Old opera, new beat

Under the lights at a limestone rock site in Guizhou province, singer-songwriter Zhu Jingxi, known by her stage name Akini Jing, and rapper-producer Zhou Mingjiang, known by his stage name Lionman, share the stage with the inheritors of Dixi Opera, one of the region's most distinctive traditional art forms.

Dressed in elaborate costumes with colorful pheasant feathers on their backs, the Dixi Opera performers chant, sing and spar, bringing an ancient battlefield story to life.

Beside them, Akini and Lionman — wearing vividly painted wooden masks — respond with a contemporary musical interpretation, blending electronic beats with the rhythm of drums and gongs.

This collaboration appears in Echoes of the Highland, Guizhou's first music-and-culture mini-documentary series.

The nine-episode production follows musicians as they travel across all nine prefecture-level regions of Guizhou, working with around 300 local inheritors of intangible cultural heritage, folk singers and ethnic musicians.

Since its release at the end of 2025, the series has presented Guizhou's rich musical landscape as a "sound journey through Guizhou", combining field recordings, traditional performances and contemporary production.

In one episode, Akini and Lionman travel to Anshun, a city known for its Tunpu culture. Dating back more than 600 years to the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), Tunpu culture emerged when soldiers and merchants from Central China settled in Guizhou and gradually integrated with local communities.

For Akini, who comes from neighboring Yunnan province, the journey offered a rare, close-up encounter with Dixi Opera and its living performance tradition.

"I joined the trip with a strong sense of curiosity and exploration," she said."Everything felt new to me, and there were so many cultural elements to take in."

There, Akini met Dixi Opera performers and mask makers and even learned some of the opera's movements herself.

What left the deepest impression on her was the portrayal of the legendary female general Mu Guiying.

"Unlike many modern interpretations that emphasize her toughness, Dixi Opera preserves Mu Guiying's softness and femininity," Akini said.

"The way she walks, her gestures and her singing style all retain a kind of feminine grace. Even though she is a warrior, the tradition never imposes fixed ideas of how she should look or behave," she added."That portrayal really moved me."

That encounter became the emotional starting point for the episode's musical reinterpretation. When Akini and Lionman later began working on a song inspired by Mu Guiying, they moved away from formal historical storytelling and focused on emotional resonance, choosing a more intuitive approach guided by what they had seen, heard and felt during the journey.

For example, they recorded sounds across Guizhou, from echoes inside caves and the resonance of stone formations to local mountain folk songs, Miao lusheng (a bamboo reed-pipe instrument) performances and other vocal traditions they collected along the way.

These field recordings formed the foundation of their creative process.

From there, the two wove traditional elements together with contemporary production techniques, including bass-heavy "808" drum patterns and reggae-inspired rhythms. The final track blends dialects, Dixi Opera percussion, environmental sounds and folk singing with hip-hop beats and electronic textures.

For Lionman, this kind of creation depends on direct engagement with place and performance.

"When you actually go into the villages and hear the waterfalls, the caves and local singers in person, the inspiration is completely different from watching videos online," he said. "Being close to people and nature sparks a different kind of creative energy."

Lionman's openness to varied sound worlds is rooted partly in his own musical background. As a teenager, he was drawn to hip-hop through basketball culture and beatboxing. He later studied both Western and traditional Chinese instruments, including the piano and the guqin (a seven-stringed Chinese zither).

For him, Chinese and Western music reflect different ways of thinking.

"The guqin is very introspective," he said. "It's quiet, almost as if you're playing for yourself. Many Western instruments are louder and more outwardly expressive."

That sensitivity to contrasting musical textures shapes how he works with multiple musical elements. Rather than keeping them separate, he aims to let them interact naturally.

"Everything is connected," he said. "Different musical cultures can inspire each other."

Beyond Anshun, Echoes of the Highland also visits Qiannan Bouyei and Miao autonomous prefecture, where musicians collect elements of the Yao monkey drum dance; Suojia Miao village, where long-song singing and the Miao three-hole xiao flute become part of a broader musical dialogue; and the streets of Guiyang, capturing everyday urban soundscapes alongside rural traditions across the province.

Through these encounters, the series traces Guizhou not as a preserved archive of traditions, but as a living soundscape — one where old forms continue to evolve through contact, listening and exchange.