Old sweet songs

Photo by Jiang Dong/China Daily

Yan Sangong, 40, a farmer from the Blang ethnic group who lives near the border between China and Myanmar, came to Beijing to perform at the concert. The shy singer couldn't speak fluent Mandarin, but listeners found his guitar-like three-string instrument to be very expressive.

According to Hou, the Blang people are good at performing vigorous melodies with improvised lyrics. The Blang ballad was listed as one of China's Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2008, and Yan is an official inheritor.

"We have to keep that music alive onstage," says Hou.

Besides online sharing, Hou plans to launch a concert series, letting audiences experience ethnic cultures through their ancient music and film documentaries of their daily lives. Soon he will invite indigenous artists from the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, the Inner Mongolia autonomous region and Taiwan.

"Chinese audiences rarely get a chance to watch performances from real ethnic singers," says Yu Long, the Beijing Music Festival's founder and music director, noting that this year's ethnic music performances were a first for the festival.

"But as President Xi Jinping said at a symposium in Beijing recently, it's necessary to preserve such ethnic music and dance by offering more platforms for those artists," says Yu.