“I don’t understand anything, but I love them!“. That comment from a follower seems to condense the code established with the adventures of the Muyun brothers, or the Muyun Brothersa prodigy of virality and the subject of various memes based, above all, on his strange (at least for us) way of singing.
¿But who are these guys?? While we are putting together the puzzle by following them on the networks (logically Tik Tok is the most natural of the media where they display their art), the information base appears in their account You Tube.
There they say that they are “around 20 years old” and that they love music. “We see ourselves as children with big dreams in our small bodies.“, they say about themselves, as if anticipating the storm of questions, expressed or reserved, about their physical characteristics.
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And what else is known about them? The names do not appear in view. They belong to the ethnic group Do, which has a population of about 9 million people and is one of the 56 officially recognized by the Chinese government. The place where they live is also known: the Daliang Mountains, in the area of Sichuan.
The singing brothers are Farmers and the videos show their habitat: a rural, mountainous area, with houses with typical roofs and goats walking everywhere. A “Heidi” scene with something Andean when the boys are seen with the ponchos, but in the far east.
With a landscape in the background, the boys appear in a few videos. A guitar in the hands of the lead singer and the brothers who provide the choruses and interventions. The gestures they make show a deep commitment to the interpretations: there is no deception possible there.
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On Tik Tok the Muyun Brothers are popular. They are getting close to a million followers. There are videos of several songs, in genres that range from folk to world music.
The best known and the one that circulates the most, by far, is what is known as “Oh ha,” where the trio deploys all their resources.
Like the voices and the arrangements they sound atypical For Western expectations and ears, authors of evil memes take advantage of comparisons with the noises of cars with starting or brake failures, or with the sounds of the body due to joint problems. “Minions exist”: things like that are also dedicated to these short boys.
All this when “Oh ha” has inspired lyrics that speak of the desire to fly like an eagle in the blue sky, to climb mountains or run like a cheetah; of the pleasure of seeing horses gallop, of peacocks, of soldiers who want to be heroes. A marvel.
Before the videos with the songs, the brothers recounted their life in the countryside like a reality show. The images show them as skilled bricklayers, painters, carpenters, cooks. “We transformed our farm into a welcoming house,” they say.
You probably exaggerate the headline of an article that says they are “threatening the K Pop Korean”. But you never know and the truth is that the brothers are moving forward.
In their last appearances they were seen boarding a plane and enjoying the flight to the city of Hangzou. “Our first time making a movie! We are very nervous!”, they posted, while having fun with umbrellas on a visit to Lake Xihu.
They seem to be heading towards some kind of conventional fame, if the millions of likes and views they collected no longer constitute it.
The language of the Yi ethnic group
The Yi are descendants of the Qiang people who inhabited western China and are also believed to be the origin of the Tibetan and Naxi ethnic groups. They emigrated from southern Tibet to the current Chinese provinces of Yunnan and Sichuan, where the singing brothers live.
Some yi in Yunnan came to practice a system of slavery where the nuohuo or “black yi” dominated the qunuo or “white yi.” The peculiarity was that some slaves who agreed to “hierarchical” tasks could buy their freedom.
Parade with costumes of the Yi ethnic group
The Yi speak several languages of Sino-Tibetan origin. An ancient writing system had a total of 10,000 words, of which 1,000 were in everyday use.
Not so long ago, in 1980, the Chinese government established a new official writing system for the language. It is made up 43 consonants and 8 vowels which can be pronounced in three different tones. In addition, there are two more vowels that can only be pronounced in a single tone.
LT