Old sweet songs

Artists from the Lisu, Blang, Lahu and Va ethnic groups performed at the Beijing Music Festival on Oct 17. The program, Walking on the Ancient Tea-Horse Road, brought art forms from eight ethnic groups of Yunnan province to audiences. Photos by Jiang Dong/China Daily

Performances by indigenous musicians from Yunnan give a new flavor to the Beijing Music Festival, Chen Nan reports.

At 52, A Benzhi can still clearly recall images of his father getting up before sunrise to work on the farm and returning home after sunset every day over four decades ago.

Beyond that diligence, what lingers in A's memory is his father's singing of Meng Hua Diao, or Menghua melody, the oldest music of the Yi ethnic group performed in local dialect. Menghua is the old name of Nanjian county, where A Benzhi lives.

"My father sang those songs all the time. He was a good man and he loved those songs. Even in his last days, he murmured the melodies lightly until he passed away at 70," recalls A Benzhi, who was born in a small village of Nanjian Yi autonomous county in the Dali area of Yunnan province. The Yi people have lived there for generations.

He followed in his father's footsteps to learn the art form of Menghua. He also started collecting traditional Yi music after he graduated from high school in 1978.

As the most educated man in his village then, A Benzhi worked as a clerk in a cultural center before he began devoting all his time to protecting Yi music in 1984.