For many aspiring Chinese singers, the best short-cut to stardom is to enter the Central China Television Young Singers' Competition and win in front of millions of TV viewers, somewhat like their peers in the American Idol show.

Top award-winners always have better chances to enrol in leading performing arts troupes in the country and to join a good many variety shows, especially the Spring Festival TV Gala show, which has a following of hundreds of millions.

The bi-annual event this year, which started on May 1, is said to have drawn a few hundred million viewers across China.

The event is similar to the American Idol show in that it is a screening contest.

But unlike American Idol, the contestants have to go through strict pre-screening contests and get recommended from their own performing arts and other affiliated organizations.

Then they are able to show their talent, their knowledge and win favor from a galaxy of top composers, established singers and music critics in China, who form the panels of judges for the competition.

The high and strict professional and musical standards attract many young singers, such as ethnic Mongolian singer Morigen.

New group emerges

In fact, the competition for stardom this year is getting fiercer because a lot of ethnic minority singers like Morigen seem to be stealing the show by displaying their distinctive voices and various styles of songs.

Like Morigen, ethnic minority singers are now recognized as singers of yuanshengtai meaning literally "original, natural state (of voices/music)."

In fact, when the competition started in 1984, there was no division of groups, and all the singers competed together. From 1986 to 2004, the competition was divided into three groups.

One group sang in bel canto, following the "beautiful singing" or elegant Italian vocal style characterized by florid melodic lines delivered by voices of great agility, smoothness and purity of tone.

The second presented folk songs of different locales and different ethnic groups in China, but the variety seemed to be limited only to those already written and recorded in the country's compendium of folk and ethnic minority music.

The third was reserved for pop singers and pop-song groups, whose works are often characterized by unconventional beats and melodies from rock'n'roll to rap, and lyrics of more personal expression.

However, when Morigen tried to show her own flair in singing at the competition two years ago as a vocal student from the Central University of Nationalities, she couldn't fit into any of the three set categories.

She registered herself as a pop singer after all, she was popular among the folks of her home town in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. She did not qualify for the finals.

But the brand new category for indigenous ethnic singers rekindled Morigen's hope for stardom. She entered this year's competition with her own group called "Nuoenjiya." She founded the group in 2001 with two other ethnic Mongolian singers to perform Mongolian folk songs.

In the final of the team competition on May 15, they represented the State Ethnic Affairs Commission and won a score of 97.41, out of the full score of 100. They also qualified for the individual competition scheduled in July.

"Though we didn't come first with our score, we are very happy to perform in our own styles," said Morigen.

Long Xian'e of the Miao ethnic group has similar experience.

In the conventional "folk song" category of the 2004 competition, her traditional Miao style of singing provoked controversy among the judges, who gave her scores ranging between 93.5 and 97.5.

Some judges held that her singing technique did not meet the standard for the conventional folk song category, though Long's singing sounded good.

However, she caught the attention of other music professionals, including well-known composer Tan Dun. They believe that Long has a unique and most natural voice that should be treasured at a time when imitation seems prevalent among singers.

At the invitation of Tan, Long performed Tan's multimedia work "The Map," and toured the United States and the Netherlands. She also got a chance to study at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music.

This year, Long participated in the CCTV Young Singers' Televised Competition again, and scored 98.30 for her natural voice with little embellishment from established schools of singing.

As the new group of singers like Morigen and Long have been thrown into the limelight, hundreds of millions of TV viewers, music fans as well as performing arts professionals are exposed to songs and voices most have never heard of before.

Brilliant voices

The singing styles within this new category are diverse.

Among them are the remarkably high-pitched xintianyou songs from Northwest China's Shaanxi Province, the excessively low-pitched khoomei or overtone singing of ethnic Mongolians, the Tibetan mountain songs, and the multi-part chorus of the Dong people.

"The new group of singers reminds us of the many singing traditions in China that are being marginalized," said Xiao Mei, a professor of ethnomusicology in Shanghai Conservatory of Music.

Like Xiao, most of the judges in the panel for this new group of ethnic singers are ethnomusicologists. Trekking into the mountains and remote villages, they collect traditional Chinese folk and ethnic minority music as their vocation.

They believe these natural voices and indigenous music represent the cultural diversity that we now must treasure, as the world's culture is inclined to become more homogeneous in the era of globalization. If we value and preserve all these diversified forms of ethnic and folk singing heritage, these offer inspiration for creative and better new music and songs for a long time to come.

The competition provided a good opportunity for audiences throughout China to appreciate the music that used to be limited to remote places, even though it will take time before many in the audiences can fall in love with their styles of songs or singing.

Xiao was a judge for the first 10 days of competition. She said she found that she had been to all the participant singers' places of origin to do field work, so their singing styles were not unfamiliar to her.

She and her colleagues have come to an agreement that they judge from the degree to which these singers carry on their own music legacy, said Xiao.

And the stars, who will give a grand gala televised show on Tuesday, are those who are firmly rooted in their ethnic traditions.

(China Daily May 22, 2006)