Zhou Long
Born Beijing, 8 July 1953

Eight Chinese Folk Songs

Zhou Long grew up surrounded by Western classical music, but during the Cultural Revolution he was sent to a remote farming area in northern China to work. After three years he transferred to a music and dance troupe in the province surrounding Beijing, and secretly took lessons with some of his mother's composer colleagues in the city. Beijing University reopened in 1977, and Zhou Long became one of the first students to enrol there in the new era, studying composition, conducting and Chinese traditional music.

In 1985 he took up a study fellowship at Columbia University, and he has lived in the United States since then. His music reflects both his Chinese and Western training, and has been described by the American Academy of Arts and Letters as “embedding elements of the two cultures in a consistent, seamless, and original musical language”. Zhou Long is Professor of Composition at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and has numerous accolades to his name, including a lifetime achievement award in 2003 from the American Academy, the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Music, and the 2013 Elise L Stoeger Prize for chamber music from the Lincoln Centre.

The Eight Chinese Folk Songs were published in 2002 and are arrangements of traditional hao zi labouring songs (with strong work rhythms), shan ge mountain songs (often using trills that enable the music to carry across long distances), and xiao diao folk songs used for entertainment.

In Lan hua-hua (from Shaanbei province) a girl escapes her arranged marriage and returns to her lover. Driving the mule team (Shanxi) tells of a girl looking for her sweetheart among the passing mule drivers. The flowing stream (Yunnan) is a love song, and in Jasmine flower (Jiangsu) the singer is overwhelmed by the flower's scent.
In contrast, A horseherd's mountain song (Yunnan) is about the basic chores of life. A girl sings When will the acacia bloom? (Sichuan) to cover her embarrassment when she is caught waiting for her lover under the acacia tree. A single bamboo can easily bend (Hunan) equates unity with strength, and in the final Leaving home (Shanxi) a woman farewells her husband who is going west to find work.

[Notes by Jane Dawson]