Riverdance on stage in Beijing
By admin on 2014-12-29

From the front row of the Beijing Exhibition Center, the blitzkrieg of polyrhythmic tapping was so thunderous you could feel the reverberations in your chest. Precisely the effect Riverdance composer Bill Whelan was after.

"I've been very drawn to rhythmic music," Whelan explained. "I try to write music that is percussive and bring in elements that are not native to Irish dance. Like mixing in odd rhythms, in 5s, 9s, 11s, something that forces the choreographers to change the steps and do something different."

Tapping its way through 13 Chinese cities including Shanghai, Shenzhen and Xi'an, the theatrical blockbuster wrapped up its latest China tour last night with a closing performance in Beijing. The production put on a total of eight shows in the capital with a full film crew in tow to record their third concert DVD.

Whelan's spirit of experimentation was prevalent on the China tour. For the act Homage to the Tradition, Whelan wrote in a famous traditional Irish air played on the fiddle, only to have the theme taken over by an erhu and developed by two other Chinese musicians on the pipa and bamboo flute.

"When the erhu took over the tune, I had an immediate emotional response that took me by surprise. I felt like I was hearing something from home," Whelan said.

Perhaps it is this ability to identify the common threads in all musical traditions that distinguishes Bill Whelan from other composers. From his foundations of rock and jazz to his later orchestral explorations, Whelan has built a career of integrating styles while at the same time furthering the influence of Irish music throughout the world.

"I've done a lot of work with the traditional music of Ireland, orchestrating new airs in the idiom of traditional Irish music," he said. "From my early days, when I wasn't completely in love with rock'n'roll, I inclined towards traditional Irish music."

The 59-year-old native of Limerick had performed with pop bands, written numerous film scores, worked with artists such as Van Morrison and produced a track for U2's War, all before the world had ever heard the taps of Riverdance.

Ever since its first performance in 1995, Whelan has used the show to bring traditional Irish music to the world; a tradition he says is very much alive today and strongly rooted in Ireland's youth.

"There are very many young people, taking up the fiddle, pipes, bodhrán and playing them in a way integrated to the community. It's something they do on Saturday night at the pub and they play endlessly for hours. We have a living culture kept alive by young people. If it had not been for that culture, Riverdance could have never sprung out."

At the same time, Whelan has also been instrumental in bringing his interest in world music to the Irish musical vocabulary.

"Personally I've always been interested in finding new ways of expression in old music. I consider myself an Irish composer, but if my music sounded postiche, old Irish, I would consider myself to have failed. So it's necessary to both draw from the tradition and then leaven it with all the other things you've got going on, the hodge-podge of your creative brain and create something new."

Many of Whelan's ideas of integration are apparent not only in Riverdance, which incorporates such diverse styles as Spanish flamenco, jazz tap and Russian folk, but also are reflected throughout his composition career. His Latin-inspired 1992 orchestral work Seville Suite is something he cites as one of the musical foundations of Riverdance.

Earlier projects involving Bulgarian and Macedonian folk music, to some of his latest collaborations with vocal acrobat Bobby McFerrin, all challenge any preconceived style of Irish music.

However, Whelan's explorations are not only driven stylistically, but also philosophically, as he points out that folk music across the globe shares very basic common elements that connect us all.

"When you get to study the actual modes, timbres, expressions of folk music, you actually discover something that is quite uniting about people," he explained.

"If I have a hope for music, it's that people find common modes of expression from each other's music and that way find ways to become closer to each other."

This sentiment was best exemplified during the playful mixing of the Chinese song Kang Ding Love Song and a traditional Irish air during the Beijing performance of Riverdance, which according to Whelan, was "a little bit of an experiment that I'd like to think worked well together."