Music wanders into the past

As autumn approaches, a millennium-old pagoda has become a meeting place for the past and the present.

The 2026 Heritage Resonance Music Festival opened on Sept 4 at the pagoda of Kaiyuan Temple in Dingzhou, Hebei province, bringing music to one of northern China's best-known historic landmarks.

Now in its sixth edition, the festival explores how historic buildings can be given new life through music and other art forms. This year's theme, "Wandering", connects heritage sites across Hebei, Tianjin and Beijing through performances, artist residencies, cultural talks and heritage education programs.

Rather than treating historic architecture simply as a backdrop for concerts, the festival seeks to make each building part of the artistic experience.

For the musicians, performing in these spaces is more than a concert in an unusual venue. It offers a chance to bring together different musical landscapes — from the grasslands of northern China to folk melodies rooted in the south — beneath the same ancient roof.

The opening performance was built around this idea of connection between north and south, says Halamuji, a 27-year-old musician from Bayannuur in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region. He performed khoomei, an ancient throat-singing tradition, and played the morin khuur, or horse-headed fiddle, during the opening concert.

Halamuji has gained a large following since taking part in the soundtrack production of the hit Chinese animated film Ne Zha 2 in 2025. He also performed at the festival last year.

"In the past, we might have focused mainly on Mongolian folk music," he says. "But now I think it is very interesting to bring together different ethnic traditions as we travel from south to north, or from north to south."

This year, he performed with musicians from across the country, along with 26-year-old Zamqagan, who is also from Inner Mongolia. Together, they shaped the musical character of the opening program.

Among the pieces was Shan'ge Haobi Chunjiang Shui (Folk Songs Are Like Spring River Water), a song associated with legendary folk singer Liu Sanjie and the folk traditions of the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region and southern China.

The program also incorporated Mongolian folk music — traditions the two young musicians grew up with.

For Zamqagan, who had never before performed in a historic architectural setting, the experience was particularly meaningful.

"The music of nomadic people belongs to nature," he says. "Now we have the opportunity to bring our music together with architecture."

The festival opened at Kaiyuan Temple, one of Dingzhou's most recognizable landmarks. Its 84-meter-high brick pagoda, dating to the Northern Song Dynasty (960-1127), is known as the "No 1 Pagoda of China".

For Halamuji, performing at an ancient architectural site is a rare opportunity.

"To me, performing in an ancient building is a luxury," he says. "It is not something you can do whenever you want."

Last year, he performed at the festival on an outdoor stage built around a historic theater in Yuxian, Hebei province. The experience left a lasting impression.

"The theater was very striking," he recalls. "It had a strong sense of history. The traditional architecture and its acoustics created a very special feeling."

His throat singing, he says, seemed to travel differently through space.

"There is a feeling of crossing through time," he says.

That dialogue between music and architecture lies at the heart of the festival, which was launched in 2021 as an experiment in bringing music and other artistic activities into historic buildings and heritage spaces while minimizing their physical impact.

This year's theme, "Wandering", turns that idea into a journey through architecture, music, geography and time. The festival will continue after the Dingzhou opening, linking historic sites across Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei.

"China's long history cannot be separated from its architectural spaces," says Yao Ying, curator of the festival. "Every building has a close connection with history, people and culture."

Classical music also featured in the program. On Monday, violinist Xu Ziman and cellist Liu Jiaqi performed at Dule Temple in Jizhou, Tianjin, known for its surviving Liao Dynasty (916-1125) wooden structures.

For Yao, the challenge is not simply to preserve historic buildings physically, but also to help contemporary audiences develop a relationship with them.

"Many cultural relics are closed to the public, or people encounter them only in museums or tourist attractions," he says.

The festival seeks another possibility.

Each performance begins with the site itself, Yao says.

"Every historic building is at the core of our stage design," he says.

Rather than imposing a standard concert format on different venues, the creative team develops each performance around the architecture, history and atmosphere of the site.

The organizers also work to minimize the physical impact of performances.

"Music is particularly suitable for heritage spaces because it causes very little physical impact," Yao says.

Many performances are small in scale and rely on natural acoustics rather than amplification.

"We often use the original sound," he says.

Ancient buildings do not have the carefully engineered acoustics of modern concert halls, Yao acknowledges.

"But the authenticity of that original expression is very precious."

For musicians accustomed to concert halls, live houses and television productions, that authenticity can create a different relationship with audiences.

Cai Kaidong, who will perform with his ensemble Tiam Drop, known for its contemporary interpretation and preservation of Nanyin, an ancient music tradition of his hometown Quanzhou, Fujian province, says audiences at heritage sites often respond differently from those at conventional live music venues.

"Their reactions are very real," he says. "It is different from performing at a live house or theater. They seem more immersed."

Tiam Drop has performed at the Heritage Resonance Music Festival three times. This year, the ensemble is performing on Friday at the Dingzhou Examination Hall in Hebei, the largest and best-preserved surviving ancient examination complex in northern China, first built during the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911).

"Music has become a way of encountering both cultural traditions and landscapes that might otherwise remain distant," Cai says.

"You come to understand how precious these buildings are," he says, "and how important it is to cherish them."