Singer readies touring show inspired by ethnic cultures

Aduo, a member of the Tujia ethnic group, had her worst performance during a TV show about eight years ago. She forgot the lyrics of a song, was out of tune and danced the wrong moves.

“I pretended to be calm onstage, but I was terrified,” the singer-songwriter recalls.

She is a pop star who gained fame after appearing on the annual CCTV Spring Festival Gala in 2005, with a dance song entitled Goodbye, Carmen. She was signed by a major record label, Chia Tai Music Group, in 2001 and released two full-length albums.

Aduo’s increasing popularity brought her many performance opportunities. But the incident in 2011 led to a change in the direction of her career. “I decided to stop,” the 39-year-old recalls.

From 2012 to 2016, she spent her days in remote villages in Hunan, Yunnan and Guizhou provinces, where the Miao and Tujia people live.

Her father is of Tujia ethnicity and her mother is from the Miao community, so Aduo feels close to both groups.

The five-year trip also inspired her to prepare for a live show, Land of Music — Huanglongdong, which will debut at the Huanglong Cave scenic area in Zhangjiajie, Hunan, on Saturday.

The 50-minute show will combine singing, dancing and instrumental performances by about 50 local actors and actresses.

Aduo, as the director of the show, will perform in it through Oct 5. Then, the show will become a regular performance staged for tourists in Zhangjiajie.

Toward the end of 2017, Aduo released Reborn, an album featuring 13 songs she wrote that were inspired by the two ethnic groups. Six songs from it will feature in the coming show.

“We will extend the show to 90 minutes for the touring version. I want more audiences to see the ancient traditions and cultures of the Miao and Tujia people,” Aduo says.

In the show, she will integrate daily scenes from the farms, such as picking tea leaves, seeding and cotton fluffing. The scenes of family reunions, weddings and traditional festivals of the two ethnic groups will also be portrayed.

“All the big moments of my career have happened in Beijing,” says Aduo.

She was enrolled for Chinese folk dance lessons at Hunan Art School in the provincial capital, Changsha, in 1988. And two years later, she joined a singing and dancing troupe in Hunan. She left her hometown when she was 15 to join a singing and dancing troupe in Beijing.

“Many people from my hometown will watch the show, and to me, their opinions matter the most.”

Aduo recalls being treated “as a family member” during her stay in the villages where she collected folk songs and dance moves. She also learned miaogu, a type of percussion performance of the Miao people, with 80-year-old Hong Fuqiang, who lives in Baojing county in the Xiangxi Tujia and Miao prefecture in Hunan.

Aduo has formed a miaogu ensemble of 13 women, ages 15 to 40, from this prefecture, who will also perform in the show.

“Unlike my busy life in a big city, I enjoyed a slow life in the villages. I got up at 5 in the morning, jogged in the mountains and worked on farmlands with the local people in the day,” autonomous Aduo says. “When I sang impromptu, they sang back, which was amazing.”

During her stay in a village in Guizhou, Aduo met Miao musician Yangeli, 53, at a wedding, where the musician played his handmade musical instruments and sang in the Miao language. They became friends and Aduo invited Yangeli to join her on a project that later gave rise to a seven-piece band called the Future Ethnic Orchestra.

“Maybe it is her pop-music background that enables her to give olden-day sounds a contemporary feel,” says Yangeli, who moved to Beijing about 30 years ago as a member of the China Ethnic Song and Dance Ensemble and now teaches music at Minzu University of China.

He started to make his own musical instruments before moving to Beijing, and a dozen such instruments will be used in Aduo’s show.

Many traditions of ethnic groups are disappearing — for example, agricultural tools have been replaced by machines, Yangeli says.

“Aduo has observed ethnic people’s daily lives and brings some of these aspects to her shows,” he adds.

Aduo still travels to the villages annually. She says it is a process of learning more about herself, which makes her stronger.