Photo: courtesy of Universal Music Group

By Sheng Taotao

Ask singer-songwriter Sa Dingding what her name means in Chinese, and she will say that it means the top [of ]. Born to a Mongolian mother and Han Chinese father, Sa's distinctive musical style has led to her being christened the new age Chinese chanteuse by world music connoisseurs in the West. Her voice is extremely rich and expressive. The tones of her vocals soar with an otherworldly quality, her boldly colored stage apparel and captivating performance declares untapped yet stored-up energy. It is a feast of Western electronica, traditional Chinese folk music, mysterious dance and Tibetan chanting that mesmerizes audiences. Exotic you may feel it is. But you wonder if it's real.

Not labeled

It was her grandmother, who looked after her in the Mongolian prairies until the age of six, bestowed Sa's given name Dingding. When she recalls her childhood, Sa remembers running wild under the endless sky, the sounds of Mongolian singing constantly echoing in the background. "I've got the freedom in me, I suppose. And that is the most precious inspiration for my music," the singer says.

Despite moving to Shandong with her parents as she grew older, Sa's singular identity as the girl from the grassland seems to have informed her extremely diverse taste in music. During the four years of her professional training at The Liberation Army Arts School in Beijing, she listened to music as diverse as Sinead O'Connor, David Bowie and Bon Jovi. To her, some of O'Connor's songs are not musical but slivers of language.

Sa's schoolmates remember many angry moments at night when they were disturbed by the loud music she played in her dorm. Some would run out of their rooms shouting: "Who the hell is playing this bloody music?! Turn it off!"

Sa recorded her first electronic dance music album shortly before she graduated from the arts school in 2001. Her unique voice got her a direct pass to some avant-garde music producers in China. "I was brought into an unfamiliar world of electronica and realized the potential that the software could bring to someone with a voice like mine. I saw the possibilities of my own music behind them and was infatuated at once. It was experimental to me," Sa says.

"I never cared about how they labeled me [and my music]. Labels delimit a boundary. And that's the thing they could sell in mainstream record stores. That has nothing to do with a musician's originality."

Invented language

With 20,000 yuan ($3,000) saved from gigs performed around town while still a student, Sa started to make her own music in her distinctive style in 2004. "At first I tried to seek some help from my professors and some experienced producers. They politely let me talk over my proposals and asked: 'What are you going for?' or 'What's the point?' or 'Why don't sell the lyrics to me?' So I gave up and turned to a young talented and patient music student from the Central Conservatory of Music."

For the next three years, Sa spent all her waking hours writing her songs and shuttling between different studios in Beijing until finally a producer from Universal Music Group (UMG) overheard her in a studio in 2006 and brought her demo back to his office. The big boss of UMG heard the demo and instructed them to "go and find the girl."

After UMG signed Sa, they released her debut album Alive in Japan and then in Great Britain in October 2007. She sings in Sanskrit (an Indo-Aryan language associated with Hinduism and Buddhism), Mandarin and Tibetan. It is a richly layered music, from many different cultures within the Far East, and is quite unlike anything else in popular culture in China. Sometimes Sa sings in an entirely self-created language.

"It happened by accident. I had the lyrics. And when I tried to sing along with it, the lyrics sort of distracted and limited the music," the musician recalls.

Sunny Wu, an executive and one of the listeners of Sa's music at UMG agrees. Wu says that she was very much impressed with Sa's rough version of the song, and the effect of her meaningless lyrics felt overwhelming. "I believe that rhythm and tunes exist before language does. Babies sing with their own language," says Sa.

During her European tour, some journalists came over to her just to check that they understood what she sang about. "Don't you sing about the homeland, childhood and freedom?" they asked with excitement.

To add to the irony, some young Chinese fans even try to sing Sa's songs in karaoke. "I don't know how they could sing my songs. But they definitely could sing if they invented their own 'lyrics'. It's all about letting out your emotions," Sa says.

World music star

Sa's album Alive brought her success. To many foreigners, her music represents a modern China. In 2008, she won the BBC Radio 3 World Music Award for the Asia- Pacific region followed by a European tour making stops in London, Paris, Amsterdam and Germany.

This led to a series of collaborations with some of the best musicians and producers in the world. In January 2008, she composed a song with Eric Mouquet of Deep Forest called Won't Be Long to raise funds for disaster relief after the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. Mouquet and Sa have collaborated on a forthcoming album Deep China.

Last year, she performed live with her band at the World Music Celebration Prom at the Royal Albert Hall in London in July and at the Harrogate Festival in the UK in August. Later she worked with Paul Oakenfold, the British DJ and producer for the lead song of her new album Harmony, which is produced by renowned music producer Marius De Vries (Debut, Björk and Moulin Rouge).

In the new album Sa goes even further in her love of pushing her musical boundaries. If people love the music of Deep Forest, Enigma or Sa Dingding, then they have reason. "I want people to feel the closeness [of the music], yet it comes from afar. And when you feel it is in distance, but somehow you feel you could just stretch out and touch [the music]," the musician explains.

Her first name, Dingding, not only means the top [of ], but also a verb: To rise up. "The artists' spiritual world is supposed to be reflected by her music, but this is very difficult to achieve." It's a challenge she intends to rise up and meet.

Sa Dingding's second album, Harmony, will be released in February 2010 by UMG. For more information, see www.sadingding.co.uk

shengtaotao@globaltimes.com.cn