Members of the Farmer Brothers band gather every Saturday and immerse themselves in music. Zhang Leilong / China Daily

A Henan-based band of musicians from farmer families comes under the spotlight, after spending years in anonymity. Liu Xiangrui and Pan Yanan report.

The band Farmer Brothers takes great pride in its rural roots and simple music that celebrates everyday life. The six-member band based in Xunxian, Henan province, had been playing for years in relative anonymity, but is now under the spotlight.

After appearances on local stages and TV, they made it onto CCTV (China Central Television) in July, and turned overnight into celebrities.

But even so they are sometimes mocked for their "rustic" band name, and at other times, accused of cashing in on their ordinary identities.

"We all grew up in the countryside," says the band's leader and keyboard player Jiang Liwei, 37.

"Farmers don't always wear old clothes and straw hats, just as rock musicians don't necessarily wear long hair and outlandish clothes."

Jiang founded the band with five teenage students in 2002, while teaching music at a technical school. However, most of the band members went their separate ways after graduating.

The only other original member of the band, besides Jiang, is 24-year-old drummer Zhao Yanqing.

"Rock bands were extremely cool then, and I joined Jiang as soon as he suggested it," Zhao says.

They searched around their school and rented an inexpensive room but, lacking the resources to invest in brand new musical instruments, borrowed a broken drum from a former disco club owner.

As the sole earning member of his family, Jiang scrimped and saved to sustain the band, even as his band mates continued to be dependant on their parents.

In 2003, they began their weekend performances, which would earn just 30 yuan ($4.70) a day for each of them for singing for four to five hours.

Three years later, they headed to Beijing to take part in a competition, taking along two large boxes of instant noodles to sustain them.

"We were more worried about how we were going to pay for our return tickets than about our performance," Jiang says.

Xu Shouchao, 26, who joined the band as a guitarist in 2003, says he still cherishes those hard days that were entirely devoted to music.

"We cooked together in that simple room and sang as we prepared our meals," he says, adding they would indulge in some wine when they had the money.

"My parents didn't understand my devotion to music," says Jiang's former classmate Qin Xianshe, 39, who joined the band in 2007.

"All that rural parents hope for is that their children have a stable job to support the family."

Adds 22-year-old bassist Liu Yong, "In their minds, we were wasting our time."

Liu joined the band in 2008 but had to drop out for six month in 2010 to work as a porter, at the insistence of his parents.

Fifty-nine-year-old Chen Guilan, Zhao's mother, used to run a small tricycle-based stall selling small household gadgets and had no idea what a band was.

"We were poor. I earned about 70 yuan a month, but the drum foot pedal he asked for cost more than 1,000 yuan," says Chen, who opposed her son's involvement in a band from the beginning.

Even so, she eventually ended up helping him buy a drum kit for thousands of yuan in 2005.

"After all, he had worked so hard on (the band)," explains his mother. "I am just worried about his future."

After winning a series of music competitions and earning money from performances, their financial concerns have slowly started to recede.

In 2008, Jiang set up a small music training school, where the other members also teach for extra cash.

Every Saturday, they gather in a small studio in Jiang's training school and immerse themselves in music, from about 2 pm to 10 pm.

It is in this small room that they record their songs on a computer, with an old microphone.

They are serious about their music and Jiang and Qin sometimes argue over small points, which are resolved by taking a vote.

The band has penned more than 30 songs, most of them warm and upbeat, about the lives of ordinary folk.

"We want to give people like us more confidence and hope," Jiang says. "We have nothing else to offer."

They hope someday they will hold concerts in Henan province's colleges to encourage students from poor rural areas.

"We never think of ourselves as professional musicians, but once on stage we feel different and find we truly belong to music," Jiang says.

China Daily