At the 2002 Spring Festival Gala, a group of girls dressed in gorgeous Hanfu attracted everyone's attention, and the song they played made countless audiences deeply shocked, and the whole scene resounded with continuous applause.
The "Twelve Women's Bands" are this group of girls, and they are the inheritors of the traditional Chinese nation. Since the Spring Festival Gala performance, the Women's Twelve Orchestra has become famous and has been widely welcomed in China.
After the Women's Twelve Orchestra had just gained popularity in China, it decisively gave up the Chinese market and turned to Japan for development.
Has their hope of becoming famous in Japan now been realized?
In 2001, a new folk music group full of Chinese tradition was quietly established in Beijing. The group, called the "Twelve Women's Orchestra", is made up of 12 talented women from top academies across China, with an average age of only 20 years old.
Under the careful planning of the founder Wang Xiaojing, the 12 girls have their own unique skills, they play or blow, they are good at the fingering of the guqin, the sound of the guzheng is clear, and some play Xiao Sheng, with a fresh rhyme. This unique folk ensemble is composed of them.
Wang Xiaojing has been an amateur folk music lover for many years, and he has been closely following the development of Chinese tradition in contemporary society.
Chinese people respect the Korean Wave and the Japanese Wave from abroad, and have gradually neglected the inheritance of national culture. Seeing this phenomenon, Wang Xiaojing came up with the idea of bringing Chinese folk music back to the stage.
He painstakingly visited art schools across the country to find students with a talent for folk music. After many screenings and assessments, the extraordinary "Women's Twelve Orchestras" was finally successfully established.
Wang Xiaojing carefully selected 12 different ethnic instruments and designed Chinese stage art to perfectly blend tradition and modernity to create a unique combination form.
After half a year of intense running-in, the 12th Women's Orchestra is finally ready to meet the challenge of its first performance.
In a theater in Beijing, in October 2001, the heavy red curtain slowly rose, and the stage was lined up with 12 girls wearing Hanfu, their expressions were serene and beautiful, as if they were **fairies descending into the world.
As the crisp whistle continues, the 12 instruments begin to play the prelude, as if a flock of birds spread their wings and fly like a trickle into a river.
The fingering of the girls dances and plucks the notes, vividly presenting the beauty of traditional Chinese to the audience. The audience was intoxicated and kept giving warm applause.
Although the three-hour performance of the 12th Women's Orchestra was short, it left an unforgettable shock and emotion for the audience. When they finished singing, the audience burst into thunderous applause, and the 12 girls smiled and thanked each other, their faces flushed.
The first performance of the 12 Women's Orchestra made them famous, and they soon became a domestic first-line star band, and launched a nationwide tour, using ethnic elements to interpret modern stage art, which won wide acclaim.
In 2002, the Women's 12th Orchestra appeared on the stage of CCTV Spring Festival Gala, and its pure Chinese style ensemble became the highlight of the night, deeply imprinted in the hearts of hundreds of millions of audiences, and since then, the Women's 12th Orchestra has become famous.
Under the leadership of Wang Xiaojing, the Women's Twelve Orchestra set its sights on the international market in 2003 and successively entered the world of Japan and the United States.
They signed with a major Japanese entertainment company and released their first **.
At that time, there was a rise in Japanese society"Chinoiserie"The Twelve Women's Orchestra, a unique form of Chinese folk music, immediately attracted the attention of a large number of Japanese music fans.
It exceeded 100,000 on the first day of release, and the total sales exceeded 1 million within a month, setting a number of Japanese sales records.
In Tokyo, the members experienced life in a foreign country for the first time, and at first the language barrier caused many difficulties in their lives, but when they felt the enthusiastic response from the audience on stage, all the difficulties became insignificant.
Fans of the 12 Women's Bands stood under the stage chanting their names and handing out flowers. After each performance, the members will get together to taste Japanese food and talk about some little secrets in their creation.
