Performers › Composers
Wang Luobin
Composer and folk-song collector from Beiping, called the King of Western Folk Songs, who shaped a Qinghai folk tune into In That Faraway Place.
In a palace music hall, a frame of tiered bronze chime bells hangs from dragon-carved beams, with one person standing with their back turned holding two mallets before it; a large red drum and a rack of red knotted cords stand to the left and a stone chime to the right, in evening light.
Also known as Wang Rongting · King of Western Folk Songs
- Roles
- Composers
Wang Luobin, born Wang Rongting in Beiping on 28 December 1913, entered the music department of Beiping Normal University in 1930, studying voice and piano. In the late 1930s he moved to the Northwest and taught in Xining, where he began collecting and arranging the folk songs of the western peoples; over his life he arranged more than seven hundred and published eight song collections, earning the name King of Western Folk Songs. Around 1939 he shaped a Qinghai folk tune into In That Faraway Place, and his other songs include The Girl from Dabancheng, The Half Moon Rises and Lift Your Veil. He died in Urumqi on 14 March 1996.
Life and times
Dates 1913–1996