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Rainbow Chan is a lecturer in contemporary music at the University of Sydney. She is also a producer, songwriter and a singer under her stage name Chun Yin.
Her debut album Spacings was awarded four stars by US music magazine Rolling Stone, and a single off the album won the 2017 SMAC Song of the Year Award.
Over the course of three years, she has produced her follow-up electronic music album called Pillar, which was inspired by both traditional and modern styles.
One of the tracks on the album was sung in her native Weitou language, a disappearing dialect that is spoken in Hong Kong and southern regions of China.
Rainbow’s mother is an Indigenous inhabitant of Hong Kong who grew up in a village near Yuen Long.
Rainbow Chan in her latest album campaign (supplied, credit to Hyun Lee) Source: Hyun Lee
During her childhood, Rainbow recalls hearing her mother speaking Weitou with her family and friends.
However, she found that fewer and fewer people were speaking the dialect and that traditional knowledge was slowly disappearing.
“The outer wall of the village has peeled off and has not been well conserved, leaving very few,” she said.
“In modern society, the traditional buildings have been demolished, and the younger generations no longer cultivate land like their ancestors. The culture is gradually disappearing. Some people even think that speaking Weitou has lower social status.”
Learn traditional folk tales from Weitou women
Rainbow was born in Hong Kong and grew up in a suburb of North Sydney when she immigrated to Australia with her parents at the age of six.
Until recently, she began to realise the richness of Weitou culture.
What impressed her most was the traditional knowledge held by Weitou women.
Weitou women are known for their strength and unity. Traditionally, these women are not allowed to publicly express their inner feelings, so they express themselves through song.
“Nowadays there are very few elderly people who could sing the old folks, left only about ten people,” she said.
On one occasion, she found that a local community centre in Lung Yeuk Tau, Hong Kong, had organised a five-year community program which aimed to conserve Weitou culture and the language dialect.
Rainbow Chan= during her childhood. Source: Rainbow Chan
With her mother’s encouragement, Rainbow decided to return to Hong Kong and reconnect with her heritage.
At that time, the community centre released a new music album in Weitou. Rainbow picked one song and remixed it into a euphoric club track called Lull.
The lullaby is short and easier to learn. It tells the story of a grandmother patting her grandchildren to sleep.
The song features Rainbow's mother Chui Ping and auntie Choi Lin at the beginning.
She felt particularly special when she realised that her grandmother sung the lullaby to her mother, which was then passed to her. Rainbow promised that she would continue to promote the Weitou culture and continue learning the dialect so that she passes it on to the next generation.
Since the Weitou dialect is not a written form of a language and many of the elderly speakers are illiterate, the songs rely on word of mouth.
Before the girls of a Weitou village got married, they lived together in “sister houses” and learned life skills such as weaving and cooking. They shared knowledge through their songs.
An interesting song is ‘Milling Rice Song’. It is significant because during times that there were no supermarkets, the people in the village had to cultivate rice by themselves and make powder from the rice mill.
This process of grinding rice was long and complicated. Singing songs together during this process helped them relax and hang on.
Rainbow Chan performing at NGV (supplied) Source: Predrag Cancar, courtesy of National Gallery of Victoria
Passion found during childhood
Music played a crucial role in Rainbow’s family. Since childhood, she listened to music because both her elder sisters were learning the piano. She would imitate them by playing songs.
By age 16, Rainbow started songwriting as a way to express her feelings during puberty.
She then began participating in competitions to build up her confidence.
Inspired by Icelandic singer Björk and Hong Kong singer Faye Wong, Rainbow fell in love with electronic music and turned her attentions to becoming a professional artist.
“I found it’s more interesting to produce music with a computer because it brings out unexpected outcomes. By cutting, pasting and playing with the technology, I could exploit different elements of the software,” she said.
“Some new sounds can be created which didn’t hear from traditional instruments.”
The SBS National Languages Competition 2019 is an SBS Radio initiative to encourage and celebrate a love of learning languages in Australia. This year we encourage Australians of all ages who are learning a language, including those learning English and AUSLAN to participate by sending us a drawing or writing that shows us ‘How does learning a language make a world of difference?’.
