A Musical Encounter With the Past | 音乐带着我们与历史邂逅

Sometimes the randomness of life presents us with unique, wonderful opportunities. It was one of these opportunities that facilitated music teacher Lauren Borodenko’s meeting with Zang Yimin (Elvis), a Chinese musician who has studied and performs music from the regions of Mongolia, Tuva and Manchuria. After a change meeting in Beijing, Yimin, who originally hails from Qingdao, agreed to come to QAIS if he was ever in the area. He is currently a student at ‘Shenyang Yinyue Xue Yuan’ but was in town over the weekend of November 17th and offered to come to our school and give a presentation about the history and sound of this unique style of music.

Throat singing is one of the world’s oldest types of music and is distinguished by a singer’s ability to sing more than one note at the same time. You may think this sounds impossible but we were able to see firsthand how this is done. There are very special techniques that manipulate the throat and vocal mechanisms to create a unique sound. As many of the cultures that still practice this type of music are native to China and others geographically close, we are in a unique place to be able to hear this music first hand.

Our guest musician first spent 45 minutes with the DP music students and several interested teachers where they learned about the context and heritage of this unique music and were treated to vocal and instrumental performances on a range of instruments. He then did a similar presentation for grades 3,4,5,6 and 7 where he performed and discussed the techniques and background of his music. The PYP and MYP classes have been learning about vocal music production and quality or timbre of sound so this was uniquely relevant to their class work.

As we sat in the audience on Friday, many students’ faces showed looks of wonder, surprise and delight at the unusual music. Younger students giggled with the strangeness of the new sounds around them and settled into focused interest as they learned more. The older students asked thoughtful questions and expanded their understanding of what singing and music might sound like. It was a truly special and unique opportunity and we are very thankful for sharing the music with our QAIS students.

有时候生活中的不期而遇会带来特别有意思的机会。正是这种意外让我校的戏剧老师Lauren Borodenko遇到了臧一民（Elvis），一位学习并表演蒙古族、图瓦族和满族呼麦音乐的中国音乐家。他俩在北京相遇，得知后者的家乡在青岛，便约定一旦臧一民回家，欢迎他来到QAIS来。于是11月17日，这位沈阳音乐学院的学子回青岛时，来到了我们的学校，为大家带来了有关这种特殊音乐的历史介绍，并进行了表演。

呼麦是世界上最古老的音乐形式之一，歌唱者可以同时发出多个音高。这听起来可能不可思议，但我们亲耳听到、亲眼见证了歌唱者通过特殊的发音方法做到了这一切。这种历史悠久的音乐仍然存在于中国和其北部邻国地区，我校的学生有幸地与它亲密接触。

我们的音乐家嘉宾首先为DP学生和感兴趣的老师做了45分钟的背景和文化介绍，并进行了一系列的声乐表演。之后他又为3－7年级的学生做了类似的表演，并讲解了发声技巧和音乐知识。小学和中学部的学生们正在学习声乐与音色，因此这与课堂的学习完美地结合在了一起。

当学生们聚集在礼堂里，聆听这种特殊的音乐时，他们觉得惊讶、意外和欣喜。低年级的孩子刚刚接触这种陌生的声音咯咯直笑，但渐渐关注、开始投入地倾听。高年级的学生提出了经过思考后的问题，扩展了他们对歌唱和音乐的理解。这真是一次独一无二的音乐体验，我们对音乐家表示深深地感谢。