Its our final day in Boading and today we planned to record serval instruments at Hebei University. Our prior arrangement with Dean of the Institute thankfully gave us access to the instruments plus a studio space to record them in. The instruments consisted of: Er Hu, serval different types of Gu Zheng’s and a Bianzhong. […]
The second part of the day in Xiongxian consisted of recording an ensemble with some very well respected musicians. This group are used to playing on larger stages around China and, now in higher demand due to the changes due to take place with this province. We thank the Dean Lu of Hebei University for […]
Part two of our recording in Xiongxian consisted of a sampling session with the instruments that are specific to this region of China. We moved indoors, as silence is a must for sampling. We had seven to sample. 云锣 Yunluo, 笙 Sheng, 笛子 Dizi, 管 Guan, 铛子 Dangzi, 镲 Cha and 鼓 Gu. The group […]
It is March 2018 and day 2. We have just arrived in Xiongxian, the forgotten backwater spot in China. Xiongxian is now at the heart of President Xi’s ‘Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei integration plan’. The “Jing-Jin-Ji” project is one of the President’s two main development initiatives, alongside the “One Belt, One Road” trade and infrastructure strategy. A lot […]
Day 1, we are in the Hebei province and arrived in Boading at 15:20. We need to get over to our first recording session at the Lotus Garden soon as the musician we plan to record leaves at 17:00. We manage to check in and gather all of our recording equipment required for our first […]
Arriving at the home of the Yao Tribe, we were greeted by a group of women, carving and cutting raw fish and leaves over a fire, next to a truck with no bonnet. We were surrounded by groups of beautiful children all dressed in their exquisitely designed handmade black and orange outfits. Their outfits were […]
Arriving at the Hani Village, high up in the mountains of Yunnan, the views were absolutely breath taking. It had started to rain so we had to split the umbrellas between us accordingly – making sure all the equipment stayed nice and dry. We had to walk down some really narrow back roads, which were […]
Driving up through miles of forestry and rice fields, we finally reached a tiny village amongst the incredibly lush green mountains. The members of the village greeted us – we intrigued everyone, as they had never seen a person of non-Chinese ethnicity before. We followed the crowds of people down to a large concrete sports […]
