No need for dreams

Uygur rock star is doing what he loves and bringing an eclectic band to China for a massive tour this fall

Uygur rock star Perhat Khaliq has famously said he doesn't have a dream.

Last year, on Voice of China, a Chinese reality talent show, the trimmed, calm musician of 33, with his tense, throaty voice, swept the nation off its feet.

Since then, he has been living the ultimate dream of musicians - living off and being loved for his music. Perhat and his band Qetiq have held concerts in several major Chinese cities. They have been flooded with job offers. Fans trail wherever they go. He no longer performs in the pubs that he once frequented for fear of being mobbed.

The band performed throughout Europe this summer with the Morgenland Festival, whose organizers discovered them about five years ago in Urumqi, capital of the Xinjiang Uyghur autonomous region in China's northwest (Michael Dreyer, the festival's artistic director reportedly said how impeccable and exceptional Perhat and his band was after hearing just one song.) Perhat now is bringing the Morgenland All Star Band to China for a massive tour.

Starting this September in Wuhan, Hubei province, the band of a dozen changing members from Europe and Asia - it frequently features Ibrahim Kelvo, who sings Armenian hymns; Dima Orsho on the Syrian soprano; and Joachim Dolker, the Scorpions drummer - will visit more than 20 cities across China in 40 days. Preparations are underway.

"I want our performances to be rich," says Perhat, who will be on guitar and vocals. "There will be classic tunes, world music, traditional, ethnic elements, improvisation, etc. There will be festivity as well as serenity in the music we offer."

Though Chinese music lovers are known for being keen on karaoke and singalongs, the band says it has noticed a change.

"It's no longer what it used to be, when audiences wave you off and demand the familiar whenever you play a new song, or music in languages their can't decipher," Perhat says.

"Changes have come in the last few years, even before Voice of China. They're much more receptive now."

The Uygur song he sang on his first appearance on Voice of China, a mournful number that reminisces about his dead parents and brother, should "have you in tears two words into the song if you know the lyrics".

"It gets you bleary in two, three lines even if you don't know what it's about," he says. "Language is not a problem."

Zhang Zhentao, a music researcher with the Chinese National Academy of Arts, says: "Music from ethnic groups is often in the whole nation's cultural genes.

"The nation has always been a melting pot of different cultures. They influence each other and then prosper. The younger generation is now much more open in listening and creating new things."

Perhat, known for his rendition of Dolan Muqam, a Kashgar folk song of native fisherman, has trekked to mountainous, faraway lands for inspiration from the autonomous region's music traditions. But he refuses to pin down his style.

"We're not into one single style. We want to share anything good. Anything can come into music, which is so boundless," he says.

Indeed, since picking up a guitar at age 6, he has been constantly experimenting, including a fling with death metal. Qetiq's first album, in 2013, is Rock from Taklamakan Desert.

"But I'm not a rock singer, nor a non-rock singer," he says. "My music can be loud, but it can also be peaceful.

"In the beginning it was mad love for music, but now that I've done it more than 10 years, it's details and study. It's looking from another angle."

Two new albums, one in Uygur and another translated into Chinese, will be recorded later this year.

"There is only one thing that matters: That I like the music."

Fans in China and around the world concur.

"We've never, ever gotten off stage on time," he says. "The audiences just don't leave."

In Guangzhou in South China, they performed every one of their songs in October but the crowds wouldn't leave, Perhat says.

"We were out of songs and looking at each other," Perhat remembers, "and then we just went out and jammed."

One fan of Perhat's music says the band reminds him of Dire Straits, a hugely popular British rock band that peaked in the late 1970s and early '80s.

"He's a one of a kind singer, telling stories in ways nobody else can," says Wang Feng, a Chinese musician and judge on Voice of China.

"(My music) is simple, as I am, honest, balanced, nothing in excess," Perhat says. "You say what you must say."

No wonder he doesn't have a dream.

"I do the things I really love. When things are done well, dreams will come to me."

sunye@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily Africa Weekly 05/01/2015 page29)