China 2001
The Power of Music, the Power of Song, the Power of One
by Kim Orloff
(Last modified: $Date: 2002/05/08 15:24:33 $)
I'm aware that music is one of the "universal languages," but I hadn't realized that it can sometimes transcend all translation into words. When I got back home from our 17-day trip to China this fall, touring with a group of barbershop singers and performing in both chorus and quartet, I was puzzled. Try as I might, I could not put my experience into words. I wanted to share the experience with family and friends, as well as with our sponsoring organization, MHBQA. I have tried, for weeks, and words - for the first time in my life - actually failed me.
Gradually I am coming to the awareness that what I experienced was a major life-changing experience. It was not just a fantastic tour of an exciting country, and not a handful of successful quartet and chorus performances, both impromptu and formal. For seventeen days I was immersed in the actual power of music, actively involved in the two-way communication with another culture. In my life I've had many blessings, and I've tried to return some of that good fortune to those around me, sharing my time and talent. But the world is large, and the little that I can contribute has never really affected the rhythms and pulses of the world.
This year, Jerry and I had planned another one of our "barbershop chorus tours" with Ed Pio's Global Music Exchange. As usual, it was designed for anyone who wished to sign up and sing during our travel. This year it was someplace very different... China. Born 60 years ago, in my lifetime China has been "another world." Radically different politically from my own democratic roots, it was often perceived as a threat to world peace, with its people caught in a revolution totally foreign to my understanding. Yet here I was in the Spring of 2001, part of a quartet teaching a chorus in China how to sing barbershop. And in the late Fall, back again with over 100 new and old friends who signed up to share the adventure of singing and teaching barbershop in China.
At the first chorus rehearsal, the power of music and the power of dreams began to take hold. Directing us was the perfect combination of dynamo and dreamer, Kenny Hatton. Kenny pulled together sixty singers, who had put in many hours with their learning tapes, into a real performing chorus. Standing in sections (7 tenors, 26 leads, 14 basses, & 13 baritones), we learned that we had a pretty good handle on most of the songs... we actually could achieve a barbershop balance... and - surprise - the Chinese lyrics were, after all, really manageable! For any questions on pronunciation, we had our national guide and translator, Li Yi Hu ("call me Steve") to call on for help. (Steve had fallen in love with barbershop during the Hao Yu Chi Singers trip the previous Spring, had learned to sing bass, and had joined the Frank Thorne International Chapter of SPEBSQSA!)
Then the magic began. Our group of singers (plus 42 supporters) boarded the river ship Beidou (Star Dipper in translation) for a cruise up the Yangtze River. We filled the ship, so we we had the wonders of the Yangtze and the joys of barbershop to share uninterupted for four nights and five days. It was scenery, sightseeing and rehearsals by day, and sleeping with the windows open to hear the sounds of the river at night. Our first night cruising up the river, our group gathered in the lounge after dinner for introductions to the ship's staff. Then Ed Pio talked about China, its people, and their desire to share with us both their culture and our gift of barbershop music. Ed has dedicated the energy of the past ten years of his life to a dream, which is to bring the people of America and China closer to peace through shared harmony - bypassing the red tape of governments and communicating directly through music on a one-to-one basis. As he told the gathered group, we were not only tourists, we were his embassadors of harmony, if we cared to accept the challenge. I think we already had done so, many months before, when we began the efforts of learning those songs with words in Mandarin, but we rededicated ourselves that night with a standing ovation for Ed and our shared goals -- which left Ed in tears.
For the next three rehearsals on board the Beidou we polished a tight show that director Kenny had created for our repertoire. Ken wrote a great script, which would be read in English by Ed Pio on the first show (which was for English language students), and read in Chinese by Li Yi Hu on the other two shows. We were singers from all over the USA, plus England and Canada - but the meld into a unit chorus was amazingly fast. It's not just the power of music, but the power of music with words... songs that put feeling and emotion into the music, making it come from the heart. And barbershoppers certainly know how to do that!
Leaving the Yangtze River at Chonqing (previously Chunking), we flew to Xi'an. And there the magic began in earnest. We were now in an area that spoke Mandarin, so the singers in our group discovered that impromptu renditions of our Chinese children's folk song Rainbow Sister brought an enthusiastic response, with listeners often clapping along with the beat. Ken had decided to open our shows with that song, since it was short, had a nice driving rhythm, and would surprise them by being a familiar song in their language. Now we knew it would work!
