Chinese Folksongs in a Jazz Mode
By ALEXA OLESEN
Mary Ann Hurst's voice glides from English to Chinese with a buttery smoothness that belies her years of commitment to both the jazz idiom and the Mandarin tongue. There is nothing forced about her new independently-produced CD, "Chinese Folksongs in a Jazz Mode." There's no haphazard stitching together of East and West, no slapdash mix of Chinese folksongs and American jazz standards. The sound achieved is not an experimental hybrid but an organic creation, fertilized by years of living in China, of listening to and singing Jazz tunes.
Growing up an army brat and an only child, Hurst remained grounded in American culture as her family moved from international posting to posting by listening to her father's extensive record collection. He was a trumpet player himself and a big fan of Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Count Basie. Those albums were her constant companions in different countries around the world and she listened to them over and over again. "Nat King Cole was in the house all the time," she says.
She also sang in choirs, and played piano and flute. At 16 she saw Duke Ellington play in France and it remains one of the most inspirational experiences of her music career.
She says she always knew music would be a part of her life but the China bug blindsided her when she was in her early twenties. She was singing in a group called Mary Ann's Rainbow in Minneapolis and waitressing to make a living when she saw an advertisement for the Army Reserve, offering language training. Chairman Mao had passed away not long before, and China was on the verge of enormous reforms. It was just opening up to the West after thirty long years of isolation, and westerners were being allowed to visit. One of the languages the reserve was offering to train applicants in -- all expenses paid --was Chinese and Hurst decided to go for it. It was the end of Mary Ann's Rainbow.
"I literally just quit all the music things. China took me away from jazz and brought me back to it," she says, laughing.
Mary Ann Hurst Talks
with Virtual China
Q: Did you ever sing for any high party officials, or have any other surreal moments?
A: I sang as a "jazz duo" with a Chinese singer (Gu Feng) on one of those Chinese New Year television shows where foreigners are asked to perform. We took the song "Route 66" (which we both "traded" verses singing), and made a medley of it using the folksong "Embroidered Pouch" (which I scatted). I figured the Chinese would miss the melody because of the form of scatting, but not at all...the largely older men in the live audience sitting in front of us burst into applause when the scatting was going on, so I guess at least they recognized the melody.
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After an intensive course in Monterrey, California under the tutelage of the incomparable language teacher K.C. Ma, Hurst enrolled in a graduate program that offered exchange programs with China. It was 1981 and China was just beginning to thaw out after a very long and frigid Cold War.
China was still a country of work units, food rations and fuel rations; people could not travel freely, talk freely or think freely -- but free enterprise was just around the corner. Deng Xiaoping had recently risen to power and was saying things like ""If you want to bring the initiative of the peasants into play, you should give them the power to make money."
It was the beginning of the end of Communist China and the first tentative steps towards reform were being taken. Inviting young Americans like Hurst into the country was one of those steps.
"I went to the University of Shanxi," says Hurst. "Two out of twelve of us stayed. Myself and a 63 year old man. Of course I had no clue how much they went out on a limb for us. We had a guy who got up at 5 a.m. to shovel coal so we could have hot water. We had a bathroom with a flushing toilet. Not even the President of the University had that. Back then if you had two bicycles you were really rich. It was a Cold War feeling. I had one translator who told me: 'I have to report everything you say.'"
Hurst's nine months in Tayuan, Shanxi were a crash course in politics and poverty for a young woman who was admittedly sheltered and naive. Hurst says it took her a long time to get over the guilt she felt then of being born in a country like the United States with so much privilege.
She finished a Masters degree in East Asian Studies, then started working in China. She held a number of different jobs, many of them cultural and educational. They brought her into the homes and studios of some of China's most creative people.
In the liner notes of "Chinese Folksongs in a Jazz Mode," Hurst says: "This project is dedicated to the many Chinese people who've influenced my life as I've worked in and out of China over the past two decades -- artists, calligraphers, cooks, diplomats, entrepreneurs, farmers, journalist, military, Buddhist monks, office workers, musicians, photographers, radio and TV personnel, seamstresses, students, taxi drivers, teachers, translators, professors, rock stars, train workers, shopkeepers, waitresses. Some shifted my world view in major ways -- all affected it."
These relationships and the beauty and sincerity of Hurst's phrasing elevate "Chinese Folksongs in a Jazz Mode" beyond a musical gimmick to an ode to China, a gesture of thanks to China. By elegantly reinventing songs that are well known to most Chinese listeners like "North Wind Blows," "Nanniwan," and "Embroidered Pouch," Hurst simultaneously breaks the rather rigid mold of Chinese folksongs and also shows westerners that Mandarin in song is not limited to the high-pitched nasal strains of Peking Opera.
The CD, which was fifteen years in the making, came about because Hurst listened to jazz when she was studying Chinese.
"The seed was planted to do such a project when I was a graduate student," Hurst says. "I listened to Miles Davis and Paul Desmond recordings while practicing writing Chinese characters. Anyone who's studied Chinese knows the necessity of repetitive drawing of the characters in order to engrave them in one's memory bank. The styles/mediums of the 'cool' style of jazz seemed to fit with the calligraphy strokes, and listening to music made the tedium of writing and rewriting less tedious."
But the idea had to germinate until Hurst had the time and the capital to realize her vision. After years of working in China a corporate job took her back to the U.S. She settled in Texas and one day in a restaurant in San Antonio she approached some jazz musicians and asked them if they'd like to try and do some jazz versions of Chinese folk songs. Hurst paid for the studio, handwrote the calligraphy and did the translations for the disk herself. The total cost of the project, while not cheap, Hurst says made her realize that record companies like A&M or Blue Note were not the be-all-and-end-all of creating music. Doing it herself also ensured that she didn't have to make artistic compromises.
Amazingly, Hurst is still a U.S. army reservist, annually giving something back the system that provided her with her language training and brought her to her adventures in China. A few years ago she was stationed in Hawaii where she helped Admiral Prueher (who has since been appointed the US Ambassador to China) prepare for a visit by Chinese President Jiang Zemin. Her mission was to buy a gift for China's most powerful living leader. She got him a Koa wood box with eight CDs in it. Among them were some of her favorites, including Duke Ellington and Wynton Marsalis. If she ever sees him again she'll have a new disk to add to that collection.
Click to hear North Wind Blows, by Mary Ann Hurst.
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Click to hear Nanniwan, by Mary Ann Hurst.
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Click to hear a blues version of Embroidered Pouch, by Mary Ann Hurst.
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Visit Mary Ann Hurst's Web site.
A few other Jazz-China Links:
You might also like to check out the CD China Jungle which is another China-jazz hybrid
Music Critic Dan Ouellette's Salon.com piece about China Jazz
Tara Shingle's China Jazz Site
Excerpts on Jazz from Dennis Rea's book "Live in the Forbidden City"
A SF Jazz Band Tours China
A List of Jazz Clubs in China
