Beijing Olympics 2008

As the Olympic countdown ticked to 30-days the Beijing Olympic Organizing Committee announced 30 new official songs for the world sporting extravaganza. Among the most prominent of the newly released tunes is Forever Friends. The work was composed by Kong Xiangdong and Giorgio Moroder.

In composing “Forever Friends”, Kong Xiangdong and Giorgio Moroder contributed immense time and energy. Kong Xiangdong says the composition was inspired by his friend Thomas Ho.

Thomas Ho is one of Kong Xiangdong’s best friends. He’s also a noted producer in the US. Ho has been involved in the production of movies like Platoon, Wall Street, Rain Man, Rwanda Hotel, and Curiosity Kills the Cat.

Right after Beijing was named as host for the 2008 Games, Thomas Ho made the suggestion that Kong Xiangdong compose a song for the Games. Thanks to Ho’s efforts, Kong Xiangdong met Giorgio Moroder, a master of sports anthems.

Kong Xiangdong believes that a song should have high artistic values. For a universal event like the Olympics, the theme should be accessible to average listeners and should resonate the spirits of participation and competition. He also says the Olympic song must be uplifting and inspirational.

A lover of traditional Chinese music, Kong Xiangdong made sure oriental elements figured prominently. In preparing to write the song, he went through more than a thousand Chinese folk songs. At last, he chose to focus on 40. These were his musical raw materials and his cultural inspiration.
It took Kong Xiangdong and Giorgio Moroder three years to write “Forever Friends.” The tune had its global release, August, 7th in 2007, in Beijing. Performing at the debut were the 14 finalists at the China Varsity Music Festival.

Since then, the two musicians kept working on the song. So far, both the Chinese-language and English-language versions have been produced. There’s an exquisite music video to go along.

A child prodigy, Kong Xiangdong began to study the piano when he was five. He gave his first public performance immediately after turning 15. Since then he has won many top awards at home and abroad. During a 20 year career as a concert pianist, he conquered audiences around the world.

Since 1997, Kong Xiangdong’s sphere has been confined largely to the Chinese mainland. He believes as an artist that he’s duty-bound to serve the people of his own country.

He has appeared at major events like the concert marking Macao’s return to China and the Spring Festival Gala on China Central Television.

Kong Xiangdong has earned his reputation as a brilliant artist, a musical activist, a cultural personality, and as a world renowned pianist.

from: cctv.com

Is this the official Olympic Theme for the Beijing Olympics 2008?
It sounds really great.

Beijing Olympic and Paralympic torch relay theme song and two theme songs for the volunteer programs were unveiled Wednesday, the 100-day countdown to the Olympic Games, at Tai Miao at the Beijing Working People’s Culture Palace.
The trio songs, “Light the Passion, Share the Dream” “I am A star” and “Smile Beijing“, which jumped out from nearly 80,000 contested songs, were finally released at the Fourth Olympic Songs Contest on Wednesday evening.
The “Light the Passion, Share the Dream” for the Olympic torch relay, was composed by Chris Baobida and written by Huang Xiaomao, who compared the Olympic flame to the eternal starlight, symbolizing that people, led by the light, will be united to realize the dream of friendship, hope and harmony.
One of the theme songs for the volunteers — I am A Star – was created by famous Hong Kong music men Emil Chau and Lam Jik. Lam regards in his lyrics the volunteers to the bow and the wind, which are source of the power and success.
“It is the volunteers who are the real Olympic stars,” Chau said.
Another volunteer theme song “Smile Beijing” was created by Chen Ying, who works for the Beijing Olympic Volunteers Committee. Chen expressed his hope that everyone would remember the sentence “Volunteers’ smile is the best calling card for Beijing.”
This song was also carried to the space by China’s first lunar probe satellite Chang’e-1, which sent back the signal of the song on Dec. 4, 2007

from: xinhuanet.com

BEIJING - Canadian pop star Celine Dion voiced her support for the upcoming Beijng Olympic Games here on Saturday, saying she was “definitely against boycotting” the Games.
“When you talk about the Olympics, you don’t say politics,” she said at a press conference. “We talk about power. We talk about love. And we talk about dreams.”
The Quebec native sang the theme song for the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games, the “Power of the Dream”.
Dion called on all people to “keep the dream possible for our young kids”.
She came to Beijing to express support for the Games after her concert in Shanghai on Friday.
On Saturday, the chanteuse received a gift sculpture from Zhao Dongming, director of the cultural activities department of the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games (BOCOG).
On finding out the name of the sculpture, “eternal flame”, Dion said “keep the flame eternal.”

