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SCMP Reporter

To many people, Mongolian-Han singer Sa Dingding is a mysterious figure. She spent her early years growing up as a nomad on the grasslands of Inner Mongolia, and her last Tibetan-themed  album, Alive, released in 2007, included mantras, Sanskrit, Tibetan chants and a new language she  created herself.   
Now Sa, a BBC Radio 3 World Music Award winner in 2008, has a new album out, entitled Harmony, and spoke to the Post  about her past.
Do you think you are mysterious?
 I don't think I am mysterious. People only find a person mysterious because there are certain things that they don't know about the person. I think when people get to know more about me, they won't find me mysterious at all. 
Tell us about your old identity as  electronic singer Zhou Peng.  
I was only 18 when I became an electronic singer. I was still very young and naive about music then. I was only  making that kind of music because my producer told me to, but there was no soul in it.
Unlike on Alive, six of the 10 songs on your new album are in Putonghua. Why? 
 The thought came when  I was on tour last year. As I was performing shows in foreign places, I started to have this very strong desire to sing in my mother tongue, which is Putonghua. Perhaps it was because I saw many Chinese overseas who came to my concerts and I felt that they could relate to my songs more in their mother tongue. 
What inspired you to make Harmony?
Alive touches on the relationship between humans and religion and this time I want to look at the relationship between people and nature, which I see as a higher concept, because only when harmony between the two is built can  everything  come to  life - and after that there comes religious belief. The whole harmony concept was derived from a Yunnan folk story. It is a story told  in an ethnic minority group called Wa Zu. It's almost like the Chinese version of  Genesis  in the Old Testament.  
Can you tell us more about this story?
Wa Zu people believe that many, many years ago the sky and the ground were  separated only by a huge tree and that our ancestors lived in the caves in that limited space, and  that they longed for more room. One day, a golden rooster appeared, knocked down the tree and, almost like a miracle, the sky and the ground were  pushed further and further apart.  Since then, humans  have flourished in this new space. I was so touched when I heard  this story that I decided to use it as the backbone of an album. 
In the music video of Ha Ha Li Li, there are spirits of trees, mountains  and oceans. What's the  meaning  of that?
 In Yunnan, people believe  there are spirits in every living thing and therefore  they respect nature a lot more than those living in the city.  People damage our environment by cutting down trees, polluting the air  and wasting water. I hope by humanising these characters in the music video I can tell people that all these things also have life and feelings, so hopefully they can treasure nature more. 
Your father is a Shandong-born Han and your mother is Mongolian. Why is your music so far from these origins?
I think being a musician is similar to being an actor:  it's  challenging and fun to play a different role. And it gave me great satisfaction when even local people  mistook me  for a Tibetan after listening to my first album, then  thought I was born and raised in Yunnan after hearing my second one. That means I'm getting their music right. 
Will Mongolian music feature on  future albums?
Oh, for sure. Mongolian music is  what I've wanted to make for so long, but  I still  haven't done it because I want to build up more experience with other types of  music before I approach it. During my childhood in Inner Mongolia, I was surrounded by  Mongolian music chanted by local folk day and night, and it has had a huge influence on the music I make  now.  Mongolian songs are written perfectly and this is also what makes it difficult to  recreate  them. It's not going to be easy, but I know I will work on it eventually. It is my ultimate goal. 
You worked with Madonna and Bjork's music producer Marius de Vries on Harmony. How was that?  
Marius and I both share many things in common, such as our vision  of classical music, but  like every relationship there  are always differences. The one thing I wasn't too sure about was his view on combining electronic music  with some of the traditional ethnic Yunnan-style  songs I wrote. I just didn't think they would mix well. But after almost a two-month-long conversation, we came up with a solution. It was a happy working experience on the whole and the key is respecting each other. 
I understand the two of you collaborated on three songs, one of which is your very first English song - Lucky Day.  
Yes, it was a fun collaboration. Marius moved his whole office to the mainland last February to work on the album with me and he wanted to link all these dreams he had had since then,  so we created a song out of it. I really like this song, although I think my English still needs to be brushed up a bit. Marius and some of the staff at the record label helped me with some of the English pronunciation, but I also like the imperfect accent I have when I sang this song because this makes it unique. I call it Sa Dingding's version of English.
Harmony is out on Feb 1



Q&A: Sa Dingding