stream of crisp, ethereal, soul-piercing notes from the guzheng, a traditional Chinese string instrument, cutting through the stillness, releasing the breath long held, pulsing through every heartbeat of the air. It is a fragment of a track in Tian Ren — the brainchild of Italian composers, Edoardo Romussi and Luca Montorsi. Tian Ren is a melodic techno project that fuses storytelling, Chinese cultural tapestry and cyberpunk aesthetics into a multisensory, extravaganza-like experience.
The descent of the guzheng sedates unruly minds, hushes rowdy inner voices, tames reckless spirits and tempers with callous intentions. It is precisely what Tian Ren sets out to do — enlighten a distraught humanity, urge it to reckon with its faults, rein in its greed, and reconnect with the wisdom and grace of a time-honored civilization.
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Calling Tian Ren merely a music act is to overlook its overarching artistic drive and depth. An audio-visual space, Tian Ren exists in a conceived universe or society where future human society grapples with the reckoning of its self-destructive behavior, which threatens the fragile harmony between humanity and nature. This imagined world is by no means far-fetched as it is an amplified rendering of our contemporary society, its triumphs, followed by calamitous crisis.
While the setting of all these happenings is a universal society, the story arc and artistic exploits behind it are richly informed by traditional Chinese culture and the rosy prospect of China’s lead in the global cultural milieu. In the near future, human society thrives with Chinese cultural mores, values, and innovations. But in the far future, all glamour and triumph will crumble into relics — a “masterpiece” of humanity’s unchecked indulgence, exploitation, and manipulation — and human existence suddenly becomes numbered.
Here Tian Ren, a superintelligent AI created by future humans in the techno music project, comes into play. Tian Ren represents a last resort to pull humanity back from the edge. It tries everything — refining systems, enforcing policies, running simulations, but to no avail — yet logic has lost its grip in this unruly society. In the final gambit, Tian Ren bets on the mnemonic language that, thankfully, still resonates among humanity, invoking the nostalgia of the old better days. This emotional recall becomes the final, critical push, snapping humanity back from its vices, and restoring reason.
Through what medium are the memory and emotion decoded and telegraphed? It is music. Each track unfurls the downfall of humanity and the disintegration of future civilization, laying bare humanity’s unchecked abuse of wit and power that pits it against the very nature it depends on. Yet, beyond its brilliance in portrayal, the music is bestowed by the two Western composers with magnificent emotional eloquence — so piercing and articulate it could serve as a wake-up call, ring a bell to the past, and jolt a disoriented humanity back to moral integrity.
Unparalleled emotive agency
Victor Vicente, associate professor of music at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen, says music and traditional culture overall are never frozen in time. Rather, they “serve as an anchor”, or a portal, of hope for people who find the present and future clouded by the climate crisis and looming social and political challenges. This proposition helps explain why Western musicians’ riffs on traditional Chinese music within their cyberpunk-infused techno compositions fit squarely into the overarching narrative of using music to cope, redeem, reconcile and revive.
“Traditional Chinese music offers not only emotional relief, but also a strategy for confronting crises that have left people feeling disoriented and powerless,” says Vicente. It becomes a corrective to a reality perceived as astray, and shapes an alternative future stripped of the perceptible and conceivable afflictions of contemporary life.
Granted, music is a vessel of emotions in general, with each music genre boasting its distinguishable emotional canon, but when it comes to the emotional range between the dichotomy of joy and melancholy, and sophistication of the emotional subtext, Chinese music comes in handy to stir the ripples of emotions and evoke the moral wokeness, aligning with Tian Ren’s ethos.
Traditional Chinese instruments boast an unparalleled emotive agency as they “carry centuries of emotion”, Romussi remarks in awe. “Electronic and techno sounds are often highly digital and artificial — sometimes even soulless. In Tian Ren’s music, coldness is balanced by Chinese ancient instruments that produce sound through physical movement,” explains Romussi. By physical movement, he refers to both the strumming of strings by the fingers and the ensuing air vibrations that generate sound.
The marriage proves strikingly consummate — capable of making listeners’ hearts skip a beat, and even inducing an intoxicating wave of goose bumps in those culturally attuned to Chinese heritage.
“However, while the fusion of Western techno and traditional Chinese music ultimately proved to be a triumph, it wasn’t an easy marriage. On paper, it sounded like a brilliant idea, but when we started experimenting, our first forays were barely successful. These two genres stand in completely opposite spheres,” Romussi recalls.
“But, like sweet and sour in food, they can work beautifully together with the right recipe, complementing each other immaculately. Ancient Chinese instruments date back to thousands of years ago and produce sound by physical movement for air vibration, paired with digital, industrial sounds generated through sequences of 0s and 1s.” For the uninitiated, techno music is created using digital code that generates sound that is rhythmic and produced in repetitive patterns.
An essential part of the project’s success lies in the two Western musicians’ deep appreciation for Chinese musicology.
Classical Chinese instruments are deeply interwoven with nature, mirroring its core virtues — simplicity, austerity, reason, integrity, harmony and balance. This kinship begins at their very creation. Made predominantly from natural materials, these instruments inherit organic timbres that distinguish them from their Western counterparts. Traditional Chinese music’s use of the pentatonic scale and its characteristic 4/4 or 6/8 rhythms make such instruments not only masterful imitators of nature, but also poetic narrators of its spirit. All the singularities of Chinese music earn it a unique place in Tian Ren’s storytelling, which centers on nature-coded messages to humanity, shrouded in a haze of futurism and sci-fi.
