Composer Lei Zhenbang remains a household name in China even though he passed away four years ago. As a famous film music composer, he is remembered for the dozens of popular songs that have helped a number of films to receive great public acclaim. Away from the silver screen, his songs about ethnic minorities have served to arouse people’s interests in knowing more about them and their rich culture.
Lei Zhenbang himself was of the Man nationality. Born in 1916 into a well-off family in Beijing, he developed a strong affection for the Peking Opera in his childhood. He was also very fond of folk songs from different parts of China. His early talent at composition was displayed when he revised several songs into pieces for the mouth organ, and conducted a band to play his works. He received a professional music training in Japan for four years and returned to China in 1943. His first composition was a revision of a piece ancient Chinese music into a modern orchestral work.
Lei Zhenbang’s career as a renowned composer began when he entered the film circle, by joining the Chinese Film Orchestra in 1949. In 1955, he went to the Changchun Film Studio in northeast China’s Jilin province, where he was able to give full play to his talents and was held in great esteem as a result. Over the following decades, he produced over 100 moving songs for films.
Of all of Lei Zhenbang’s songs, however, the most impressive ones must be those reflecting the lives of ethnic minorities. He made countless trips to areas inhabited by ethnic minorities in order to better understand their unique music. For a long stretch of his career, he regularly spent three or four months of each year traveling. He made friends with quite a number of ethnic minority singers, who afforded him a deeper insight into their local customs and, more importantly, their music. At a time when tape recordings were impossible, Lei Zhenbang had to transcribe much of the music by hand. Based on these music scores, Lei Zhenbang worked the basic themes of ethnic minority music into emotional and expressive songs for film.
One example is a song Lei Zhenbang that composed for the film “The Five Golden Flowers”. The film tells the story of the love, work and lives of five beautiful Bai nationality girls in China’s southwestern Yunnan province. The film was so successful that even today, girls of Bai nationality are usually addressed as “golden flowers” by visitors from home and abroad. And, of course, Lei Zhenbang’s music contributed a lot to the film’s success.
Another well-renowned piece composed by Lei Zhenbang was for the film “Sister Liu”, an operatic film based on the legend of a girl singer of the Zhuang ethnic minority in south China’s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. Sister Liu was said to be the Zhuang nationality’s “the fairy of singing” during the Tang dynasty, some 1,000 years ago. She was particularly famous for her many mountain songs that focus on love and the pursuit of a better life, and which have since become musical treasures of the Zhuang people. Based on the local legends, Lei Zhenbang composed music for the film, which won him the award for Best Film Score in 1960, at the second “Hundred Flowers Award”, one of China’s top film award ceremonies. The film also swept across southeast Asia during the 1960s, to great public and critical acclaim. Here is a mountain song taken from the film.
The pieces that we’ve heard today represent just a small proportion of Lei Zhenbang’s works. He composed a large number of film scores based on the music of China’s ethnic minorities, from throughout the country. His name and music remain as a treasure of Chinese music, one that will be remembered for many years to come.
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