Why are the Flowers so Red

[gawn]

I love to travel musically, discover and explore old and new musical cultures. While this has led me to collect a hole load of instruments (mostly woodwinds) from all over the world - I sadly find that I don't have enough time to practice and learn to play them all to at a level where it would be enjoyable to listen. So I concentrate on practicing my main instrument - the oboe - and play around with the other instruments in the spare time. On the other hand I am keen to take my oboe to new grounds and I was more than happy when I found a number of music books with Chinese pieces arranged for flute or violin that turned out to be perfectly playable on the oboe as well. One such piece, contained in a book 'Melodies of China' by Han Guoliang ( www.schott-music.com/shop/1/show,233233.html ), captured my attention immediately: 花儿为什么这样红 (Why are the Flowers so Red). All information given by the book was that this is a song of the Tajik minority. Playing it on my oboe, my imagination began to travel on the ancient silk road, taking a rest in the oasis of Kashgar where people from China met with those from Turkestan and further west.

After a bit of research on the internet, I found out that this song appears to be very popular in the Chinese speaking world and widely known.

Supposedly it's based on a Tajik song called 'Gulbita' (?), but the version contained in my book is an adaptation by Lei Zhenbang that he wrote for the movie "Visitors to the Ice Mountain" (冰山上的来客), released in 1963. The song appears here as a male/female duet in what I believe is Mandarin rather than Tajik, accompanied on a sanxian (? - or some Tajik/Uygur lute?).

More recently a TV version (2006) and an opera (!) (2005) have been made based on this movie, both containing new performances of Lei Zhenbang's version of the song.

Here are a few versions: youtu.be/PefCjyEK_eo
0:00-1:39: Lei Zhenbang's Version from the 1963 Movie;
1:40-3:26: TV version 2006
3:27-7:20: Opera 2005
7:21-9:47: a version of the original Tajik song

Additionally there are dozens of different versions of it on youtube and elsewhere - from rather traditional to pop and rock:

Erhu (?) & Oboe, with beautiful dance performance:
youtu.be/OZtEpGgvIwY

Pop (?):
youtu.be/VEBqz6isxks

Classical:
youtu.be/vSq0lZFdMY8

And many others.

I thought it's a nice story to share with you... does the song tell you anything? Any recollections, stories or associations?


Cheers,

Georg

[sanmenxia]

I haven't heard it before but it's a nice tune!

The song, as from the film:


For recorder in Western notation:


For piano:

[davidmdahl]

I like it! Another song from the same region is "The Tulufan Grapes are Ripe":

www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkzuBY7-faQ

This is a lot of fun to play in an ensemble:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHeuGwu9hgY

I don't know how close the Tajiks are to the Uyghurs culturally, but the music seems similar.

Best wishes,

David