多元文化视阈下的跨界演唱

Cross-border Singing from the Multi-cultural Perspectives

进入新世纪以来，跨界演唱成为活跃在各类舞台上的一种新的歌唱现象，“跨界声乐”成为一种新的文化名词，这种歌唱现象甚至达到了一定的繁荣程度。活跃于世界乐坛的英国女歌唱家莎拉·布莱曼就是一位才华横溢的“全才”歌唱家，她不仅是百老汇歌后，还是美声和通俗两种唱法兼得的歌唱家。在中国乐坛也出现了不少探索跨界演唱的成功范例，如男中音歌唱家廖昌永出版的新专辑《情释》，在这张专辑中首先从曲目的选择上来说，无论是翻唱王菲的《红豆》、那英的《征服》还是迪克牛仔的《有多少爱可以重来》，

Since the beginning of the new century, cross-border singing has become a new phenomenon on various stages. ″Cross-border vocal music″ is now a new cultural term, and it has grown so fast that it has reached the certain state of prosperity. British virtuoso Sarah Brightman, for example, is a versatile singer who is not only a Broadway superstar, but also a great artist in both bel canto and pop singing. In China, there are also some successful cross-border singers, such as baritone Liao Changyong, whose recent album ″The Love Died″ features a wide range of songs including remakes of Faye Wang's ″ Red Bean″ , Na Ying's ″Conquest″, and Dick Cowboy's ″How Much Love Could Come Again″. For a bel canto baritone, cross-border singing is indeed a great challenge. But Liao's interpretations of these pop classics in his pure and beautiful baritone voice produce an elegant and imposing atmo- sphere for these songs, and in the meantime, makes the bel canto singing more accessible to the audience.Cross-border singing refers to the phenomenon that one singer can perform in high level the vocal works of different singing styles. No precise definition has been made so far by Chinese and foreign theorists. In vocal music educator Jin Tielin's words, ″it is absolutely possible to sing songs of different styles and forms as long as you use the proper methods, just like different vehicles on the same road.″ In the first place, cross- border singers learned from the artistic practices of such 20th-Century Western singers as Pavarotti, Stefano, Bartoli and Sarah Brightman. They can be divided into three types. Type One is the so-called ″all-around″ singer. The curriculum for singer at some of the conservatories in Italy contains complex and diversified singing schools and styles with refined classification of voice parts where all human voices of great differences may have appropriate works for training and performance. Normally singers are good at certain types of works and pursue estab- lished technical styles. An all around artist breaks the stereotypes of works and singing styles so that he or she can sing everything like chorales, chamber songs, romances, polyphonic music and operas, which used to be performed respectively by specialized singers only, or in other words, he or she has such a wide range of voice that all repertoires of various types can be performed. The Italian bel canto was spread to the whole world since the 17th century, and in Europe by the end of the 19th century, it was merged with all different types of music such as comic opera, folk ballad and operetta, and the U.S. saw the rise of rock'n'roll, blues and country music, while musicals appeared in the UK. By the end of the 20th century, all these different categories can be con- quered freely by a single singer. Type Two is the cross-over between different technical styles. At the beginning, the classic singers sang the songs of pop singers with techniques of classic songs but in pop song style. Pavarotti and Stefano are two examples. But when Sarah Brightman came out, such technique was changed with the development of pop song voice methods. This kind of cross-border in transcending techniques is, in my opinion, the true cross-border singing of greater significance. Type Three is the cross-border singing by some celebrated classic music singers rather than pop music singers or folk music singers. This some- how explains the reason why the voice technique of pop songs can not take over that of classic music. There are so many rules and laws about the classic music and so strict principles for its voice techniques that singers of other styles find it hard to manage though they may maintain the superficial cross-border out of their strong interests. In fact, the for- mation of one particular singing style has much to do with the its voice technique. In China, on the contrast, things are much different. The biggest difference is the so-called ″hybrid″, with the combination of vari- ous singing styles which, by absorbing the best ″genes″ from one an- other, creates almost new singing styles such as bel canto-pop, folk- bel canto, folk-pop and traditional opera-classic opera or classic opera-traditional opera. Some of vocal music experts call this ″Chinese bel can- to″. These hybrid singing practices and vocal music education provide new approaches to the development of Chinese song singing, and will perhaps become a mainstream school for Chinese vocal music, which, technically, can parallel with Western opera singing methods and styles.