Published by: World Tibet Network News Tuesday - February 13, 1996

New York Times, Tuesday, February 6, 1996

By Jon Pareles

The best-selling album ever made in China, "Sister Drum" (Sire/Elektra) straddles the border between majesty and kitsch.

The album was written after Dadawa (Zhu Zheqin), a singer from Guangzhou Province, visited Tibet with He Yuntian, a composer and producer, and Hun Xunyou, a lyricist.

In songs that allude to Tibetan beliefs, He Yuntian has set her voice to resonant sustained synthesizers. Yet there's just as much influence from Western pop: blues progressions, U2's echoing guitars, even giddy girl-group harmonies. Dadawa can sound sweet and girlish, or hushed and awestruck; she can also belt with a rocker's rawness.

Some songs, like the meditative "Home Without Shadow" and the driving "Zhouma of Zhoumas," live up to their internationalist ambitions, making Dadawa China's answer to Enya and Peter Gabriel. Other tunes capsize under choirs and overwrought vocals.

"Sister Drum" arrives with inescapable political overtones. China occupied Tibet in 1950, and the Dalai Lama, Tibet's Buddhist leader, has been in exile since 1959. For a Western listener, it is hard to tell whether the album represents a Chinese claim on Tibetan culture, sympathy for Tibet or simply musicians seeking spiritually tinged exotica.

"The purpose of the journey is not to explore Tibet, but to explore ourselves," the producer writes. But the final song, "The Turning Scripture," incorporates Buddhist monks' chanting and trumpeting alongside a pompous orchestral anthem, with lyrics that praise "the piety that can't be broken." and "the dream that can't be scattered."

As China supresses Tibet, its hit album may hint at a troubled conscience.