Canadian singer Celine Dion (R) and her husband Rene Angelil attend a TV program in Beijing, China, April 12, 2008. [Xinhua]

Many foreign governments and senior officials have expressed support for the Beijing Olympic Games, condemning the deeds of those disrupting the Olympic torch relay and politicizing the sports event.
Baleka Mbete, Speaker of South Africa’s National Assembly, said on Friday at a press conference for the 118th Assembly of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) that appeals for boycotting the Olympics and disrupting the torch relay would never gain popular support.
She said any person with conscience would condemn such deeds of obstructing the Olympic Games that was a grand sports occasion for the entire human race.
IPU Secretary General Anders B. Johnsson also told the press conference that the IPU was strongly opposed to violent deeds and was against any act of obstructing the Olympic Games.
The Republic of Korea (ROK), Thailand, Peru, Afghanistan and many other countries also expressed support.

from: chinadaily.com.cn

Pop music and movie star Jay Chou from Taiwan struggled to produce a song for the Beijing Games because neither he nor long-time collaborator Vincent Fang had attempted writing this kind of music before.
The pair worked on the song A Long Journey for five months and finished a demo in Taipei on March 9. Chou told the Shanghai-based Oriental Daily he rushed to complete the song and ended up e-mailing it to Beijing Olympic officials at night just before the deadline.
BOCOG will reveal the songs for the Olympics and Paralympics 100 days before the respective Games start.
Chou, known for his roles in the Zhang Yimou-directed Curse of the Golden Flower and Initial D, said the song marked a new departure for him.
“I think the feeling of the electric guitars is a little stronger than just using the piano,” Chou said. “If listeners from Europe and America hear this kind of music, I hope it can make them jump back a little!”
The song blends Chou’s traditional Chinese sounds with other genres like rock and electro.
Some of Fang’s lyrics, written in Mandarin, have already been leaked on the Internet: “A long journey, countless nights, waiting for a clear moon, on the border of dreams, the wind blows ceaselessly, never feeling tired, the East is worthy, who is number one, let us pursue perfection.”
March 10 was the closing date for the fourth round of Olympic song solicitations. Organizers said they were looking for 25 songs for the Olympic Games, 10 songs for the Paralympics, one theme song each for the Olympic and Paralympic torch relays, theme songs for the volunteers and a piece of music for the award ceremonies.
Light the Passion, Share the Dream, composed by Hong Kong musician Chris Babida, has already been named for the Olympic torch relay, which got underway March 24. I am a Star, by Emil Chau, will be used for Olympic volunteers.

Giorgio Moroder and Kong Xiangdong’s Forever Friends is considered a leading candidate for the Olympic theme tune. This would be Moroder’s third Olympic theme song.
“National characteristics should be reflected in the song,” he said. “For example, Korean musical elements were used in Hand in Hand. This time, we have used Chinese music from Liu Yang River instead of Jasmine, because the latter has been overused.”

BOCOG started song hunting in 2003 and collected over 300 in 2005 alone, including Wishing Star by another Taiwan artist, Huang Dawei. Over 4,000 songs have been submitted over the last four years, including at least 30 for the theme song.
Canadian singer Celine Dion, who will perform on April 13 at Beijing Workers’ Stadium, has also sent a candidate theme song to BOCOG. The multiple Grammy Award winner sang The Power of the Dream at the opening ceremony of the 1996 Atlanta Games. Four years ago in Athens, Icelandic artist Bjork took the honor, performing Oceania in a towering white and purple dress.
Former Olympic gold medalist Yang Ling penned the lyrics to one offering entitled I stand on the Olympic Winner’s Podium.
Beijing Satellite TV (BTV1) launched the program Olympic Songfest on Jan 5 last year so viewers could vote for their favorites.

