The Music – Why Are the Flowers So Red?

“Why Are the Flowers So Red” was originally an interlude in a popular 1960s spy movie “Visitors on the Icy Mountain”. It was based on an old Tajik dance music. In order to allow the music to reveal a sense of time and space, Composer Lei Zhenbang appropriately slowed down the speed of the original music in the process of adaptation. The music after adaptation has a kind of feeling of distant and vast space.

A vocal version:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p02cxoxS4k8

by {link:http://www.flickr.com/photos/kuzeytac/3341605323}Kuzeytac{/link}

This is one of the most popular songs in China in the 1960s, and one of the most common hummed song by the rusticated youth of china. In the era intertwined with confusion and difficulties, the rusticated youth of china who desired and dreamed of love could only express their feelings with songs. Then, “Why Are the Flowers So Red?” told a beautiful love story with a graceful melody, so it became a deep imprint in their green days.

The Composer – Lei, Zhenbang

The composer Lei Zhenbang  (1916-1997) is a famous movie music composer, he is rooted in the rich soil of folk music, composed music for dozens of Chinese films.

He is the most famous movie song writer in the fifties and sixties. His creative works cover a wide range of Chinese folk music, from Yunnan music in the movie “Lu Sheng Lian Ge” , Guangxi folk songs in the movie “Liu Sanjie”, to Xinjiang music in the movie “Visitors on the Icy Mountain”. This kind of practice to get inspiration from folk music was not only a spiritual successor of Wang Luobin, but also has become a mainstream model in creating music.