China may be the arriving superpower, an economic and military giant finally stirred from centuries of slumber. But in one area of their Long March to global leadership, the inheritors of Mao remain unreconstructed minnows: the world of pop music.
Yet, if some commentators are to be believed, all that could be about to
change. This summer a telegenic former Mongolian nomad who sings in Tibetan
and fuses the sound of the zither and horse-head fiddle with appealingly
dreamy electronic dance music is hoping to become the first Chinese pop star
to crack the Western market.
The initial staging post in Sa Dingding's quest for international fame and
fortune will be Britain. Already hailed as the oriental equivalent of stars
ranging from the ethereal Hibernian crooner Enya to the fiery Icelandic
chanteuse Bjork, she will arrive in the UK next week where she is
confidently expected to pick up a prestigious BBC Radio 3 World Music Award,
a move coinciding with the re-release of her first album, Alive.
The campaign to bring modern Chinese music to a mainstream British audience is
being masterminded by the global music giant Universal. It will continue
through the summer when the 25-year-old Buddhist performs at a televised
Prom at the Royal Albert Hall, then appear before a sell-out crowd at the
Womad festival. She also plans a major appearance in Beijing to coincide
with the Olympic Games where she will be a target for the massed ranks of
the international media as they train their cameras on all things Chinese.
Listen to 'Alive (Mantra)' by Sa Dingding
Courtesy of Wrasse Records
Her fans insist Sa is a million miles from her homeland's adolescent army of
teen-queen poplets and clean-cut heavy metallers, blending a unique mix of
indigenous cultures with haunting, ambient electronica that industry bosses
are gambling would fit rather nicely on the iPods of well-heeled Western
consumers relaxing to exotic chillout sounds.
Evoking the wide-open spaces of the Chinese interior, a land still strange and
remote to Western tourists, her music has caught the attention of the top
British DJ Paul Oakenfold and the former producers of Madonna and Kylie
Minogue. By phone yesterday from her record company office in Beijing, Sa
said it had always been her ambition to share her music with a wider
audience.
Listen to 'Lagu Lagu' by Sa Dingding
Courtesy of Wrasse Records
"Now I have the chance of a lifetime, the opportunity to fulfil my dream,
for people from far away from China to listen to my music and see me perform,"
she said. "I feel very lucky to come to Europe and particularly to the
UK market and I hope I will bring great pleasure to audiences."
Sa believes she can help break down what seems like an everwidening gap in
understanding between China and the West, perhaps even helping to reverse
the controversy engulfing her native country in what was hoped would be its
showcase Olympic year.
But, despite her championing of Tibetan culture in her music, she is no
political critic of the regime in Beijing, which has faced growing
international condemnation for its brutal crackdown on recent
anti-government protests in Tibet, a position which could easily dog her as
she becomes increasingly exposed to the questioning gaze of the Western
media.
"I am a musician so I concentrate on making music, but I am also Chinese
so I definitely support our government policy on this issue," she said. "I
think everyone has their own country and they will hope their country can be
peaceful and develop well."
China's restrictions on free speech are proving something of a hindrance to
its emerging musical culture, with artists unable to pursue the traditional
rock and roll themes of rebellion and excess while also being forced to
avoid contentious political and social subjects. The end result is, to many,
a saccharine procession of Identikit stars with little crossover appeal
outside the Chinese mainland. Yet Sa, who shot to fame after winning a China
Central Television singing contest in 2000, has carefully skirted possible
areas of controversy, encouraging fans to explore the limits of their
imaginations rather than the political system. She has championed instead
the indigenous cultures she first became aware of as a child growing up in
Mongolia to a Mongolian mother and Han Chinese father.
She spent her first six years in a nomadic existence with her grandmother.
Later, she travelled through Tibet and Yunnan, ending up in Beijing where
she studied at university. On the way she learnt Sankskrit, Tibetan and
Lagu, a language rapidly disappearing from the remotest villages of southern
China.
To this she added her own language, one she says she created based on buried
memories of her grandmother talking to her as a baby and which, she claims,
prompted hardened studio engineers to burst into tears when they heard it.
Add to this heady brew studies in Buddhism and a smattering of Dyana yoga
and the result is a unique melange of styles and traditions that has already
shifted some two million albums in Asia.
But not everyone is buying it and some voices have declared the dressing-up of
Sa Dingding in ethnic clothes to be little more than a cynical record
company marketing ploy.
The international music expert Simon Broughton, editor of Songlines magazine,
is more open to her undoubted charms but he believes she is vulnerable to
criticism that she is exploiting her exotic ethnicity to stand out in
China's overwhelming Han culture, with the music and performance bordering
dangerously close to pastiche.
"The good thing about her is that she is genuinely half-Mongolian,"
he said. "But there is a naivety about the way this music is perceived
in China and it makes it uncomfortable for us in the West because it exposes
China's neo-colonialist attitude to its minorities. But if she was to say
anything she shouldn't it would torpedo her career. Given what is happening
in Tibet at the time, this makes it extremely awkward for her."
Of course, there are those who have seen it all before. Zhu Zheqin, better
known as Dadawa, was also hailed as the first big thing to come out of China
when in 1996 she became the first Chinese singer to secure an international
release for 40 years. She too revelled in the nickname the "Chinese Enya",
even going so far as to tour and record with the legendary Chieftains. Zhu,
who is ethnically Han, also experimented with the sounds of Tibet. But for
her it was a fusion too far. Signed by Warner Records, her career stalled
amid a welter of criticism over her apparent attempts to appropriate the
culture of the oppressed nation, not least when she appeared in the maroon
robes of a Tibetan nun, and accusations by campaigners that she was
legitimising Beijing's repressive rule in the mountain kingdom.
Less controversial but arguably artistically considerably more egregious is
China's other recent musical export, Twelve Girls Band. Formed in 2001 from
more than 4,000 classically trained contestants studying at Chinese
conservatoires, the 13-piece TGB (there are only ever 12 on stage at any one
time) was assembled by the Chinese rock Svengali, Wang Xiao-Jing.
Bringing traditional instruments such as erhu (flute), yangqin (dulcimer) and
pipa (lute), they successfully reworked modern Western tracks such as
Coldplay's "Clocks" and – you guessed it – Enya's "Only
Time" to complete two highly successful tours of the United States, as
well as playing the Shanghai leg of 2007's Live Earth extravaganza.
Luckily for British audiences, they have yet to arrive on these shores. Those
with a penchant for Chinese sounds will have to satisfy themselves with the
photogenic charms of Sa Dingding. Whether she is able to break out of the
world music ghetto remains to be seen. The initial signs are promising. Her
music is being taken seriously by critics in Britain. She was described this
week by one reviewer as "an impressive addition to the ranks of world
divas".
But for Sa, success, she says, is all about a more noble cause. "I hope I
can be a cultural bridge connecting the Western people and Chinese people
and show them what is happening in China right now as well as bring back
from the West a little bit of what is happening here," she said.
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