When pots and pans were made into musical instruments, a rural band consisting of five farmers aged 70 and beyond enriched the spiritual life of villagers in Mengyin County, Linyi City, east China's Shandong Province.
On a rainy autumn day recently, the "Hudaogu Band", literally meaning a band that plays casually for fun, was called upon as usual to prepare for a singing performance in a local modern agricultural park.
"Please wait until we correct the pitch," said the 82-year-old band member Wang Xianyong while listening carefully to the pitch of his "dulcimer", whose resonator is a big iron basin.
Every time it rains, Wang Xianyong and other band members have to check the strings repeatedly, as high humidity often dampens wooden components and affects the pitch.
Pitch adjusting is particularly difficult for them, since all their instruments are made of unusual raw materials such as iron basins, water dippers and dustpans by Wang Xianshun, the band leader.
Since strings are the most costly components, the band made its own instruments including a dulcimer, a banhu or bowed Chinese fiddle, a zhongruan, a special stringed instrument "big-basin-hu" and others, making their performances possible.
Spotting the damaged kitchenware during Wang Xianshun's instrument-making, his wife Wang Guimei used to complain about his days of "hudaogu" or "unprofessional efforts" which gave the band its humorous name.
But when the band loudly sang the lyrics of its original song "Busy Harvest," happiness captured the hearts of every member.
Seeking an elderly life full of vitality, the five aged farmers are leveraging the local dialect-featuring singing performances to express their satisfaction with life in Mengyin County.
As the band has become a household name locally, its members set up the "Dream Art Troupe", which Wang Guimei also joined to be a leading singer and dancer.
Apart from singing folk songs in local style, the troupe members also wrote stage lines to interpret local innovations, development theories and new trends in their own ways.
(Edited by Duan Jing with Xinhua Silk Road, duanjing@xinhua.org)
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