[Article] Why Sa Ding Ding Has China in Her Hand

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Thought I'd post this, hopefully sparking some interesting in the amazing Sa Ding Ding. I really like the article. I think it really gets across how unique and talented she is amoung other singers.

From Telegraph

The eccentric costumes, ethereal beauty and haunting music of Sa Dingding have already made her China's biggest pop star. Now she's set to take Britain by storm. The precociously talented Mongolian talks to Sue Steward about zithers, pompoms and pigs

In one of MTV China's most popular videos, a beautiful woman stands in a long red frock straight from a pre-Mao soirée in old Shanghai; around her, kung-fu monks dance and wave ostrich-feather fans, leaping Crouching Tiger-like through the air. This is Sa Dingding, China's biggest pop star, whose album has sold more than two million copies in Asia and who is the first Chinese singer in a long time to have caught the attention of Western audiences.

Sa Dingding is a precociously talented singer-songwriter, a skilful player of traditional instruments and an insatiable student of languages, speaking Mandarin, Mongolian, Tibetan, Sanskrit and English (all but English are woven into her songs). Her sumptuously quirky costumes, which she designs herself, make even Christian Lacroix's recent foray into the exotic look dull. Just as the silk robe she wears on the cover of the album is constructed from colours, patterns and textures symbolising different locations, eras and cultures, so her songs are stitched together from different musical worlds, in a web of electronic beats punctuated with patches of sharp colour from the traditional instruments. She reflects certain key aspects of the new China: alluring, photogenic, intriguing and controversial, looking at once to the past and the future.

Sa Dingding's popularity at home has elevated her above the cloned armies of pretty teen poplets in the Asian charts, and her songs have drawn some of the world's leading DJ-producers, including Paul Oakenfold and Full Phatt, whose electronic wizardry reinvented hits by Kylie, the Rolling Stones and Radiohead. Her album, 'Wan Wushen', or 'Alive', recently won a BBC Radio 3 World Music Award in the Asia-Pacific category, and later this month British audiences can see her at the world-music festival Womad and at the Albert Hall in London.

Sa Dingding was born in Inner Mongolia on 27 December 1983, the Year of the Pig. A more unlikely creature could not be suggested for this beautiful, pale-skinned star, but she is proud of their shared qualities: 'A pig is very silent and serious,' she says, sipping tea in her Kensington hotel room. 'Serious about one thing: eating!' Her giggle is a surprise because, like the pig, she comes across as rather serious. 'I focus on one thing and give myself up to it. For me it's music.' Her passion to bring back traditions banned during the Cultural Revolution follows changes in the Chinese national curriculum, reinstating the teaching of traditional music. Apart from singing and composing songs in several languages, choreographing her shows and designing her costumes, Sa Dingding also plays the 2,500-year-old guzheng zither. And all of this at the age of 24.


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