Leehom Wang

QUICK FACTS

• born in Rochester, NY
• parents immigrated to NY from Taiwan
• attended Williams College and Berklee School of Music
• received a recording contract after entering a talent contest in Taiwan while visiting his grandma in 1995
• has since made 13 albums + one Japanese album
• was one of the torchbearers for the Beijing Olymic Games and performed at the closing ceremony
• began his acting career in a Hong Kong action movie and has since worked with Ang Lee and Jackie Chan
• latest projects are his directorial debut Love in Disguise and a new album, The Eighteen Martial Arts

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Leehom is everywhere in Greater China!





Visiting China since 2001, I'd always wondered why this one person was on every bottle of Wahaha mineral water. I just couldn't understand who would want to be Wahaha's human mascot and assumed that he was either a Taiwanese drama heartthrob or a popstar.

It turns out that Wahaha, the hugest Chinese water & beverages company of all time, was looking for a new young singer's face to represent them, and at the time, Leehom already had a solid fanbase in Taiwan and was looking to expand his audience to Mainland China.

[Notes: I think bottled water is a lot more widely-consumed in Asia than in the US because the tap water there is not drinkable, and free cups of water do not exist, not even in places like McD's.

Also it is probable that if Justin Timberlake's face were on every can of Coke here, he would just gain haters for being part of a tacky advertising campaign, but for Leehom in Asia, Wahaha was perfect.]

2010 is his twelfth year with Wahaha. They charmingly circulate old pictures of him, including ones in which he has that unattractive Asian wanna-be hairstyle:




the rare US concert, Las Vegas 2007

Leehom grew up in New York, where his Taiwanese parents had come to study and ended up settling. As soon as he was old enough, he wanted to play the violin just like his older brother and got to take lessons at Eastman School of Music beginning at six years old.

In his teen years he was still listening to classical music and having his life changed by the Beastie Boys. And, while his parents expected him to become a doctor, he finally chose to attend a small liberal arts college and to major in music and Asian studies.

By then he had already secured a recording contract in Taiwan by entering a talent contest just for fun. The host of this was later revealed to be Sony BMG.

Chinese 101 freshman year, and onward to write his own Chinese-language songs. Leehom says this about his early days:

"It was really difficult for me at the beginning to adapt...I didn't really speak Mandarin very well. I didn't know anybody in Taiwan. And I was really, really lonely. And it was hard to...hard to just express myself. It was a tough time."

And:

"It was a way to strike a balance between my two identities: being born an American kid used to having a private life and being a public figure [in Taiwan]. That's what fate has dealt me."

Why did he choose to stay in Asia for his career despite the difficulties? There are a number of reasons, including a kind of self-search and the opportunities that he saw in Asia to advance his chosen career (musician & recording artist) and contribute to the music world. Here is what he told Berklee Today, the magazine of one of his almae matres:

"I never really had plans to launch an American career. I think I'm lucky that things started in Asia, because I was able to develop as a pure musician, to be known for my music and let the music speak for itself. In America, I'd rather be known for my music than as the 'Chinese artist.'"

(I feel that this is true to some degree. Maybe one day, when the time is right but preferably before he turns 45, he can attempt crossover by making a single that features Usher. Then he can transform the American pop music scene. Because somebody has to be the first Asian-American popstar OK. In the meantime he seems to enjoy his non-celebrity status in his birth country, where his parents and brothers still live and where he can have a private life.)

Starting in the late 90s he began to develop a style of music that blends traditional Chinese sounds with hip-hop, pop, and R&B. While Jay Chou calls his "Zhongguo Feng," Leehom terms his own "chinked-out."

Controversial! In the US, at least, where the word "chink" is the equivalent of the n-word for African Americans.

He explained upon the release of his tenth album Shangri-La (2004) that he wants Chinese pop music to develop its own unique sound, and "chinked-out" is an effort to reappropriate a racist term and "create a sound that is international, but at the same time, Chinese." He traveled to Tibet, Mongolia, Xinjiang, Yunnan, Taiwan, and of course Shangri-La to learn about the music of ethnic minorities and incorporate them into his songs.



Following this album was his best-selling Heroes of Earth (2006) in which he focused on centuries-old Beijing opera and kunqu. "Hua Tian Cuo," for example, is based on an opera called The Bride Napping, which is based on a section from The Water Margin, one of the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature. Leehom invited Zhenchun Chen to write the lyrics, and then he wrote the music in a beautiful opera-R&B style.

LISTEN TO HIS ERHU!!



(Have to say that this is my favorite WLH song. And that I found videos of at least three young black women covering this song on YouTube. AWESOME!)

Leehom continued to score Asian points in 2008 when he ran the Olympic torch in Greece and sang with Stephanie Sun & Jackie Chan in addition to other superstars, including Korean homeboy Rain again during the closing ceremony.

Then he was invited to guest-conduct the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra.



A year earlier he had auditioned and was chosen for a major part in Ang Lee's drama Lust, Caution, based on the novella by Eileen Chang. Chinese diaspora party? Of course.



He had also been friends with Jackie Chan for several years when in 2009 he was chosen to co-star in Chan's own production, an action-comedy film set in ancient China titled, Little Big Soldier.



More recently, he has participated in the Shanghai Expo festivities--performing a sexi song to promote Taipei--and co-written, directed, and acted in his own romantic comedy, Lian'ai Tonggao or Love in Disguise, due out just two days before Chinese Valentine's Day in 2010 along with his new album, The Eighteen Martial Arts, which is chinking-out C-pop once again.

CHECK OUT THE MOVIE TRAILER HERE!



UCLA Asian studies critic Brian Hsu in this article that Prof. Feeley assigned us to read says this:

"It's not necessarily that he's the best singer or even the best musician in the Mando-pop universe. It's that 1) He's famous for being a classically-trained musician, 2) He's known for writing and producing his own music, and 3) He makes it clear in the album credits and videos that he plays multiple instruments, and 4) He has by far the most ambitious musical mind in contemporary Chinese pop. Wang theorizes his music: he experiments with it; he names it; he allows his image to transform as his musical inspiration changes."

Leehomie, keep playin' that erhu.



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