from: chinadaily.com.cn

“If God had a singing voice, it would sound a lot like Andrea Bocelli,” Celine Dion once said. Fitting then that the great Italian tenor has lent his vocal talents to a composition that may be chosen as the official song of the Beijing Olympics.
Composed by Tan Dun and produced by 14-time Grammy Award winner David Forster, the song One World One Dream was submitted last week to the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad.
Featuring traditional Chinese instruments - the guzheng and erhu - and a world-music-style orchestration and chorus, the song showcases the universal love, friendship and warmth Chinese people bring to the world, Tan said.
Bocelli is joined by rising Chinese star Zhang Liangying, with each of them singing in both Chinese and English.
“For the past eight years, I have been seeking a voice to sing for the Beijing Olympic Games,” Tan said.
“The voice had to be both of China and of the world, be warm, full of love and able to last forever.
“David and I planned to have Celine Dion and Bocelli sing the duet, but when he (David) heard Zhang’s voice, he said she was the perfect match for Bocelli,” he said.
An internationally renowned composer, Tan’s musical credits include winning an Oscar for the score for the hit movie Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon.
Canadian producer Forster said in Beijing yesterday: “This is my first visit to China, but I can already tell why everybody loves this country.
“I always knew my life would not be complete until I had discovered music in Asia and worked in Asia. Tan has given me a great opportunity to achieve that goal,” he told China Daily.
“I respect Tan. He is a genius, like Mozart or Beethoven. He is also one of the few people I know who works well on both classical and pop music,” he said.
“Tan has the vision, and I believe he knows how to make a piece of music belong to both China and to the world.
“But I have never worked so hard: Tan kept changing things. The finished song is actually the 18th version,” Forster said.
The lyrics were written by Tan and his wife Jane Huang Jingjie “Stand next to me, I want to see you in this place. You are everywhere I look, as the light falls around your face. Stay and take my hand. How many moments do we get. All is right in this world of ours and time will go as time must go. Time will do what we both know.”
“I hope the song expresses the love between East and West, old and new, God and man, and men and women,” Tan said, adding that his inspiration came from the scenes of people celebrating the end of World War II in 1945, in Times Square, New York.
“Strangers were hugging and kissing each other,” he said.
“At the opening ceremony, I want there to be that kind of passion and love that we want to share with the people standing next to us, even strangers.”

from: chinadaily.com.cn/olympics/2008-03/20/content_6551645.htm

Countless numbers of envelopes and parcels exploded into the office for the Campaign to Solicit Songs for Beijing 2008 Olympic Games on Monday. BOCOG has set up an Olympic Songfest, in which submitted songs will vie for a place of honor within Olympic history. With the March 10 deadline of this fourth and final round, songwriters all over the world wanted to get their submissions in before the doors closed. Among the clutter of return addresses, some familiar names stand out: Jay Chow, Lin Xi, Vincent Fang, and Xiao Ke, along with many other well-known musicians, have also joined in the fun.
The Jay Chow-Vincent Fang duo has been quite prominent in introducing popular songs to the world. In October of last year, Chow announced that he wanted to be a part of the creation of the Olympic song, attaching great importance to the role he wants to play. The song he composed and submitted for the Olympics, with the help of lyricist Vincent Fang, was the first song he created in 2008, differing in style with his previous songs, with an easily understood melody and simple lyrics. The song arrived at the office at 10 PM the night before, and from initial reactions, seems to be a hit.

Arriving on Monday afternoon was Lin Xi and Xiao Ke’s submission for the Olympic Songfest. Their song incited excited reaction from listeners, who believe the lyrics and melody allow people to feel the great power and deep spirit of the Olympics.
Although Monday is the official deadline for the fourth round of submissions for the Olympic Songfest, the office will continue to accept outstanding songs for the activity. Interested parties may still send songs in, which will, according to a representative of the office, still be judged using the same criteria. If a song passes the test, it may be used by BOCOG.

An unprecedented number of people took part in this last round of the Songfest. All submissions had to be postmarked by Monday, so there are still envelopes in the mail. Even so, the number of packages already in the office is impressive. The next step is for workers to ensure that copyright forms have been filed, before the selection process begins. By the end of April, the winners will be notified.

from: beijing2008.cn 

With Giorgio Moroder’s “Forever Friends” other 50,000 songs try to be selected

Over 50,000 songs have reached the organizers of the campaign to seek best songs for the Beijing Olympic Games in August this year, the Beijing Evening News reported.
The Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad (BOCOG) started soliciting the songs on April 15, 2003.
The responders include ordinary citizens, students, professional composers, overseas Chinese, people with disabilities, and many others.
Among the entries, many praise the rise of China, athletes’ striving for the title, triumph of bid victory etc. However, the Olympic songs have their audiences not only in China, but the world over. “We expect more entries which embody the common aspirations and ideals of mankind,” said Jiang Xiaoyu, executive vice-president of BOCOG.
“Only a song advocating the splendor of humanity as encouraged by the Olympic spirit, can surmount the cultural differences and become a good Olympic song,” he said.
The world audiences would like to sing songs that integrate the nationality and internationality, he added.
The melody of “Hand in Hand” composed by Giorgio Moroder (he also competes for the Beijing Olympic theme) for the Seoul Olympic Games did not mention any word like “Korean”, but it perfectly expressed the spirit of the people of the Republic of Korea promoting unity, development and progress, Jiang said.
With the Olympic Games less than 200 days away, BOCOG has started to promote part of the entries through television and mobile phone schemes.

