Hao Ge (pronounced How Guh) is perhaps China’s most unlikely pop star: he is Nigerian, and he sings in Mandarin.
His
real name is Emmanuel Uwechue, though he is better known by his stage
name, which sounds like the words for “good song” in Chinese. Mr.
Uwechue, 33, has developed quite a fan base, particularly among the
children and middle-aged women who
watch “Xin Guang Da Dao,” the
“American Idol” knockoff show, where he first gained notice a few years
after his arrival almost a decade ago. He has performed alongside a host
of Chinese superstars — including Sun Nan, Na Ying and Han Hong — and
has been enthusiastically embraced by the Chinese media.
“The African Who Searches for His Dream in China,” read the headline
atop a 2006 article about Mr. Uwechue on QQ.com, a popular social
networking site. Articles by the state-run Xinhua news agency and in the
Web-based magazine Sina Entertainment, as well as a television
documentary, have similarly chronicled his unusual story. Mr. Uwechue
even appears on bus ads: “Good Song Comes From Good Wine,” reads an
advertisement for the Guan Gong Fang company, which signed him to
represent its brand of wine.
“He’s good — he’s not just another foreigner who got on TV because he
could speak and sing in Chinese,” said Yu Na, 40, who lives in
northwest Beijing, adding that she likes to “jump up and down” to Mr.
Uwechue’s more upbeat songs; many of them are soul-infused versions of
classic Chinese love songs, with faster rhythms.
Mr. Uwechue is not the first foreigner to have made a name for
himself in China, but he is the first African to have reached widespread
success. Some music industry experts in China credit part of his fame
to the close economic and cultural ties — including friendship and
exchange programs and other joint ventures — that have long existed
between China and some African countries. In a recently televised public
performance, Mr. Uwechue dressed up as an oil rig worker and sang
alongside a Chinese fellow laborer.
Among nations with close Sino-African ties, Nigeria in particular has
benefited from Chinese capital. China has invested more than $7 billion
in energy, communications and infrastructure in the country, which
exports some $4.7 billion in crude oil to China each year, according to a
recent statement by Li Yizhung, China’s minister of industry and
information technology.
“This is not just about Hao Ge,” said Long Hu, 38, a music producer
and talent scout in Beijing who cultivates young musical talent. “It’s
about China and Africa.”
Mr. Uwechue got his start singing in the choir at House on the Rock
Pentecostal church in Lagos, Nigeria. After receiving a degree in
engineering, he decided to pursue music against the wishes of his
father, who “disowned me for a while,” Mr. Uwechue said, adding, “He
thought I was throwing my life away.”
A Chinese friend, Li Yayu, who was working in Lagos at the time, was
aware of Mr. Uwechue’s interest in singing. When Mr. Li moved back to
Henan Province in 2001 to open a hotel, he called Mr. Uwechue and asked
him if he wanted to visit.
Mr. Uwechue accepted in 2002, and eventually started performing in
bars and hotels in Henan and Hebei Provinces. He got his big break when
Liu Huan — a top producer in the music industry who helped pioneer pop
music in China by performing and composing for television — discovered
him singing one night at the Big Easy, a bar in Beijing that has since
closed. With Mr. Liu’s backing, Mr. Uwechue became a devoted student of
Mandarin and eventually gained a following. It was his performance in
2007 at the wildly popular Lunar New Year Gala, seen by hundreds of
millions of people on television, that made him a star. It’s the Chinese
equivalent of the Super Bowl and China’s highest-rated broadcast event
of the year.
Mr. Uwechue is mindful of rigid cultural controls imposed on artists
by the Chinese government. His albums — “Red and Black” (2006), “Hao
Ge’s Latest Songs” (2008) and “Beloved Life” (2009) — hew to themes of
heartbreak, redemption and love, the kind of pop that is played on the
airways. He is also frustrated by those strictures.
“I feel boxed in, always singing romance songs,” he said. “I don’t
want to sound ungrateful, but I would like to expand the horizons of my
distributed work.”
To that end, he has formed a new band, which, in a recent jam session
at the One recording studio, played a dozen songs that he conceded had
“no chance” of being taken up by China’s pop producers. Mr. Uwechue said
he preferred singing upbeat, rhythmic songs to the slower commercial
fare — some of it sappy by Western standards — that his producers insist
mainland Chinese will listen to.
Mr. Uwechue is working on a new album that he says will be a “radical
departure” for him, although it remains to be seen whether it will be
distributed or promoted in the same way his previous work has been.
Being a recognizable star and being African obviously has its
complications in China. Whatever racism he has felt, he said, has come
from “other singers and competitors” within the industry, not from the
public.
Despite the fame he has found in China, Mr. Uwechue is aware that
many Nigerians harbor mixed feeling about his adopted country, with its
increasingly visible global financial power. He says that while many in
his homeland are “appreciative of China coming in and helping the
economy,” others fear the Chinese presence could be “another form of
colonization.”
When Mr. Uwechue took his first album to his friends and family in
Nigeria, they were, he said, “a little bit surprised, yet proud” to
learn that he had become a pop star in China. He recalled his mother’s
response: “‘China? Wow! I never could have imagined.’
Story via the New York Times
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