The Hanggai Band is performing
Members of the Hanggai Band were interviewed by reporters
Captain Ilyich
The scene of the performance
The just-concluded theme activity of "Night Yao Northern Xinjiang Qingcheng - Xinhua Square New Year's Eve Carnival Night" brought a shocking Chinese New Year's Eve cultural feast to Qingcheng residents and tourists, among which the appearance of the Hanggai Band near zero o'clock directly filled the New Year's Eve atmosphere. In an exclusive interview with reporters, the members of the Hanggai Band said that they deeply love the grassland culture, love the "Northern Xinjiang Culture", and publicize and protect the concept of national culture, which is the goal that the band has been striving for.
A band from the steppe
Hanggai, Mongolian means "a pure world with blue skies, white clouds, grasslands, rivers, mountains and forests". Founded in 2004 by 7 young Chinese Mongolian musicians, the Hanggai Band is one of the most prestigious Chinese bands on the international music festival stage today.
As a crossover group that integrates world music and rock music, their music comes from the vast Inner Mongolia prairie and is rooted in Beijing. The members of the band come from Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang, Qinghai and the capital Beijing. Because different regions have their own unique and long-standing musical traditions, the Hangai Band consciously selects the most representative folk melodies and endows them with unique interpretations and emotions, so that their works are full of national traditions while presenting contemporary characteristics and new ideas. They combine traditional Mongolian instruments such as horse-head violin, mouth strings, and sanxian with modern Western instruments such as electric guitars, electric basses, and drum kits, and at the same time incorporate the unique Mongolian vocal method - Humai.
The music of the Hangai band is varied, ranging from the embarrassing lullaby "Borulai" to the wild and unrestrained rain song "Urendusi". Since 2008, the band has released 4 albums and toured 100 performances at home and abroad.
According to reports, when the Hangai band first started, China's independent music had only developed for less than 20 years, and heavy metal, new metal and punk were the mainstream in this field. Hangai is one of a small group of local musicians who are beginning to think and try to develop in new directions, bringing their music closer to China's own musical roots. By 2005, the band had gained a sizable audience, many of them foreigners living and working in China, including a couple of artists from Germany, who interviewed and filmed some of the independent bands in Beijing and produced the documentary "Beijing Waves", which included Hanggai, which also made their fan base grow rapidly.
A band that promotes national culture
At 20:30 on December 31, 2023, the Hang Gai Band was interviewed by the media before the performance. The members of the Hanggai Band said that they were very happy to be able to return to Hohhot, Inner Mongolia to participate in the performance.
Ilich, the leader of the Hangai band, said that he had not participated in the New Year's Eve performance outdoors for many years, and he was very excited to return to his hometown to participate in the performance, and he believed that this performance would be a very rare performance. Today's Hohhot city is very livable, and the faces of the citizens are full of smiles, which makes people feel good. "Northern Xinjiang culture" is a hot word in 2023, and Iliqi has a more specific understanding of it: "I understand the 'Northern Xinjiang culture' as being able to run freely under the blue sky and white clouds and on the vast grassland in summer, and feel the most beautiful time of the year." In winter, you can watch the snow scene, play with ice and snow, and feel the charm of nature. ”
A band that goes global
"Music is not only national, but also global. For this sentence, the Hanggai band has a deep experience. Over the years, the Hangai Band has not only achieved musical results, but also exerted their influence outside of music. In 2010, the first Hanggai Music Festival was successfully held in Anlilong Villa, Shunyi, Beijing. Although the theme of the festival was not clear at the beginning, the direction was determined quickly, focusing on national and world music, and the Hanggai Band used its influence to invite outstanding domestic musicians and bands (such as the Shanren Band, Da Wanggang Band, etc.) to participate in the performance. Every year since, the Hangai Band has insisted on making the festival a goal in addition to performances, hoping to build the Hangai Music Festival into the best world music festival in China and attract outstanding musicians at home and abroad to participate.
"National culture is particularly precious, scarce, and irreproducible, so we must inherit and protect national culture well. Niu Xin, a member of the Hanggai band, said.
The grassland culture and the "Northern Xinjiang Culture" have a very far-reaching influence on the music creation of the Hangai Band. Ilich said that some of the songs included in the upcoming album are adapted from folk songs. The music itself comes from his hometown, so the new album was also created by drawing inspiration from his hometown. The melodious and ancient singing of the grassland has become a carrier for the band to record and witness, and at the same time express the members' respect for nature and their deep attachment to their hometown grassland.
The year 2024 marks the 20th anniversary of the establishment of the Hangai Band, during which the Hangai Band has recorded unforgettable moments with music and expressed respect for nature with singing. At present, the new album produced by the Hangai band to celebrate the band's 20th anniversary is in the process of selecting songs and preparations, but there is a song called "Time to Run", which will definitely surprise everyone.
(Text/Hohhot Evening News Reporter Ma Yan Text/Picture Reporter Wang Shaokai)