Sound investment as indie label turns up volume on folk music

When the 80-year-old Chinese musician Li Hongsen played the fangxiang, inside the tranquil courtyard of Beijing Stone Carving Art Museum on a sunny afternoon, the audience was intrigued by the sounds and eager to learn more about the instrument they had never heard of before.

"It's a musical instrument with a history dating back to the Southern and Northern Dynasties (420-581). When you listen to its sound, you are having a conversation with ancient China," said Li, who played the piece Impressions of Yunnan in front of a young audience who filmed his performance on their mobile phones. Born and raised in Beijing, Li started to collect traditional Chinese musical instruments after he retired 20 years ago. He learned to play erhu at a young age and has so far collected more than 100 traditional Chinese musical instruments.

The fangxiang is an instrument made of 16 metal bars akin to a xylophone that produces eight sounds when the player strikes it with a mallet or a metal stick. It was mostly used for Chinese court music and is rarely seen today. The music pieces played by Li on the fangxiang will be recorded by Modern Sky, one of the country's leading indie music labels.

Teaming up with Art China, a Beijing-based art organization centering on protecting and promoting traditional Chinese music, the label launched a project in Beijing on Nov 26 to record music played on traditional Chinese instruments, which will be released digitally online.

"These ancient musical instruments are facing challenges from the contemporary music scene. They are priceless and ageless. We want to protect these musical instruments and give them a modern twist to enable the younger generations to enjoy them," says Shen Lihui, founder of Modern Sky, in Beijing.

A group of young musicians, including Qin Siyuan, Huang Jin and Deng Boyu, have been collecting traditional Chinese musical instruments such as the rattle drum, gong and huantou (a flat iron-bar that hums smoothly when rubbed with a metal stick). They combined electronic music with the sounds of these old instruments in a short performance to mark the launch of the project.

Last year, Modern Sky launched a new record label－Pollux－to focus on world music which covers every aspect of the genre, including artist management, music production and copyright.

"World music is regarded as a new direction on the international music scene, and we are keen on expanding our musical map. What we want to present is music with distinctive sounds, such as Chinese folk music, which also has a contemporary touch," he adds.

According to Zhang Xiaozhou, artistic director of Art China, the project will gather together a group of musicians to unearth and record a range of Chinese folk music materials. The digital release of the recordings will help music lovers from around the world to enjoy in the traditional sounds of China.