Yan Bing will stage a concert to introduce his fellow street performers to a broader audience in Beijing on Aug 8. (Photo/China Daily)
Yan Bing, who has kept folk music alive from a bar in Southwest China, has gotten himself a Beijing gig, thanks to crowd funding.
When folk singer Yan Bing opened a page on Chinese crowdfunding website Kaistart to raise money for a gig at Beijing's Exhibition Theater, the response was immediate.
Only two weeks later, more than 1 million yuan ($161,000) was raised from some 4,000 people to fund the show on Aug 8.
The 35-year-old, better known as Dabing, is also a TV host for Shandong Satellite TV Station and the author of two popular travel books.
He has more than 1 million followers on his Sina Weibo micro blog.
The concert, titled Dabing and His Friends, will feature Yan and 10 other folk singers, who perform at The Cabin of Dabing, a bar Yan opened in 2008 in Lijiang, an ancient city in Southwest China's Yunnan province.
The bar, popular among locals and tourists alike, doesn't have amplifiers, microphones or a stage, and performers sing and play simple instruments, such as the guitar and harmonica, with customers sitting around.
"We will invite 20 people to sit onstage during the performance in Beijing, exactly the same as at The Cabin of Dabing," says Yan, who aims to introduce the folk singers to a wider audience.
According to Lu Zhongqiang, the founder of Beijing-based indie music label Thirteen Month, the original goal was to get 800,000 yuan from the crowdfunding project, with June 29 being the closing date.
"We met our goal within such a short period of time. The result is within my expectation because of Yan's fan base," says Lu, who helped Yan initiate the project.
He visited Yan's bar toward the end of 2014 and was impressed by the folk performances.
Lu shot a 36-minute documentary on Yan and the bar, which has been watched more than 10 million times online since it was released earlier this year.
An album of songs of Yan and his fellow singers will be released ahead of the concert by Lu's company.
"I have never tried staging a concert through online crowdfunding before. I believe it will become one of the most popular and direct ways for indie musicians to connect with their fans," says Lu, who has worked with China's best-selling singer-songwriters, such as rock star Xie Tianxiao and folk singer Lao Lang.
The folk singers aren't commercially successful but they have found a niche market in Lijiang, he adds.
Lu says many singers, who travel across China and sing on the streets, don't have perfect technique and their songwriting skills aren't properly developed. But their personal stories are touching and that made Lu want to work with them, he says.
Yan, who is an enthusiast for outdoor activities such as camping and hiking, was born in Yantai city in East China's Shandong province. He graduated from Shandong University of Arts with a major in oil painting.
Before The Cabin of Dabing, he had two bars in Lhasa in the Tibet autonomous region. He closed the bars in Tibet after he opened the Lijiang bar.
He describes his fellow musicians as his "tribesmen", who lead nomadic lives.
"My singer-songwriter friends and I share a similar philosophy about life," he says of the joy that they feel while traveling around the country with their music.
Liu Yin is one of the folk musicians at The Cabin of Dabing. The 30-year-old has been a volunteer teacher at a primary school in Ninglang, a remote town of Lijiang, since 2012. He has donated all the money he made from singing and selling his CDs to support his 76 students.
"My students don't have good living conditions. They just have potato soup every day. I want to make more money to improve their lives," Liu says. "For me, singing is more than expressing myself. It means responsibility."
Yan says: "With no manager, no agent and no record company to serve and limit them, they pursue their musical dreams with a free spirit. Their healthy attitude enables them to write songs about love, memory and nature, which fits in the atmosphere of the ancient and slow-paced Lijiang city."
Yan hopes that someday many residents of Beijing will also visit The Cabin of Dabing for some good old folk music.
