HEIRLOOMS / The Teng Ensemble / Review

HEIRLOOMS
The Teng Ensemble
Esplanade Concert Hall
Friday (11 October 2019)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 14 October 2019 with the title "Chinese immigrant music given a fresh take".

What do immigrants from China do when they transplant themselves thousands of miles from their homeland to settle in Southeast Asia?  They bring along their musical cultures, mostly through oral tradition, create their own instruments, and pass these down to succeeding generations. All in the hope that younger ones will be receptive. That is how musical heritage survives, or risks being forgotten altogether.

Over four years, The Teng Ensemble has interviewed and recorded musical practitioners whose forebears arrived by sea from China’s southern provinces, namely Fujian (Hokkien), Chaozhou (Teochew) and Guangdong (Canton). Heirlooms is the 70-minute concert of music derived from these traditions, produced by Bang Wenfu and Joel Nah, accompanied by a documentary film directed by Koo Chia Meng.

Imagine the metamorphosis of music, through displacements in time and space, with the imbibing of modern popular culture, and one gets an idea of the music heard. Eight short works by New York-based Malaysia-born composer Chow JunYi were presented, each with roots in pre-existing music but transformed into something fresh out from the 21^st century.

The original creators will not recognise these slicked-up efforts, but hopefully some of the creator spirit remains. It was only appropriate that Teng Ensemble founder Samuel Wong gave a short preamble before opening the first piece, Tracing, with his nanpa solo. Lovebirds Singing In Harmony by Zhuo Sheng Xiang and late Cultural Medallion recipient Teng Mah Seng was the basis for this flight of fantasy. One interviewee on film quipped that Nanyin music initially felt like Chinese funeral dirges, but this updated take and Xin Zao Beh, a re-imagination of Nanyin classic Eight Horses, would completely change the script.

With house-lights dimmed to near darkness, and stage-lights taking over to illuminate soloists, the romp began. Allying Wong were eight players, equally spiffy in their designer suite, plying traditional Chinese (erhu, sheng, pipa, ruan and guzheng) and modern instruments (gehu or cello, keyboard, electric guitar and electronics).

Localised versions of certain instruments were also employed, including Cantonese gaohu and qinqin, Teochew zheng and pipa, with the intent that some authenticity was being preserved. The music was amplified and with projected visuals and strobe-lights, everything took on a psychedelic edge.  

Lovers of Cantonese music will recognise Chen Peixun’s Autumn Moon Over The Calm Lake and Yan Laolie’s Han Tian Lei (Thunder In Drought) in the mash-up titled Hang Gai. There was also a nod to film music with The General's Command (a melody later used in Once Upon A Time In China) incorporated into Contemporary. Here, a recording of drums and temple gongs from the Lao Sai Tao Yuan Teochew Opera Troupe was included into the mix.

There was also a tribute to the late Yeo How Jiang, a master of Waijiang (scholar music) and Teochew music, who was recorded and immortalised in Memoir. With the final work Far From Home, using four Teochew melodies, Teng Ensemble showed that the past is still relevant, if anything to inform the future.