Show time approached. We handed out the matching red and black shirts, with Chinese logo Song Weavers (the closest we could come in characters to the concept of barbershop). A final morning rehearsal sped by, and, after more sightseeing, our bus arrived at the Xi'an Foreign Language University for an early dinner and our first performance. The first half of the show was student singers, primarily their choral groups. After intermission, our chorus took the stage. We were ready, we knew our music (and had our word crib sheets for the shaky spots in Mandarin), and we knew the plan. What we were not ready for, and never could have been, was the reaction. The audience, primarily students of English as a foreign languages, had settled back to enjoy the show and polish their English listening abilities. At the opening of the first song, which was the Chinese children's folk song Rainbow Sister, there was an audible intake of breath from the entire audience, a roar of approval and burst of applause, and then joyous rhythmic clapping accompanied our singing for the rest of the song. We all were stunned, and kept going only on instinct.
After that, the show rolled on, mixing American folk songs (Nellie, Coney Island Baby) with demonstrations of barbershop parts. We sang the simple SPEBS arrangement of I Love You Truly, then hummed in four-part harmony as Rae Phillips read Elizabeth Barret Browning's poem How Do I Love Thee... (Sonnets from the Portuguese XLIII), with the chorus coming back with words on the tag of the song when the poem ended "I shall but love thee better after death." (There were many questions from the students afterwards, about the poem and the author!)
As the show continued, quartets came out from the chorus to sing a song or two; quartets had formed during the Yangtze River cruise, and we had encouraged them to audition to be a part of the show. One quartet even modified the stock barbershop song Little Lize I Love You, singing the "I love you" (wo-eye-nee) in Chinese! And when the Hao Yun Qi Singers performed their set, the ringing chords of Hi, Neighbor received enthusiastic applause, and the warm reception to What a Wonderful World matched any I've received as a quartet on a barbershop show in the USA. Of course, singing with the legendary Brian Beck and is equally talented wife, Holly, was also part of the personal magic for Jerry and me - probably the high of our entire quartet careers. And when we sang Brian's special arrangement of another Chinese folk song, Jasmine Flower (in Chinese), the audience was... well, one of our fondest memories.
But the chorus impact on the audience was the greatest. When we got to the songs we'd learned in Chinese, what a reception! All the effort we'd put into learning those words in Mandarin really paid off! Those four songs were ones that all of us in the American chorus already knew in English. It turns out that they are popular songs throughout the world, even in China. The students in our audience had learned those same songs in elementary school - with words in Chinese! To Edelweiss, sung primarily in English, we added the tag in Mandarin. On Red River Valley a verse in English was followed by two verses in Mandarin. On Jingle Bells, after the verses in English, we did the final chorus in Mandarin! Actually, Jingle Bells in Chinese is pretty easy: Ding ding dong, ding ding dong, ling eye shine ding dong. Wo-men wash-eye dwo kwai luhr, wo-men tsore tsai share chaw sun, oh... Try it! Each time we sang a song in Chinese, the atmosphere became even more electric, the unity of feeling in the theater even more euphoric.
Then we reached for the heartstrings. Brian Beck stepped out of the chorus to direct us in his lush arrangement of Auld Lang Syne. This song is well-known and loved in China as an instrumental number, and learned in the schools with Chinese lyrics. No matter what time of year, you'll hear it in hotel lobbies and restaurants! We sang it in English; the audience leaned forward to enjoy it. When we began the Chinese lyrics, there was a quiet intake of breath, and then you could have heard a pin drop. The emotions onstage and in the audience soared as we shared the thoughts and feelings of that music... "we'll take a cup of kindness yet, for auld lang syne."
Following that applause, an even higher emotion was kindled onstage as we sang from the heart what is probably our favorite American folk song, Jim Clancy's arrangement of Home on the Range. And the audience came right along with us. To top off the high, Val Hicks stepped out from the chorus to direct his arrangement of Bye Bye Blues, and then we segued into a reprise of Rainbow Sister for intros and farewell. At the finale, there was a roar of approval and thanks from the audience, flowers and photos, and then across the stage and throughout the audience area students were mingling with us, asking questions, sharing email addresses... and wanting to know more about barbershop music and how to sing it. We felt as if we'd died and gone to heaven!
On the bus back to the hotel, we still could not believe that what we'd experienced was real, but felt that that evening alone had made the entire trip worthwhile.
China is a vastly different country than my homeland, with millenia of traditions and history. They have been through a turbulent century, but it is only a small part of their 5,000 year history, and the people are resilient. I am very much an American (and yes, a child of both California and the "Wild West"); I fiercely cherish my own freedoms. Suddenly that evening I discovered that - in China - I was truly free to share my heart with people who were obviously coming from the same depth of personal emotions as myself, and those people were now also free to share with us. Their paths to this point were vastly different from mine, but our arrival times were the same, and the person-to-person communication on the level of song was intense. I found myself overwhelmed by the realization of what was happening, and my part in it.
