British musician takes Chinese music to heart

Shaun Gibson's access to Chinese music began in the karaoke bars of Liverpool, England.

When he was a student studying music at the University of Liverpool, his Chinese friends pulled him to such bars, where he became fascinated by the hit Chinese pop songs of the day.

But as a British songwriter who has been constantly exploring the combination of Chinese traditional instruments and Western pop rhythms, Gibson's interest in the ancient sounds that also come out of China was sparked during his first trip to China in 2014, when he heard a busker playing pipa (a four-stringed Chinese lute) in Chengdu, Southwest China's Sichuan province.

"I thought pipa would be more like a cultural relic, not really relevant in modern society," he says. "But when I saw that lady performing in the shopping center, just like a busker would play the guitar in the streets of Liverpool, I realized that pipa is also part of modern Chinese culture. And I could, maybe, have the opportunity to work with this amazing-sounding instrument and put it into my own music. All of that started my journey to where I am today."

Gibson is now a music influencer, with more than two million followers worldwide, and has been invited occasionally to compose Chinese-style songs.

Fusion music sounds like a cliche nowadays because it is frequently mentioned, but he says it is not easy to achieve a smooth mix between two distinct and different sounds.

And when asked how he chooses the appropriate traditional Chinese instruments for a piece, Gibson says: "It just happened very naturally for me."

For example, in a song named China Blue, which evokes imagery from Jingdezhen city in East China's Jiangxi province, Gibson integrates dizi (Chinese flute), pipa, and yangqin (a Chinese hammered dulcimer) into the main tune, to paint a picture of the misty place where water frequently trickles down the lanes from the mountains so often topped with an emerald haze.