Migrant workers band together

Their mentor for the program, Shi Lu, iconic female drummer of rock band Hedgehog, while speaking highly of the lyrics abstracted from Hu's life experiences and the well-organized arrangement, pointed out to them that there's a long way to go before turning one's creativity and ambition into an accomplished, beloved piece of work.

Over the past three months, Hu practiced a lot, especially to follow the beat, but it still proved challenging. Yet, it was the time spent together creating and practicing that they enjoyed the most. They set up a new band along with a few others to try and spark some flames of inspiration.

Shi also shared with them ideas about how to run a band, coordinate with other partners and solve inevitable internal frictions, and how to extract life details and turn the inspiration into melody, says Wang Bo, another member.

Xie, who is an albino, and Chen are members of the band 8772, made up of seven young musicians who all deal with physical challenges, such as brittle bone disease and spinal muscular atrophy.

With the program, the band improved their skills in applying soundtrack recordings, rhythm sequencers and other techniques, while polishing arrangements of their songs created over the past six years and learned the basics of music video production.

They also got the opportunity to visit Taihe Music Group, a major Chinese record label, to gain a deeper understanding of how the music industry works.