The Spring Festival Gala: a Chinese celebration beyond borders
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From the United States to Brazil, Kenya to Spain, and on to Australia, France, Russia, and the United Arab Emirates, these eight countries have recently hosted special events in the lead-up to one of China's most anticipated annual celebrations, the Spring Festival Gala, the nation's premium televised variety show to celebrate the Lunar New Year.

Over the past few days, these overseas events have offered a global prelude to the gala, which is set to go live on the evening of January 28th, this year's Lunar New Year Eve. In today's special episode, we're joined by musician Huang Ye, who performed at the New York event,

He'll share his experience of being part of the prelude celebration and discuss how the Spring Festival Gala has evolved over the years forging new traditions while honoring its roots It's Monday, January 27th

So I saw that post of you being part of the prelude event in New York City for the Spring Festival Gala and you performed a jazzy version of a mixture of On the Sunny Side of the Street and also a Chinese piece of Jin She Kuang Wu. And by the way, is there an official name for this Chinese piece, Jin She Kuang Wu? I translated it into The Dance of the Golden Snake.

Oh, the Dance of the Golden Snake. Pretty accurate. Yeah. So both two pieces are iconic songs from the 1930s. And how did you come up with the idea of pairing and mixing these two pieces? And did the audience in New York City love it?

So I can trace it back to when I first came back to China in 2021. I experimented a lot of mixture between the Chinese elements and the jazz elements because they're both my roots. I grew up in China, but I moved back to New York when I was 11. So I understand the both cultures, but only a little bit. So I think...

dig into the both side of the cultures when I came back to China. So I experimented how to use the Chinese elements such as the elements of five, the elements of pentatonic and rhythms. So experimenting

four years, the result is one of these pieces, the Dance of the Golden Snake. Because they're both iconic songs from the 1930s. The Dance of the Golden Snake was written in 1934 and On the Silent Side of the Street was written in 1930. So I wanted to combine those pieces that were written nearly 90 years ago to a new extent to

the audience understand and listen to today. So because they resonate with both cultures, so the Chinese people always hear the dance of golden snakes every new year. And also on the southern side of the streets, also iconic American song when they listened, like every time they have a bad mood or bad attitude,

So always look at the bright side. So they both are very vibrant and traditional and also new to our younger generations. So combine those, I thought it would be interesting to blend both styles from different cultures. At the prelude to the Spring Festival Gala in New York, were there other performances at the event that have blended Chinese and Western music styles?

Yeah, one of the choir sung by the Young Kids Choir from Washington, that was very interesting. Because it's also a trending video in China, young kids singing Chinese, young American kids singing Chinese. So I think there's a great example of cross-cultural exchange and singing both languages at the same time, also bringing the cultures together.

There's another performance that particularly stood out because it was a sign language performance paired with singing. So the singer was singing but also signing in sign language at some time. So that was very emotional to me because I can understand how she wanted to portray herself and also give it up. The sign language, the deaf people are also very important in the musical world. It must be very difficult to practice.

So this event in New York was one of the eight performances around the globe. That's for warming up for this upcoming, the biggest annual celebrations TV show in China, which is actually taking place

tomorrow evening, as we were having this conversation one day before the Spring Festival Gala goes live on air. So as the prelude to this Spring Festival Gala, do you think the Gala itself is gaining more popularity, like being watched, being welcomed among its American audiences?

I think absolutely, because last time I was in CCTV annual Spring Gala was last year. And it was very sensational to me because I never thought that China would put out a great show internationally in both countries.

a board and also a home. So, I mean, there's still a lot of room to grow because we can capture more attention from other media, for example, the US media, to benefit to more diverse and more international way of bringing our Chinese elements and Chinese tradition to the world. And also, I mean, last time I saw their

only a few Chinese people on stage, but this year it's much more. Chinese artists, renowned artists on stage. I mean, in the future, I would love to have more like Chinese artists, Chinese musicians and like renowned musicians to show up in this gala to showcase that China also has a great audience base, also like musicians.

