All Chinese a cappella group, SouLA, finds identity at UCLA through both Chinese- and American-inspired a cappella performances. Daily Bruin Radio reporter Emma Oeland spoke with members of SouLA about their uniquely Chinese/American fusion of music, and the international Chinese student experience at UCLA.

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TRANSCRIPT:

OELAND: You just listened to “Brightest Star in the Night Sky” by Escape Plan, the debut performance of the all-Chinese a cappella group SouLA as part of the Chinese Students and Scholar Association’s culture night earlier this month.
Founded in spring of 2013, SouLA strived to create a community of Chinese students on campus who enjoyed expressing themselves through music and shared a similar cultural background. Shavvon Lin, a second-year communication studies student and founder of the a cappella group discusses their choice of American and Chinese music.

LIN: The music that we choose aren’t really in the mainstream here or in China. A lot of people choose Jay Chou and Leehom, who are really famous singers with big hits.

OELAND: Iris Zhang, a third-year economics student and member of the group mentions the importance of these alternative music choices.

ZHANG: Some people in China think that American music is always better than Chinese music. People usually think that foreign things are better than local things. So if we can show people that we are enjoying what we are doing, and singing Chinese songs in different ways, that would be a really great thing to do.

OELAND: A cappella originally began during the European renaissance, and developed later in the American Ivy league university setting, but never moved into China as Marvin Zhu, co-director and second-year music history student, explains.

ZHU: It’s really new to China, it is only a style of music that has really picked up in these last two years over there in colleges.

OELAND: By creating music that tries to appeal to every student at UCLA, Lin hopes to make a larger statement to their peers that expresses what it means to be an international Chinese student at UCLA.

LIN: Some American students have this stereotype about us, that we just study really hard and sit in the library all day you know – we don’t all do engineering and chem, come on. We just want to show that international students, Chinese international students or from East Asia in general, we can do music as well. WE can be an entertainer, we can be fun. We can do something creative – not just study.

OELAND: In this way, as Zhu states, the group hopes to take what is old and familiar in modern Chinese music, and through the Westernized style of acapella singing, turn it into something pleasantly new and fresh for both American and Chinese audiences.

ZHU: The pop culture is really developing in China, so we as international students living in America should also begin to accept a lot of the new things and introduce them to our own culture. Re-create some of those traditional aspects for people now, and make them something that people like and that can be popular too.

OELAND: While every individual takes a different meaning from the group they share the similar sentiment that expresses not the experience and feelings of a Chinese student abroad, but what it means to live in a globalized and diverse society.
For Daily Bruin Radio, I’m Emma Oeland.