“We believe traditional Chinese instruments carry a more mystical and exotic aura — one that blends perfectly with our intended narratives,” says Romussi. “We also want to introduce the Chinese musical realm to the West where it remains relatively unknown.”
Interpreting Chinese elements
In a techno music project, if tunes, rhythms and melodies form the body, then visuals animate the soul, and drive the musical narrative home. Without complementary, arresting, if not larger-than-life visual maneuvers, a story set in a futuristic parallel universe would struggle to stand, stun and stick.
While Tian Ren’s visuals are still in the making, its first few rendered images and blueprint have stirred waves on social media. What sells in those images? Likely, it’s the aesthetically ravishing Chinese elements — imagery shorthand of Chinese culture: temples, pagodas, coiling clouds, white tigers, phoenixes, dragons, lanterns, fans, and yin and yang.
One much-buzzed rendering features a fierce dragon roaring as it soars through the air, its silver-azure scales glistening against a backdrop of lantern-lined, mist-shrouded streets, seemingly launched by an inexplicable force from the universe. The caption reads: “They (humanity) engineered peace, rewrote laws … Nothing endured,” foregrounding humanity’s manipulation of power at the expense of nature’s interests.
In this futuristic musical landscape, the peppering of traditional Chinese motifs and cultural symbols advances both the visual and musical narratives.
The seamless reinterpretation of Chinese aesthetic culture, executed with precision and flair, can be credited to the artists’ acute observation and deep understanding of Chinese history and tradition, as well as Chinese culture’s enduring ability to evolve and remain relevant within the zeitgeist.
“We believe traditional Chinese imagery is incredibly beautiful, epic, and carries a naturally cinematic and musical aura. We wanted to share that beauty with Western audiences, reimagined through a futuristic lens,” says Romussi.
An avid aficionado of Chinese culture and globe-trotter who spends months on the Chinese mainland and in Hong Kong each year, Romussi immerses himself in local cultures and their backstories rather than merely skimming the surface. He has drawn a wealth of visual prompts from his trips that have either reinforced or challenged his preconceptions through firsthand explorations of and bonds with Chinese cities.
“You can often spot the Tian Ren vibe throughout the Chinese mainland and Hong Kong — ancient imperial buildings, gardens, and temples — remnants of a millennia-old history juxtaposed with futuristic skyscrapers and cutting-edge architecture that showcase the power of this rising superpower. These contrasting sceneries are surprisingly common,” says Romussi.
“A few specific places that come to mind include Yu Garden and Yuyuan Old Street in Shanghai; the breathtaking serene views of Hangzhou’s West Lake; Dafo Temple in Guangzhou; the hutong (narrow alleys) of Beijing, where you can glimpse the CBD (central business district) skyscrapers in the distance; and the temples in Hong Kong, often dwarfed by surrounding high-rises. Not to mention the few surviving neon signs in Hong Kong that give off a true Asian cyberpunk vibe. And, of course, we have to give Chongqing a shoutout! The whole city feels like a cyberpunk dream. But, the standout is, definitely, Hongya Cave, cradled by glowing skyscrapers. All these places have directly inspired Tian Ren’s visuals.”
It is true that China has been developing so rapidly but, instead of supplanting the past, the behemoth skyscrapers flashing the futuristic whimsies and supremacy are layered on top of enduring traditions. Yet, Vicente argues that “people often dismiss the very foundations of these traditions”, oblivious to the cultural bedrock underpinning the spectacle.
Vicente believes that Tian Ren — a Western musical project infused with Chinese influence and global reach — will serve as an awakening retrospective of China’s indelible artistic and cultural heritage.
Wider audience
While traditional Chinese culture is gaining traction among Western creatives — graduating from mere foil to the main act in their original work — young Chinese talents living abroad, too, have never stopped drip-feeding the Western audience with cultural elixirs of their heritage.
A musical adapted from Chinese classic Honglou Meng (Dream of the Red Chamber) by a cohort of emerging Chinese artists is in the offing at the upcoming Camden Fringe festival in London.
The musical taps into the same emotional attributes of traditional Chinese instruments as Tian Ren — the ability to evoke cultural memory and nostalgia, and to swell and elevate the arc of its characters’ ebbs and flows.
“When you hear the music, it might sound like it’s written in the 2010s and the melody pattern is definitely Chinese,” says Zhang Yixin, assistant director of the musical. “Our score uses a hybrid palette — guzheng and pipa, matouqin, alongside pop drums, string pads, and harmonies that evoke both East and West.”
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The movement of traditional Chinese dance costumes, such as shuixiu (water sleeves) also offers a contagious emotional clutch to the storytelling. “As a costume accessory donned by the performers, the fluttering and rippling of the sleeves becomes an extension of the body, setting the emotions in motion,” says the choreographer, Li Yiyun.
Romussi’s dismay over the West’s ignorance of China’s venerable cultural legacy, rooted in centuries of history, and its cutting-edge technological strides which, in many areas, lead the global charge, runs deep. This duality of tradition and progress, and the West’s failure to see it, has been channeled into Tian Ren’s draft composition with a witty, yet sobering twist.
Still in production, the piece centers on a tipsy Western traveler lost in Hong Kong’s concrete jungle late at night. Wrinkling his nose at “exotic” local food and bewildered by cultural shocks, the traveler becomes the subject of cheeky, catchy Cantonese chants that narrate his misadventure. The story may well culminate with the traveler begrudgingly assimilating into local culture, only to be won over by the city that embraces him with open arms.
Disorientation becomes deep connection. That, at least, is Romussi’s hope.
