Music

紫微

“紫微” is one of my more experimental works because I deliberately brought together three things that normally seem unrelated: Zi Wei Dou Shu, Chinese theatrical performance, and a seven-character poetic structure inspired by classical verse. I did not want to simply sing a list of star names. I wanted to see whether a complex traditional system could be reorganized through the rhythm of Chinese stage performance and the discipline of seven-character lines. The lyrics include Zi Wei, Tian Ji, Tai Yang, Wu Qu, Tan Lang, Ju Men, the Four Transformations and the twelve palaces, with many lines intentionally kept within a seven-character structure so that they feel both musical and formally literary. The arrangement adds guzheng, pipa, dizi, hand percussion and half-sung, half-chanted delivery, moving the piece toward a modern Chinese theatrical form. For me, the song is more than an introduction to Zi Wei Dou Shu. It is also my personal attempt to reinterpret the system by taking stars, palaces and observations about life out of charts and tables and turning them into a cultural language that can be heard and remembered.