Culture

American face, Chinese kungfu

By Todd Balazovic (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-07-16 09:36

For most Chinese kungfu lovers, the mysterious Oriental martial art involves lightning-quick kicks and punches performed by guys such as Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan. However, a skinny blonde from Boston is exploding this stereotype by standing on stages in Beijing bars and demonstrating her own unique style of kungfu.

With her sonorous vocals, an impressive guitar and vigorous ac-tion, Jess Meider rocks audiences with what she calls vocal kungfu.

Meider, who landed in China in 1997 and has lived in Beijing for 10 years, may be the first foreigner in the city to combine the kungfu idea of qi (a basic energy flow that, according to traditional Chinese beliefs, exist in all humans) with singing. She has already produced four albums in this funky jazzy way.

Graduating from Boston-located Berklee College of music and then developing her early musical career in New York, Meider has played an important role in developing Beijing's music scene, helping to turn a budding movement into a flowering scene.

"When I got here, the scene was so tiny. It's still tiny, but there's definitely more than there used to be," she said.

Like the impromptu nature of her jazz lyrics, Meider's decision to move to China was made on the spot after the person she was in a relationship with at the time came to China for a job. She said once she had the idea in mind, she was eager to go, despite objections from her friends.

"Everyone thought I was nuts to go to Beijing," she said.

However, she soon proved it was a good decision.

Meider quickly found Beijing to be a bastion of relaxed creativity and a place where an artist can live comfortably and free of the pressure.

"In New York, it's such a faster pace of living. It's much more stressful and drains your creativity" she said. "Here, I can relax, it's cheap and you can live comfortably."

Q & A

Q: How do you teach vocal kungfu?

A: I will tell my students to pay attention to their heels and ask themselves - "Do you feel grounded? Are you supporting yourself?"

It's understanding how everything works, that awareness, that deepness.

Q: Have you ever tried to write a song in Chinese?

A: I tried to write a Chinese song once, but my Chinese boyfriend at the time basically told me not to. I have never really written one since, but I want to.

Q: Are you flourishing as much as a musician compared with if you were living back in New York?

A: I think I am flourishing in a different way. Whenever you move into any city, there's benefits to live there as well as downfalls. I think that I have more creative leeway here, but at the same time I am not around high-caliber musicians all the time to push me. I've had to do that myself.

Q: How would life be different if you had stayed in New York?

A: When I go home to see friends I went to school with, I see they're finally at this level, at this place. They're high-level musicians playing with famous people, but they do that with a struggle, because in New York there's a lot of competition.

Q: Do you think the lack of competition helped nourish your music talents?

A: I think I had more liberty to try new things. I was learning how to sing jazz here basically, because when I first got here there weren't a lot of jazz vocalists so I had the opportunity to get on stage more.