If you stepped into a studio at China Central Television in Beijing last month, you would have found a world of bamboo musical instruments rendering a unique natural sound.

"Bamboo music has become part of my life, my faith and my dream," said Wang Wei, a 50-year-old musician who has been exploring and making bamboo musical instruments for more than a decade.

He and his band were recording their fourth compact disc.

Among the instruments they were using was the klong put, a Vietnamese instrument made from different lengths of bamboo, with each tube closed at one end.

If you clap your hands at the mouth of the bamboo tubes, the air forced down through the tubes will generate different pitches according to the length of the bamboo. The fantastic music is soft and gentle, like a lullaby.

Wang made all the bamboo instruments on his own.

"We are the only bamboo band in China," Wang proudly claimed. His wrinkled, deeply sun-tanned face beamed with a childlike smile whenever he spoke of his music.

Yet behind the smile is more than a decade of exploration filled with arduous joy.

Music perfectionist

When he began his research into making bamboo musical instruments in 1991, Wang was a performer in the Beijing-based Oriental Song and Dance Ensemble. The ensemble orchestra is composed of instrumentalists who play a wide range of Asian, African and Latin American musical instruments.

He had ample opportunity to learn about bamboo instruments from Asian countries.

One of the first bamboo instruments that caught his attention was the shakuhachi, or chiba in Chinese, a vertical end-blown bamboo flute with five holes introduced into Japan from China some 1,300 years ago.

The shapes and histories of these instruments inspired Wang to begin making his own bamboo musical instruments in 1992 and to create his own band.

His first masterpiece was a bamboo marimba, a kind of xylophone. Two groups of bamboo bars are lined up as keys, beneath which are resonating bamboo tubes. Marimba players produce music by striking the bars with a mallet.

"Ordinary xylophones usually have wooden bars and resonating tubes and produce crispy and sonorous sounds," he explained. "In contrast, the bamboo marimba can produce abundant tonal colours with a somewhat restrained flavour."

Wang has made over 30 bamboo instruments. There are a dozen different kinds of flutes in the band. The shortest is 4.6 centimetres while the longest one is 3.2 metres and weighs 5 kilograms.

While working on the instruments, he has taken care to make sure they encompass the same range of vocal parts as a standard orchestra for ensemble playing.

Wang specially loves the xiang, an ancient Chinese percussion instrument with a history of 2,000 years.

The xiang is composed of a collection of standing thick bamboo tubes filled with rice. While husking rice in a bamboo cask with a pestle, ancient farmers discovered different tones came out according to the amount of rice.

Wang's tedious work has turned the ancient percussion instrument into a set that produces the same range of pitches as the standard piano.

Yu Chunsheng, a senior music critic based in Beijing, praised Wang's efforts as a breakthrough in the history of Chinese folk music.

Moved by Wang's devotion to bamboo instruments, 17 instrumentalists gathered around him to form a band, exploring the possibilities of playing bamboo percussion and wind instruments during their spare time.

As they cannot afford to rent a rehearsal hall, the members often rehearse in Wang's living room, which has an area of merely 20 square metres.

Liu Huanan, who plays the dizi (bamboo flute) in the band, said: "We are convinced that bamboo music can and will add a new chapter to traditional Chinese music." Liu also plays the dizi with the Performing Arts Troupe of the People's Armed Police Force. "This faith has kept us together," he said.

New elements

Wang said his collection of bamboo instruments produces music of soft tones, not like the brilliant voices made by stringed and brass instruments such as the violin or French horn.

The band's repertoire ranges from Asian folk music to many pieces of Western music.

Ian Hunter, director-general of the International Network for Bamboo and Rattan, said: "I have no difficulty understanding the band's music, which shares many common traits with Western orchestras." Hunter attended a small concert given by the band in May in the Swiss Embassy in Beijing.

The band released their first CD in 1999, called Zhuyeqing (Green Bamboo Leaves), and the album has been quite successful. The band's music was recorded against a background of music from electric instruments to give it a richer ambience.

After this initial success, the Hong Kong Trends Record Co released more of the band's work under the title Zhuyin (Sound of Bamboo) in 2000. This disc won the China Record Society's Golden CD Award. The track list features popular Chinese folk songs such as Little Cabbage, with no electric instruments in the background.

Wang recalled: "I rejected the company's proposal that electric elements might add a pop flavour to the music, which usually attracts young people."

The fans' response justified Wang's opinion. The album sold 300,000 copies in China.

To Wang's surprise, the CD has also become a favourite among music lovers for testing the low vocal range of hi-fi equipment.

In 2002, Zhuhuahua (Bamboo Flowers) was released by the Hong Kong based Qiansi Culture Co. On this album, the band played household folk songs with a modern tempo.

Wang explained that the new CD includes many folk songs from other Asian countries, including the famous Japanese song "Red Dragonfly."

Wang Yueming, professor with the Chinese Central Conservatory, said: "It is not easy to adapt songs into bamboo instrumental music." The professor rewrote the scores of folk songs for the bamboo band.

"It has been a task to become familiar with the peculiar sonic traits of all these bamboo instruments so that the arrangements best represent the folk elements," he said.

In Zhuyin the backdrop is provided by percussion instruments such as xiang, whose deep bass sound successfully offers an exotic effect.

In his band's fourth CD, to be released next month, Wang Yueming made a bold experiment by using a huge bamboo flute to provide the background ambience.

Wang Wei said: "We hope that this CD will be a feast for the fans' ears through such fantastic sound effects. Our next goal is to make our music universal while keeping its unique flavour."

(China Daily September 9, 2002)