So you had the honor to perform on the prelude event to the Spring Festival Gala in New York and to me that feels like

quite a big honor but just out of curiosity have you had a chance to perform in on the actual spring festival gala yet no yes but in the future i would love to yeah i must be looking forward to that right is that like one of the the biggest owners as an artist as a musician i mean to perform on the spring festival gala yes it's one of my dream actually because um one of my dream in this

past few years is to merge more of myself and also with Chinese elements because I grew up with different cultures, two cultures actually. So I understand both but I want to create something like that belongs to me and also I have the elements of both cultures.

So I would love to have more like Chinese jazz and Chinese based compositions to put out a great show in the future.

And being part of the prelude event might have set you on the path to performing on the Spring Festival Gala. So fingers crossed for that. Thank you. Now let's get into some technicalities. So from a musician's perspective, this gala went from a domestic tradition to a global, now a global live streamed event.

Is it challenging to recreate the same immersive sound experience for viewers at home, especially when we're talking about music performances? Creating immersive sound for viewers at home is always a challenge for musicians, for live performances, but especially with people who want to create interactions in person.

So we did our best to create appearance wise, we did our best to create so we get eye contact with the audience with cameras. But I mean, it's difficult to perform and replicate the live energy through a screen. But we work hard to have interactions with live musicians, live audience, and to ensure that the viewing experience is as engaging as possible.

Now we are having the conversation one day before the actual Spring Festival Gala takes off for the upcoming year of the snake.

And as we were talking about this earlier, so this biggest annual event kind of started from an era in China when there wasn't much entertainment around the country. But now at this biggest annual celebration is facing the challenge of competing from diverse forms of entertainment in China. So have you noticed that

any changes or adaptations in the music performances on the Spring Festival Gala to try to keep the Spring Festival Gala stay relevant to the modern times? Yes, I noticed a difference because the trending side of the music and also performance is always upcoming trends. As I talked earlier, there's a show that has American kids singing in Chinese.

And that's never before, I think, in all the similar I have seen in America. And because Chinese is not easy to sing, because I can tell they practice in words than the music. So they are actually singing like perfect Chinese. So we all feel like, wow, very shocked and also loved to have like American, the younger generations, US kids singing in both languages.

And also the sign language is also a very interesting part because the sign language influence is upcoming more and more. There are a lot of people who understand but cannot hear.

that understand the music, so what we're doing. So I think that's a huge trend in the diversity between the people and all the arts. The innovative touches of those shows are great and I believe the GALA can do much more and in the future part, bring both the best of Chinese and the best of American. Yeah, so with the...

the cross-cultural exchanges, as well as being more inclusive to audiences with physical struggles, then this Spring Festival Gala is opening itself to a wider range of audiences. And now the last question, just very briefly, as an audience and potential performer on the Spring Festival Gala, do you have any future expectations on how this Gala might look like someday in the future?

Okay, it will be featuring my big band for sure, because I'm leading up a jazz big band, but also made up of all Chinese, of the greatest Chinese musicians I can find in China. I'm the youngest.

because I want to build a new generation of the superstar of jazz and try to bring it abroad and also touring in China. So you'll be featuring my big band and we're going to do a few of the arrangements such as the... because I'm writing a song, I'm writing a speech actually, a bind of all the Changjiang river areas and

arranging their best music. For example, in Sichuan we have Kang Dingqin Ge, in Hunan where we're from is Liu Yanghe, and in Shanghai it's like Ye Shanghai. So I'm trying to merge all the famous traditional songs and arrange it to a jazz element.

and bring it to an entire suite. So the suite is about 60 minutes of 11 songs. So I want this to be part of the future performance I have in the Spring Gala. We'll all be looking forward to that, a mixture of cultures across the borders. Thank you very much, Huang Ye, for speaking with us. Thank you so much.

This brings us to the final episode of Deep Dive in the Year of the Dragon, brought to you by me, Li Yunqi, and my colleagues Zhang Zhang and Qi Zhi. Special thanks to Huang Ye for sharing his insights with us. See you in the Year of the Snake.