Due to the recent Beijing Olympics, for better or worse, we’ve all been learning more about China. It was in this vein that the BBC show Newsnight presented a piece about a Chinese singer named Sa Dingding. Let’s not talk politics, she didn’t in her interview. China is a wonderful place for artists, end of interview. Maybe she truly believes that, maybe the government made no secret of the fact that they knew where her family lived, all I’m saying is that it is a little creepy to see that her album was produced by ShangHai To-Wing Culture Development Co. Ltd., and not, you know, by individuals.
Enough about all of that though, the point is, I heard about her on Newsnight and instantly fell in love with her music. Her album, “Alive” came out in 2007, but thanks to the Olympics and positive feedback in Europe, I recently got a hold of the CD, now available in the United States.
What’s it like? Well, for starters, no English. Mandarin, Sanskrit, even a self created language, but no, I do not understand a single word on this album. It doesn’t matter though, the music is so cinematic that just like when watching a television show in another language, you just kind of decide what you think is going on.
What is going on? A real East meets West kind of sound. Forget Ming Tsai! This is a real cultural blend. (A personal note to Ming Tsai: Please don’t take offense and come after me with one of your beautiful Kyocera ceramic knives!) Sa Dingding blends very traditional sounding folk songs with Westernized techno and rock sounds. On my favorite song, the title track “Alive”, I swear that some sort of harp or mandolin, totally jams out in a blues/soul kind of way. The album has simple, and beautiful, vocals cutting through a dense fabric of sounds.
Check out Sa Dingding’s “Alive”!
The song itself is really cool all by itself, and this girl is a very interesting vocalist. She sounds interesting to me anyway, but I’m not that current on my modern day Chinese goverenment sponsored pop stars. The music is very well done and nicely layered, too.
But enough about the music…what about that freakin’ video? Castles rising up out of the earth? Pitched Mortal Kombat viewed through a scrying pool? The costumes and set-pieces? And that kick-ass “rocks flying up into the air effect” that you normally only see when an anime character gets really, really mad? Damn!
I mean, I don’t know if China is a wonderful place for artists or not, but it sure looks like a pretty nice place for music videos.
Wow, that is a really beautiful song. It has a slight South Asian/Bollywood epic quality to the song rather than the Chinese pop like I was expecting. My brother lives in Bejing, so he sends me all sorts of Chinese music videos, mostly popular dance tunes and ballads. So this song is refreshing!
It’s not unusual to see that the Chinese government produced Sa Dingding’s album. This is probably more normal for them than it is for us. Even Yao Ming of the Houston Rockets surrenders half his NBA salary, and perhaps even part of his sponsorship revenue as well, to the Chinese government (their rule, not his).
In fact, if one is Chinese, it’s tricky business to run your own company without the Chinese government meddling. I mean, it is The People’s Republic, after all – so anything you create is everyone else’s, too. Not always, but it has been that way for years, even though many things are changing now to reflect a more capitalist culture(with Communist Party overtones).
I suppose I could go on and on, but let’s not talk politics – China is a wonderful place for artists.