Little did we know that it was just beginning. A flight to Beijing plus a bus ride to Shijiazhuang the next day brought us to the same area where our quartet had taught the previous Spring. Like proud parents, the four of us (Becks & Orloffs) were anxious to hear what had grown from those days of teaching. At the afternoon joint rehearsal, the Hebei Seniors Chorus was on the risers when we arrived; they sang for us the SPEBSQSA barbershop arrangement of "Heart of My Heart" -- and we glowed with pride. Our "parental" ears were perhaps fondly over-generous... they still have a lot to learn... but they were learning!
The combined chorus show that night highlighted both choruses individually, closing with a combined performance on four songs. Directors Li, Hatton and Beck shared directing on Edelweiss, Red River Valley, Jingle Bells, and Auld Lang Syne. The audience reaction was again phenomenal, but the feelings onstage between the American and Chinese singers creating those barbershop harmonies were absolutely euphoric. Our chorus members had experienced that enthusiastic audience reaction before in Xi'an, so it wasn't quite so overwhelming... yet this was an audience of older adults, not university students, and they still reacted the same! Again it was hard to get to sleep that night; some of us "afterglowed" for hours.
And then, in Beijing, there was the final show. This appearance had only been added to the schedule a few weeks before. It was to be at Tsinghua University - alternately spelled Qinghua - one of the top universities in Beijing. It was not a school for language, but for all sorts of majors; it is the Harvard/Yale of China. Some of the students we met at the end of the show were majoring in chemistry, some in mechanical engineering, some in government, some in business...yet all had the hobby of singing and were involved in the school's music program as a secondary interest. Indeed, throughout the trip we were to discover that singing in China is almost as universal as eating! In this University, however, the level of singing was amazing. As in Xi'an the first half of the show was put on by the students.
The welcome and introduction for the evening came from a lady in her sixties (I would guess), dressed traditionally in the faded cotton padded jacket of Maoist Cultural Revolution. She turned out later to be the head of the School of Music! The show began with us sitting in the front side rows of the audience, and our jaws collectively dropped at the first sounds out of the student chorus. An a cappella group of about 60 student singers (half men, half women), the clarity of sound and richness of their vocal production put us on notice. Most of what they did was four part, a cappella - and would have made a SPEBSQSA or Sweet Adelines coach extremely happy in the areas of vocal production, phrase endings, control, etc. They were followed by other groups (quartet, octet, soloists) of equal caliber, including a tenor operatic soloist who knocked our socks off! By the time we got on stage, we knew we faced a real challenge to perform anywhere near that level of vocal expertise, so we just put our trust in our music, our director, and the magic of barbershop.
And magic it was. The reaction was the same as at our other performances, only even better. Many of the students in the audience spoke English, but not all - and it did not matter. The script was entirely in Chinese - the same script as used in Xi'an, but read by our senior interpreter, Li Yi Hu, in Mandarin. (That was an interesting experience, listening for your cues in a foreign language!) Again Kenny Hatton worked his magic; the show flowed with ever increasing power and energy. The euphoria in the theatre again was contagious.
After this final show, every person in the chorus suddenly found that there was someone from the audience wanting to talk - to find our more about how to sing barbershop, to share experiences in music, to exchange email addresses. Naturally, since we were barbershoppers, we taught some of them a tag! Partway through this impromptu onstage "afterglow" some members of the Tsinghua University Chorus began to sing their version of Auld Lang Syne to us... in Chinese... and everyone - American, Canadian, British and Chinese - softly joined in on the words. That was a very special moment in time, which we will all relive every time we hear or sing that song again. Even six months later, there are tears whenever I write about this. There was not enough time to talk to everyone...we had to leave all too soon.
Amidst all of that sharing, something very special was happening. That elderly lady in the padded cotton Mao coat? She and the chorus director met privately with Kenny Hatton, and - through an interpreter - requested the "scores" and information on barbershop singing, so that barbershop music could be added to the school's music curriculum. WOW! It happened in the Spring of 2002... for details, see the entries in this website section about Barbershop Mini-College and World Harmony Exchange/Dragon Fundraiser.
The power of music - it had touched each of our lives individually, long ago, coalescing into the power of song. For us, the song was in our own unique American format of barbershop style, which can be performed with such immense power to touch the emotions. Each of us as individuals had brought the years of singing experience we'd had, with many marvelous directors, coaches, judges, quartets. Each of us had brought to China the power of one, and given all we had to our performances. And that power of one has multiplied into a force of energy beyond recall.
Someday perhaps I may be able to get a more complete handle on what magic happened in my life those seventeen days in China. I opened my heart, and sang, and shared... and melded with the other voices in the group. Together, I think we had more impact than we had ever hoped. We may actually have made a tiny impact on the world, our own contribution to world peace. By that sharing, I know that I am changed; I am incredibly enriched. And Jerry and I will be there singing next September, when Kenny brings the 2002 American Barbershop Chorus to China, sharing harmonies with our new barbershop friends.