Nini is from Taiwan and plays several Chinese traditional folk instruments, often in orchestral as well as rock settings. She has toured Europe, the USA, Canada, China and Japan, successfully promoting her unique sound. Give her music a chance and click on the red links below. Please let us know what you think in the comments.
Start off with this, with Nini playing Amazing Grace in the central highlands of beautiful Taiwan (Hehuanshan - Mt. Joy - I think) pictured above.
Nini made her name on social media when the pandemic forced everyone online. She has followers across the world now, mainly in the Far East, including China, though she has been vilified by trolls from the mainland, possibly a CCP nudge unit, as they do not like Taiwan’s ‘soft power’ and influence over young mainlanders.
Nini plays several instruments, including the zhongruan, which looks like a big banjo with pegs sticking out of the head; the liuqin, similar but much smaller; the sanxian (three strings) with a very long stock and used to play Amazing Grace; the yueqin, a very wide fat sort of banjo, and the pipa, an oval shaped guitar like thingy, with a lot of frets. She plays all five here.
Here’s one for the more classical minded - but prepare to be surprised. Dressed in a slim-fitting, silver lame top with a heart-shaped hole, she stands looking at the camera for a while and then, with a manic laser display in the background, bursts into Flight of the Bumblebee played superbly at a frantic 185 beats per minute. The mix of classical music, electronic beats and Nini’s visual style is, in my view, compelling.
Another one of my Nini favourites is a Goth-themed, sort of, version of one of the best Rolling Stones songs Paint it Black played on a pipa. She has many more clips available on Youtube, most of them very good. I especially like her version of Dueling Banjos from the film Deliverance.
Nini is an interesting lass, and has great style as well as being talented and versatile. Her musical motivation is to “teach people about my instruments and share the beautiful culture of Taiwan with the world”, saying that although “many people around the world have never seen or heard my instruments,… if I can get just one person in my stream to remember or be interested in my instruments and culture I feel I have accomplished my goal.” She certainly gets attention. She was a winner in the 2020 Gamer’s Got Talent competition, whatever that is, when she played three songs on three different instruments in three minutes.
She’s also entrepreneurial. Her first album, Rise Up, was financed via crowd-funder Kickstarter, and to celebrate the end of recording she did a 24-hour Twitch stream. She’s played Daoist temple performances, company parties, weddings, music festivals, as well as making several European and North American Tours.
She can be feisty. After receiving several death threats, probably from mainland China trolls, she replied to one saying “Lol how are you on this site this is banned in China. Wumao small pinkie”, neatly showing that her tormentor must be a state sponsored troll with, on one translation, a small penis. Reddit banned her for that, but she was soon back, accusing them of being pro CCP and anti-Taiwan.
Leaving the last word to Nini, “No-one’s political views, language, and opinions will ever be all the same but when I am able to perform for so many people of different backgrounds we all have one thing in common — music.”