Taiwan pop star Chang Hui-mei, once banned from performing in China, is hoping she will be chosen to sing at the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, her past political problems forgiven and forgotten.
Chang has recorded a song in English called “Forever Friends” which, if chosen, she will perform in front of a global audience of billions on the night of Aug. 8, when the Olympics open.
It would mark an amazing comeback for a singer, affectionately known as A-Mei, who in 2000 sang the Taiwan anthem for anti-China President Chen Shui-bian’s inauguration.
China was incensed and stopped her from performing there until the summer of 2001. Though later allowed to return, in 2004 she cancelled a performance in Hangzhou after a protest by nearly 100 people accusing her of supporting Taiwan independence.
Chang, 35, declined to talk directly about those incidents in a recent interview with Reuters at a Beijing recording studio.
“I cannot say that my 10-year career path has been very smooth,” the petite singer said.
“But at least in the past 10 years, I have had highs and lows and I am glad to have walked safely through it all,” she added.
China views self-ruled, democratic Taiwan as part of its territory. The island has been ruled separately since defeated Nationalist forces fled there at the end of a civil war in 1949.
Beijing has threatened to take Taiwan, by force if necessary, but over the past few years has sought favour with Taiwanese people by promoting cultural exchanges.
Taiwanese and Hong Kong singers are hugely popular in China, despite its own growing pop scene, with many fans seeing those singers as more glamorous and fashionable.

“SMALL MISTAKE”
Chang, who grew up singing for fun in her native Puyuma village, stands out because of her strong voice on light rock tracks covering matters such as love and race.
Mandarin songs like “Can I hold you?”, “Bad Boy” and “When I started secretly to miss you” were big hits not just in Taiwan and China, but across Southeast Asia.
The singer’s top priority now is to rehearse and record “Forever Friends”, composed by Chinese musician Kong Xiangdong and Italian Giorgio Moroder, producer of the Seoul Olympic theme song “Hand in Hand”.
“A-Mei made a small mistake,” Kong said of Chang’s previous political problems. “But the audience did not forget her after all these years.”
The song has already won recognition with the Beijing Olympic organisers, who have praised it as one of their top five candidates, despite Chang’s checkered past in China.
“The Olympics and music are beyond borders and beyond politics,” said Wang Pingjiu, a senior official who is in charge of Olympic song selection.
“Personally, I like this song very much. But as for the future of the song — whether it is able to make it as the Olympic theme song — you might need to wait until the Aug 8. Olympic opening ceremony to find out the answer,” he added.
Previous Olympics have seen performances by Celine Dion, Bjork and Kylie Minogue. (Writing by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Katie Nguyen)

from: guardian.co.uk 

The Dream Team of Giorgio Moroder witch include top star Coco Lee and Sun Nan, producer Kong Xiangdong and Yang Dongsheng and german lyricist Michael Kunze produced what should become the Beijing 2008 Olympic Theme.
Here the lyrics to the song:

Forever Friends

You’ve tasted bitter defeat and the sweet success.
You want it all and you settle for nothing less.
You’ve tried harder than the rest.
You’ve become one of the best.
This is the time you’ll remember for
All your life.

Forever friends
In harmony
As the whole world joins and sees
Days of unity and peace.
Forever through the years
We’ll hear the cheers.
Joy and laughter everywhere!
We’re together here to share
Forever friends

You’ll meet all races, see faces you’ve never seen.
People from parts of the world where you’ve never been.
And you’ll feel it in your heart
We spent too much time apart
This is the time when all dreams of man come alive.
No matter where we are or go
No matter what we hope for or know
No matter how we word our prayer
There is one dream we share
One world One Dream
Forever friends
In Harmony!
Forever Friends
One dream we dream,
One world we share.

RobLadin.com