Old sweet songs

Performances by indigenous musicians from Yunnan give a new flavor to the Beijing Music Festival, Chen Nan reports.

At 52, A Benzhi can still clearly recall images of his father getting up before sunrise to work on the farm and returning home after sunset every day over four decades ago.

Beyond that diligence, what lingers in A's memory is his father's singing of Meng Hua Diao, or Menghua melody, the oldest music of the Yi ethnic group performed in local dialect. Menghua is the old name of Nanjian county, where A Benzhi lives.