Concert in the Playground

Things have gotten literally a lot hotter around here and the outdoor festivities have begun!   Street vendors tow carts full of watermelons, guys have started wearing shorts, and girls have started wearing sandals.  Langfang shows all the signs of an oncoming summer.  To prepare, the school has been hosting a number of outdoor activities in which both students and teachers can participate.  Last week, I got to participate in an outdoor music concert.  About twenty-five talented young musicians from NCIAE gathered to play and sing.  One of the musicians was my student, Jay.  Jay called me up about three days before the performance and asked if I could fill in an extra spot in the show.  I gladly agreed.

Two days before the show, I showed up along with everyone else for the rehearsal.  A collection of freshmen to senior students all gathered with guitars in hand ready to play their hearts out.  We had a fairly sizable turnout including: three bands, a saxophone player, and about twelve solo guitarists.  Almost everyone decided to play a Chinese song, expect for the vocalist, who choose to sing an Adele song, "Rolling in the Deep."  I, too, ended up selected a Chinese song to play.  It was called, "Qing Fei De Yi" (Chinese: 情非得已; Pinyin: qíng fēi děi yǐ).  A song by Harlem Yu (Chinese: 庾澄庆; Pinyin: Yǔ Chéng Qìng), a Taiwanese singer who is renowned in China for his composing talents, Chinese TV hosting and traditional opera performances.  Jay told me that every young boy guitarist in China wants to learn this song to impress their girlfriends.  I wanted to learn it simply because my students asked.  It's one thing to play guitar and sing.  It's another thing to play guitar and sing in another language.  I learned the song through mimicry as the lyrics made no sense at first.  I downloaded the song off of iTunes and listened to it over and over again.  Finally I could repeat the song word for word.  It took a little extra time to understand the English translation.  It's an adorably cute love song about love at first sight.  However, the translation didn't help me play it any better.  I still had to sing in Chinese.

The night of the performance came and all of us gathered on the basketball courts outside of the library.  The stage was set and the students were gathering.  I was number 11 on the list.  We had some technical difficulties that kept us from starting on time.  But we got it worked out and the show went off without any more problems.  Our first act of the night was the vocalist and backup band playing Adele's, "Rolling in the Deep." Then went my buddy, Jay, with his guitar solo.  He is an extremely talented guitar player.  After that was several more guitar acts.  I was so nervous.  I always get nervous before a performance.  At around the eighth person, Jay came over to me looking quite worried.  Jay was the coordinator for the evening and I could tell something was going wrong.  He came over to me and said, "We need you to sing another song."  Apparently the person before me couldn't make it to the show and they had another slot they needed to fill.  I agreed and decided to play one of the songs I have been teaching my classes, "Down By The Water" by The Decemberist.  It went really well and the audience loved it.  I played the English song first and then pretended to leave the stage.  The announcer, another student of mine, knew what I was planning and we started acting like I was supposed to sing a Chinese song.  Of course, I acted like I didn't know any, but then I surprised everyone when I sat down and started singing in Chinese.  The crowd went wild!  It was my first time publicly performing a Chinese song so I shocked everyone in the audience.  I'm also extremely thankful for my good friend who accompanied me on the song.  Together we made it sound really good. 

The night ended with two live bands, one of which preformed death metal.  It was a little outside of the musical styling of the rest of the night.  But the students seemed to enjoy it.  The singer of the Death Metal band is actually one of my students.  He is a little shy guy that speaks in a soft voice.  It was fun to see him screaming his lungs out at the concert!  The night ended, we all gathered for a final bow, and the students left happy.