Rock musician Su Yang performs in a concert. Su has won millions of fans with his folk-rock compositions. [Photo by Gao Peng/China Daily]

When rock musician Su Yang traveled from Beijing to Yanchi in Northwest China's Ningxia Hui autonomous region last winter, he listened to Liu Shikai playing the sanxian (a three-stringed plucked instrument) and singing old folk songs.

Su, 47, was in the county with a video documentary team.

One of the songs that 60-year-old Liu sang was Pearl Roller Shutter.

"Those songs are about old legends, love stories and scenes from daily lives. Some of the songs are just melodies and a few lyrics," Su says.

His third album to be released in October has been adapted from folk tales of the region.

Since 2003, the rock singer-songwriter has been traveling around China to gather material about folk music in the northwest. As a popular performer at outdoor musical events and indie live-house venues across China, Su has won millions of fans with his folk-rock compositions.

"I am fascinated with folk songs. They deserve a revival. They may not be grand in today's terms but what attracts me the most is that they are about common people's lives," says Su, who has given nearly 20 shows at Chinese music festivals in the first half of the year.

His latest project, Yellow River, aims to showcase folk art of northwestern China. The first concert for the project was held in Tianjin on May 21 and the second will be held in Beijing on July 24.

Born in Wenling, a small coastal city in East China's Zhejiang province, Su moved to Yinchuan, capital of Ningxia, as an 8-year-old along with his parents. The change of living environment made him anxious and rebellious as he grew up. Wenling was greener compared with Yinchuan.

At 16, after listening to a classmate playing the guitar when he studied in Xi'an in Shaanxi province, also in the northwest, Su was drawn to the sound and bought one himself. Within a year he became one of the best guitar players in his school. In 1995, he founded his rock band, Transparent, and built a fan base in Yinchuan.

But singing Western rock wasn't enough to convey his thoughts to the world. In 1999, his band was dismantled.

"The music I played didn't belong to me," he says. "At the time, the more I played rock music, the more I recalled the folk songs that I listened to while growing up."

In 2001, he was inspired by a blues album and began to combine rock with hua'er, a traditional folk song genre from the country's northwest. Su's idea proved successful when he performed several rock songs, based on hua'er, at a small teahouse in Yinchuan two years later.

"When we did the sound check ahead of the show, people complained about the noise. But when we started to perform, they gathered around," he recalls. "A catchy tune easily attracts people."

"These songs belong to the local people," he says of his folk-influenced music.

After that, he went on trips to remote northwestern towns to seek more folk songs. By talking to old artists, he learned a variety of singing styles. He sang along with the singers and gathered information about techniques. The more he learned about folk art, the more confident he became about his music. He had finally found what he had been looking for all his life.

In his album, Like a Grass, released in 2010, Su covered a traditional hua'er, titled The Night Journey, which tells a man's secret date with the woman of his dreams.

One of the songs from the second album, The Song of Shout, has been used in the film Song of the Phoenix, which was directed by the late Chinese filmmaker Wu Tianming.

The art-house film depicts two generations of suona players, who dedicate their lives to the traditional Chinese instrument.

The upcoming album will continue the style and display the folk songs he has accumulated in the past few years.

"When I drank with the local people, they often sang to express their relationship with the land," he says. "Now, I want to go further back to the days when such songs were created. There is much to do with folk music－like a hidden gem to me."