‘Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’ composer Tan Dun on spotlighting Hong Kong’s folk music and presenting Chinese culture to the world

The Oscar and Grammy award-winning composer, who’s curating a music festival in the city, says why he thinks Hong Kong’s cultural and music education is among the best in the world

Oscar and Grammy-winning Chinese American composer Tan Dun—who’s famous for his film score in Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), is in Hong Kong this month to launch the Tan Dun We-Festival, a musical extravaganza that brings together local talents such as soprano Louise Kwong and pianist Rachel Cheung, as well as international musicians, orchestras and rock bands.

In January 2023, Tan was appointed by Hong Kong’s Culture, Sports and Tourism Bureau as the city’s Ambassador for Cultural Promotion (ACP) for five years—and this festival is one of his major initiatives. Taking place at Hong Kong Cultural Centre, it features three events: Opera and Dance Theatre on December 6 and 7, When Bach Meets Genghis Khan concert on December 9 and 10, and a symposium about these two concerts on December 10.

Above “Opera and Dance Theatre” at Tan Dun We-Festival (Photo: courtesy of LCSD and Tan Dun)

The first event highlights three pieces of folk music-centred works: Shaman Tea Ritual sung in the Yunnan dialect; Deer of Nine Colours and Heart Sutra, two Buddhist stories sung in Cantonese, Tibetan, Mongolian and Mandarin; The Rite of Spring by Russian composer Igor Stravinsky paired with contemporary dance and traditional Chinese percussion. The second show features German composer Johann Sebastian Bach’s music paired with Mongolian rock band Hanggai’s songs, with additional performances by Chinese folk singer Tan Weiwei accompanied by a western orchestra.

At first glance, the two concerts, which last for about two hours each, seem an ambitious undertaking of a wide variety of genres and musical names. But Tan claims that “they are not as randomly selected as you think. Who invented the strings? Italy. What do we think of when it comes to France? The bassoon. What about the 1,000-year-old tradition of China? It’s percussion.” The performances spotlight these traditional aspects of music from different cultures, weaving them together to tell universal stories of nature and human emotions. “If the totem of western classical music is Bach, the totem of the Mongolians is nature and Genghis Khan.”

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Above Mongolian band Hanggai (Photo: courtesy of LCSD and Hanggai)

Tan thinks that eastern and western cultures are sometimes more harmoniously connected than we realise. “When I went to eastern Europe, I was exposed to a lot of Hungarian folk songs such as [Béla] Bartók’s Mikrokosmos. Those are [similar to] Chinese folk songs that we listened to when we were schoolchildren,” he says.

Tan also gave the exmaple of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring (1913), which was originally written as an orchestral piece for the ballet. “After he died, scholars found out that the prototype of the piece comes from eastern European folk music. Stravinsky changed and morphed [folk elements into his work] and set a trend [in the classical music scene],” he says. “I’m so inspired by this, and I want to put the most original [music] of China to the world stage. We’ve been receiving cultural influences from the west for a long time. It’s time to put Chinese culture out there.”

The Hunan-born composer, who claims Hong Kong is his second home, says this city is the ideal place to realise his vision. “I have worked with musicians from around the world. Hong Kong musicians stand out to me as very musical, spiritual and professional. The city’s music education is great. When it comes to the top eastern cultural cities, Hong Kong is the best in my heart.”

Above Tan Weiwei (Photo: courtesy of LCSD and Tan Weiwei)

Next year, Tan wants to put the spotlight on Hong Kong’s traditional folk music. “[Around] 700 years ago, western explorer Marco Polo landed [in China],” Tan says. The composer wants to “use this east-meets-west historical moment as a starting point to look at the region’s folk music”, such as Cantonese opera and nanyin (traditional music in southern China), and how they have evolved under western influence. For this, he’s been visiting Macau and Hong Kong’s villages to look for musicians who are still practising the traditional arts. He also teases the possibility of using AI to connect the past with the present.

“It has always been my hope to see Chinese culture being presented to the rest of the world. I have already been doing cultural promotion even before this festival. But Hong Kong has given me the chance to further my vision. In the coming years, I expect a lot of changes and possibilities, because the world is changing, and [as artists], we always have to dance with the waves.”

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‘Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’ composer Tan Dun on spotlighting Hong Kong’s folk music and presenting Chinese culture to the world