Tia Ray hits a high note

The acclaimed Chinese soul singer is about to launch her first English album after years of cross-cultural collaboration, Xing Wen reports.

The voice that first awakened Yuan Yawei's musical soul came from the dim, intimate heart of a Beijing jazz bar. There, as a young woman from Hunan province, she watched a singer pour raw soul into a wireless microphone while moving freely through the crowd.

In that moment, the sounds of American roots music washed over her with an intoxicating sense of liberation.

"I'd never seen a performance so thoroughly enjoyed, so full of pure joy," she recalls. That night ignited a spark that has fueled her unwavering artistic journey ever since. She evolved into the artist known today as Tia Ray, flowing effortlessly between soul, jazz, and R&B, mastering their rhythms, riffs, and phrasing with instinctive grace.

Once, she lived in a rented room in Beijing, saving from her food budget to buy English-language music CDs. She taught herself the language by copying lyrics by hand and imitating the voices of singers she admired.