Rock of ages
Reclusive Chinese musician Qiu Ye is ready to return to the stage with a younger, new-look band, Chen Nan reports.
Everyone has a different reason for making music, mine is that I have something to say.”
Qiu Ye, Chinese rock singersongwriter
When Chinese rock band, Zi Yue — or It Says in English — released their first album called The First Volume in 1996, the band’s founder, singersongwriter and bassist, Qiu Ye, could not have imagined the lasting influence his music would have on China’s rock scene.
By 2002, when they released their sophomore opus, The Second Volume, Zi Yue had won themselves an ardent fan base throughout China that would remain loyal for the next two decades.
Qiu’s music, which combines techniques from Western rock with Chinese cultural elements, such as poetry, dialects and folk tunes, as well as more than a little of his unique humor, clearly resonated with the nation’s rock fans.
Songs such as Xiang Dui (Gaze), which was used as the theme track for popular Chinese TV series,
Struggle, in 2004, and Guai Guai De
(Be Good) in which Qiu blends Tianjin dialect, reggae and rap, to portray a dialogue between a father and a son, have distinguished the band from their peers.
So, fans will be thrilled to hear that, after a long hiatus, Qiu will return with a live show in Beijing on March 2. He says he has been waiting for an opportunity to return since his last concert in the capital in 2014, noting that the music might be a little different from what the audience remembers. The concert will also have a theme centered around Beijing, which is Qiu’s hometown.
The singer-songwriter has recruited younger members in his band to join him onstage and to help him breathe new life into, and deliver updated renditions of, his old hits.
In his studio located in Songzhuang, an art zone in the city’s Tongzhou district, a small stage has been set up in the basement and rehearsals will start within a week.
“I ask the young band members to play beyond the original scores. I want them to show me something more than just technique,” says the 52-year-old singer-songwriter. “Each song is like a drama, and everyone in the band should be its director. That would be fun.”
But Qiu says it is not easy to recruit new band members, “some people soon quit, because I ask for too much”, he laughs.
“They have less experience of playing onstage, but what I value most is their imagination, their ideas about music and their courage to display them,” Qiu adds.
Asked about the reason for his absence from the music scene, the singer-songwriter recalls he used to tour around the country but during one live show about 10 years ago, he forgot the lyrics in the middle of a song and had to ask the band to play it again.
“I wrote the song myself and I had performed it many times before that. It was a warning to me. I felt empty then,” says Qiu. “I feel blessed because I wrote those songs, which I still feel proud of today — but I knew it was time to slow down.”
It was around that time he decided to move away from downtown Beijing and into the suburbs, as well as halting work on the band’s third album.
He occasionally wrote songs for TV dramas and movies, as well as expanded his creative outlets to include painting and directing theatrical dramas.
Since 2006, Qiu has annually released a new recording online, which is essentially a year-end review of major news and happenings. His latest song, reviewing 2018, will be performed at the upcoming concert in Beijing.
“Everyone has a different reason for making music, mine is that I have something to say. It’s more like writing a diary rather than for any commercial reason,” he says.
Before he embarked on his journey as a rock musician, Qiu made friends with other Beijing rock singer-songwriters, such as Cui Jian and Dou Wei. It was Cui’s iconic 1986 song, Nothing to My Name, that inspired him to become a singer-songwriter and form his band in 1994.
He used to share a stage with Cui but, unlike Cui, who grew up in a musical family in the city — his father was ethnic Korean and a professional trumpet player and his mother was a member of a Korean dance troupe — Qiu started from scratch and taught himself the guitar.
“When I performed onstage with Cui for the first time, I was very nervous, yet thrilled,” he recalls, adding that he missed those early days “because every day was new and fresh and I was curious about music”.
Cui, who is considered to be China’s godfather of rock ’n’ roll, talks about his first time watching Qiu play: “In the 1990s, I watched his live show for the first time, which was a pleasant surprise. Nobody rocks like him.”
In 2014, Cui invited Qiu to play a role in his directorial debut, Blue
Sky Bones. A year later, Cui also persuaded the low-profile musician to participate in the popular reality TV show, China Star, aired on Dragon TV in November 2015. The show, featuring influential Chinese singers as both contestants and judges, including Cui, was produced by the Recording Academy and the China Recording Association and was hoped would be an effective channel for Sino-US cultural exchanges.
“It was not a competition to me, but a platform to perform, to let the audience know about the variety of China’s rock music. I am grateful to Cui,” says Qiu, who plans to give more live performances throughout the country in 2019.