China's first official campus music festival kicked off on
Sunday in Beijing, aiming to promote the creation of original
campus music, a process which has been cooling down in recent
years. The music festival will last six months.
Over 100 colleges and universities have participated and will
vote for a dozen awards entitled "College Students' Favorites"
during this festival.
Director, Feng Xiaogang and pop singers Zhang Yadong, Xiaoke
attended the opening ceremony, acting as representatives of the
"Honor Group", along with established national musicians, Gu
Jianfen and Qiao Yu.
Some one hundred famous people from the art circle will form
this "honor group", striving to enlarge the influence of campus
music. People on the "Honor Group" list also include renowned
musician Tan Dun, Ma Youyou, well-known pop singer Cai Qin, Emil
Chau, Andy Lau and big names from the film circle, such as An Lee,
Zhang Yimou, Feng Xiaogang, and Hong Kong comedian Stephen
Chau.
The theme song of this festival will be created in an
unprecedented relay-race-like way, such that famous musician Qiao
Yu and Yan Su write the first and last sentence of the lyrics
respectively, while the middle part will be left to the
brainstorming of college students.
Waves of campus music have hit the country twice in the past.
The first craze came around the middle of the 1980s, led by Taiwan
male singer Luo Dayou.
Then not until 1990, when two mainland singers, Gao Xiaosong and
Lao Lang, came onto the stage, did campus music once again gain a
stronger foothold in the music world. The two have created a number
of campus ballads, each striking a chord with contemporary college
students.
However, the past decade didn’t see any obvious rise of campus
music. This initial campus music festival has therefore been
launched, in an attempt to encourage more original campus music and
sustain a new drive in the development of Chinese musical
culture.
(CRI.cn April 23, 2007)