Las Vegas musician helping preserve Chinese folk music, instruments

By Cristina Chang

Friday, Aug. 3, 2012 | 2 a.m.

Balancing the morin khuur base between his knees, Las Vegas-based instrumentalist Hong Wang uses his right hand to slide a bow smoothly across the instrument. The fingers on Wang’s left hand glide between the dual strings in a flurry of movement as his head swings to the mellow tune.

The morin khuur is a Mongolian instrument that looks like a banjo, plays like a violin and produces a melody that sounds like that of a cello.

For Wang, 53, Chinese folk music and the instruments used to play it have become a way of life. He has instructed a Chinese ensemble in California, has toured in Europe and has performances lined up this summer at New York’s Lincoln Center Festival and Las Vegas’ MGM Grand.

His music, with its somber melody evoking life in China’s rustic past, may be recognizable to many in the under-20 crowd who have watched “The Legend of Korra” and “Kung Fu Panda” on TV.

Wang is a calm, modest man whose eyes light up when he talks about music. Without it, he says, life would be boring.

“You can use words to express thoughts, but through music, I can do the same thing,” he said.

He shrugs off compliments on his talent, pointing instead to other musicians, such as Yo-Yo Ma. But he acknowledges there are few musicians in the world like him who can play both woodwind and string Chinese instruments.

Wang grew up in China performing Beijing opera as a child. By high school, he was composing his own music. He picked up music in part to avoid being sent to work in the countryside, but he eventually grew to love the art.

When China opened its universities to the masses in the late 1970s, Wang had to wait an extra year because, he said, his family background was not considered politically pure enough. He eventually worked his way up to a professorship at Jiangsu Province Institute of the Arts, collecting and researching Chinese folk music.

In 1995, he immigrated to the United States seeking opportunities to showcase his craft. He settled in San Francisco, where he co-founded the Chinese performance group Melody of China.

Ten years later, he returned to China to conduct fieldwork to preserve the music of dying folk musicians. He collected more than 300 songs through interviews with folk musicians, some so old they died within months of Wang’s visit. During the Cultural Revolution, many of the musicians were purged by the Communist regime. Records of old songs were destroyed and preserved only through memory.

“Tradition is the most useful source for creative music,” Wang said. “The things we do now are based on tradition. ... If we don’t have a past, we don’t have a future.”

In 2008, Wang joined the flow of immigrants moving to Las Vegas. He laughs and says that when he arrived, his friends asked him why he would want to move to the desert. His bamboo flutes cracked in the Nevada heat, forcing him to switch to wooden ones.

But Wang said he reveled in the excitement of Las Vegas’ 24/7 pace and world-renowned entertainment culture. Furthermore, not many people in Las Vegas had mastered his niche. Best of all, he said, the move allowed him at least a temporary escape from Los Angeles traffic.

In 2010, Wang partnered with the Las Vegas Philharmonic to create a concert, but his chief sponsor passed away and the funding dried up. The concert was called off.

Undeterred, Wang formed Las Vegas’ first Chinese ensemble, the Beijing Trio, this year. For three months, they played at the Bellagio Conservatory, introducing visitors to Chinese folk music and attracting onlookers from all different backgrounds and ethnicities, with some standing for more than an hour to listen.

Nowadays, Wang sells hard-to-find Chinese musical instruments and serves as executive director of the Sunway Universal Foundation, which seeks to promote and secure funding for up-and-coming Chinese artists.

Composer Albert Chang first met Wang when Wang called on Chang in Los Angeles to deliver Chinese instruments. Chang since has collaborated with Wang on a number of compositions.

Chang describes Wang as a “down-to-earth fella.”

“He understands that being a musician can be a tough gig, but he’s always an optimistic person who brings a lot of positive energy,” Chang said.

Every two weeks, Wang drives to Los Angeles to record music composed for Nickelodeon.

“It’s been an incredible education working with Hong,” said Jeremy Zuckerman, an Emmy Award-winning composer who has collaborated with Wang on music for more than 50 episodes of “Kung Fu Panda” and “The Legend of Korra.”

Wang will add little, stylistic embellishments to the music that a Western composer cannot write, Zuckerman said. It is these articulations that bring the music to life and add extra depth, Zuckerman said.

To Wang, the musical style is defined not by its instruments but by its melody. He would like to see more community events in Las Vegas and is working to bring a music festival featuring a fusion of Western and Chinese music. His hope is to bring young musicians together to create music everyone can relate to and bridge the culture gap.

Wang will be in the orchestra playing the erhu, a two-stringed fiddle, tonight at the MGM Grand Conference Center during the Sunway Universal Foundation’s tribute to Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Zhou Long. And in January, Wang will join the Beijing Trio in playing for the Las Vegas Arts Council’s Downtown Cultural Series.