rui fu
is a vocalist and composer specializing in improvisational and impressionistic interpretation of Chinese ethnic musical traditions and modernist portrayals of literati meditative and Wu shamanic musics. As a writer, devoted field researcher on minority cultures and translator of Chinese classics, she channels her knowledge and cultural sensibilities into creating and performing cross-cultural music and drama works that have been featured by Forbes, Vogue China, Whitewall Magazine, BBC Arabic, Chinese Central Television, among others. She is also a documentary photographer.
Music as Ritual
Strongly influenced by the temporal, timbral and rhythmic flexibilities of ancient Chinese music, Rui collaborates with instrumentalists from minority tribes in musical experiments that explore the natural pace of one’s breath in relation to the gravitational tendencies of the body, and the melodic direction that arises as a result. She initiates conversations between indigenous musics and rare instruments, often employing her signature - non-lexical vocables as her own “language” and lyrics - to illustrate a crossing of cultural and religious barriers.
Selected Works
The Yin Project
is the result of Rui’s musical journey. It is an ongoing ritual to reconcile the human voice with its musical kins across cultural borders. “Yin” in Chinese means both “musical sounds” and “the feminine.” In these musical conversations, collaborators focus on portraying various culturally-specific stories, roles, and/or concepts; the female voice, as a result, employs distinctive profiles to adapt to the diversity of multicultural instrumentalists.
Improvisational music
is approached as a spontaneous anchoring space that reveals the unity of being of all participants involved. The intention is to shed egocentric desires to convey artistic concepts, and instead return to the original state of humble joy, from which creation is not limited by any party’s or genre’s terms, but follows a new order rising out of disinterested harmonization.