Finding a new voice

"I write songs in response to my intuition. They're totally self-expressive and spontaneous," Pu says. "So I never plan an album as I never know where things are going."

"I just repeat the process of creating a new song then dismantling it," he adds.

At the ceremony, Pu and his band performed two songs from the album, the title track Orion and a song called Years of Innocence.

That night, 37 awards were announced. Singaporean singer-songwriter JJ Lin, or Wayne Lim Jun Jie, won the award for male vocalist of the year, while Taiwan singer Kulilay Amit, who is better known by her stage name A-mei, picked up the award for Female Vocalist of the Year.

Singer-songwriter Xu Jun was awarded Newcomer of the Year, while Beijing-based pop duo Mars Radio were named Group of the Year.

"It's been my dream to launch such a music award ceremony like the CMIC Music Awards, which aims to restore the dignity of China's music industry," says Song Ke, chairman of the China Music Industry Committee, a nonprofit organization which has more than 100 members belonging to record labels and distributors.

Song, the former head of Warner Music China and now the CEO of Ali Music Group, a division of e-commerce giant Alibaba, launched the CMIC Music Awards in 2017.

"There are many music awards in China which have celebrities, screaming fans and generous sponsors, but they are more about entertainment-they have nothing to do with music," says Song. "We want to recognize talented people in the music industry and encourage young musicians. More importantly, we seek to regain our industry's dignity, which we had lost."

In the early 2000s, due to rampant online piracy, record companies didn't consider it worthwhile to release albums and turned instead to managing artists' performances and advertising to provide their main source of revenue. And Song left the industry to open a restaurant since, as he put it, "people were willing to pay for their food but not the music they listen to".

The awards honor a diverse range of genres including pop, rock, hip-hop, jazz and classical music. It also recognizes the technicians, engineers and designers behind each album and song.

According to Xu Yi, the former CEO of Sony Music Entertainment China, president of the CMIC Music Awards committee, the jury panel consisted of 101 members from the China Music Industry Committee, all hailing from record labels and distributors. Veteran Taiwan songwriter and producer Jonathan Lee was invited to be their chief consultant.

"Before launching the CMIC Music Awards, we studied how prestigious music awards such as the Grammys and the BRIT Awards operate, because what we needed was to create a music award that was fair and had authority," Xu says.

For the first time, the CMIC Music Awards has two new categories: Best Children's Album and Best Original Soundtrack for a Video Game.

The winner of Best Children's Album is Rhyme of Ancient Poetry, which combines children's choirs with songs based on ancient Chinese poems. The album has seven songs composed by Chinese musicians, including Zhao Jiping and Zhao Lin.

"There are few songs written for Chinese children. The songs my daughter is listening to today are the same ones I listened to as a child. So, I'm glad to see that there is a music award to honor artists creating children songs. I hope it will influence more Chinese songwriters to fill this gap in the market," says Chen Danyang, the publisher of the album.

Contact the writer at chennan@chinadaily.com.cn