On 7th of January Yunnan band Bagedai released their first international single ‘Nan Ai Er’. Part of an upcoming album - ‘Nan Ai Er’ - like the other tracks on the project, was recorded live (multitrack) at the historic Yunnan Publishing House Studio in Kunming.
This recording approach, led by technician Dou Ru Yi (recording and mixing) producer Sam Debell and band leader Lao You, hoped to capture the energy of Bagedai’s live performance - a band of twelve musicians, including five lead singers, infamous for stealing the show at the many festivals they have played since being established early in 2023.
Improvisational interactions between the musicians can be heard throughout the entire project, and these subtle groove elements add especially to ‘Nan Ai Er’s’ driving energy and the live, (untuned) vocals instantly add a human element that conjures the atmosphere of a Wazu village hoedown. The musicians in this project include some veterans of the late A Mei’s seminal band Sigangli, which first drew attention to Ximeng as a source of some of Yunnan’s most groundbreaking music in the late 2000s, along with some of the most promising next generation Wa musicians.
‘Nan Ai Er’ is an example of what would be called the Qing Ge (Love song) family of traditional Yunnan songs and retains the basic structure of traditional Wa music with the additional of modern instrumentation that harks back to a ‘Gewuting’ era (local dancehall) mixed with the reggae elements that have come to define the Ximeng sound in the last decade or so - cheeky and engaging and very very catchy.
#seaofwood #yunnanreggae #Bagedai #newsingle