Their young hearts are surging because of their love for ** and dreams. In order to spread the word better**, the Girls 12 Orchestra is intensively learning Japanese in order to better communicate with Japanese fans and teams.
They need to not only memorize the pronunciation of the lyrics, but also learn how to greet and express gratitude in everyday life. The members overcame the jet lag and struggled to adapt to the pace of work and life in a foreign country.
Their visit to Japan not only raised the international profile of the 12 Women's Orchestra, but also promoted them to be more professional and global in their art.
They deeply felt that the power of ** can transcend national boundaries and language barriers, and reach people's hearts, which strengthened their determination to promote Chinese folk music to the international stage.
After the 12 Women's Orchestra returned to China, they paid more attention to the world view in their creation and performance, and strived to make each piece present a global perspective.
They also have an open and humble mind, absorb excellent elements from all over the world, and constantly enrich their own vocabulary.
They use ** as evidence to show that as long as they are attentive, there will be a deep resonance between different cultures.
After successfully exploring the Japanese market, the 12th Women's Orchestra began to set foot in the distant Atlantic of the United States.
They went through many twists and turns to make it to the billboard charts and put on a spectacular performance at the esteemed Grammy Awards.
American audiences were fascinated by the exotic "Chinese Girl", and the Girls Orchestra further expanded its presence on the international stage.
However, good fortune doesn't last forever, and just as their careers are booming, the 12-piece band is gradually revealing its dark side.
With the passage of time, the differences in personal emotions and concepts have become increasingly prominent, resulting in some core members choosing to leave one after another, and new members are also facing the challenge of integrating into the team.
On stage, the tacit understanding between the members gradually weakened, and there was a rift in their relationship. "We're always arguing over little things, and it's no longer our common language. A former member recalled.
Their 12 Orchestra Workshops have now become overly reliant on commercial performances, and the piano and flute are no longer the main driving force for their creations, but have been replaced by frequently scheduled commercial tours.
The core of the * is gradually lost, and the interest of the audience is also declining, and some members start to take frequent leave, "I'm so tired, I just want to find a place where no one knows me to rest." One member said.
The gradual deterioration of the team atmosphere, the phenomenon of intrigue and faction is quietly spreading, these subtle changes indicate that the 12 women's orchestra has fallen into a trough, and it is too late.
In 2005, due to the obvious decline in the performance of the 12 Girls in the Japanese market, the Japanese agency announced that it had terminated the contract with them, because the cooperation between the two parties had become meaningless.
Now, after the 12 Women's Orchestra returns to China, it is difficult to cause too much of a sensation again in the rapid changes in the music scene.
They have lost their past glory and are left to survive on a few small commercial gigs.
Beginning in 2018, they entered a five-year period of silence, during which their fans became fewer and smaller, and their former glory was gone, and everything changed.
The core members of the team have left one after another, and the substitutes have also left in a hurry, and they are all pursuing their dreams. When we reunite occasionally many years later, everyone is already in their last years, and only the memories of the past will remain in our hearts.
The Women's Twelve Orchestra appeared again after five years, although it still played a wonderful **, but it did not cause much sensation.
So far, when many ** enthusiasts mention the "Twelve Women's Bands", they will still miss the shock and emotion they brought in the past.
This scene is a microcosm of Chinese folk music on the international stage, and it also represents a positive attempt to integrate Chinese and Western elements in contemporary society.
What we miss is not their glorious peak, but the heart that is never afraid of challenges.
In this unpredictable entertainment industry, we need more people with ideals, and we also need more music fans with the ability to appreciate. Only by paying enough attention to the original ** culture and passing it on, can we expect more immortal classics to come out.
The Chinese ** industry believes that there will be more creative ** people in the future, who may not be able to reproduce the brilliant achievements of the 12 women's orchestras, but they will definitely be able to create their own legends in the new era.
Let's look forward to the bright future of China's original ** with a positive attitude.