Folk songs of the Yellow River captivate Beijing audience

The Yellow River has carried more than water across northern China for thousands of years. Its people have also carried their stories, hopes and memories in song.

On Aug 21, the China National Traditional Orchestra brought those voices to the National Centre for the Performing Arts in Beijing with Travel with Folk Songs: Up the Yellow River, a concert exploring the river's rich musical heritage.

The concert was led by young conductors Wang Guanren and Liu Yu, with the orchestra's choir also performing. Feng Mantian served as a musical guide, weaving spoken poetry and music into a journey through the cultures along the river.

Structured in three sections: "Water", "Land" and "Love", the roughly 110-minute concert traveled from the upper reaches of the Yellow River toward the sea, using folk songs to explore the relationship between people and the land.

The program brought together different song styles from across the river basin and beyond, including the xintianyou folk songs of northern Shaanxi, the boatmen's work song, Inner Mongolia's long song tradition, and Gansu's hua'er.

Each song offered a different glimpse into local life.

The concert culminated in My Motherland, bringing the musical journey back to a shared national identity.

For this concert, traditional voices were joined by an ensemble featuring the ruan, morin khuur, erhu, suona, Chinese wind instruments and Chinese drums, alongside piano, guitar, double bass, synthesizer and percussion.

Travel with Folk Songs is a concert series launched by the orchestra in 2024. Its artists have traveled across China to collect and document folk songs, rework them for the stage and perform alongside local singers and inheritors of traditional music.