Part-time farmers, part-time rock stars: A Chinese band’s unlikely rise

GUILIN – Before setting out on his band’s first national tour, before recording another album and before appearing on a major television network, Ba Nong had one task: finishing the summer harvest.

Standing in a field edged by rolling hills, two days before the first tour date in late September, Ba Nong, the frontman of the Chinese band Varihnaz, looked over the yellowed remnants of the rice stalks he had spent the past few months tending.

“The land gets to rest, and I get to go play,” he said.

Planning around the harvest may be an unconventional way to manage an ascendant music career, but Varihnaz is an unconventional band.

For its members – two farmers and a former bricklayer from Guangxi, a rural region in south-western China – the land and their music are inseparable. Rather than the usual staples of love and longing, their lyrics dwell on pesticides and poultry rearing.

Varihnaz means “fields filled with fragrant rice flowers”, in the language of Guangxi’s Zhuang ethnic minority. To fans, the group offers a refreshing break from China’s hypercommercialised popular entertainers, with music about a simpler, slower way of life, an alternative to the intense competition of modern Chinese life.

Ba Nong hopes his music helps people consider shrugging off mainstream expectations themselves.

“The more tolerant and developed a society is, the more diverse its lifestyles should be, too,” said the musician, who is 44.

Born Wei Jiayuan, Ba Nong adopted his name early in his career; it means “farmer from the karst mountains”, a reference to his home region. He and his bandmates’ commitment to their lifestyle, even at the cost of conventional success, has been a guiding principle since they started attracting national attention in 2023 on a reality music competition, The Big Band.

When asked on the show what would happen if they advanced to the final rounds that September – which would interfere with the harvest – Ba Nong replied: “Then we’ll try not to get to September.”

Before appearing on The Big Band, Ba Nong had been making music with a rotating cast of friends under the name Varihnaz for almost 20 years, as a hobby. The group played for crowds of 30 or 40 people and had little desire for more.

But when the reality show, which has often highlighted less mainstream musicians, approached him, he readily agreed.

“It was the peak of the pandemic, there were all kinds of quarantines, and there was also the Russia-Ukraine war,” he recalled during an interview in Guangxi, while loading the last of his harvest into a winnowing machine. “Everything felt very divided and tense.”

He saw an opportunity to share a message of peaceful coexistence, inspired by natural farming techniques, which eschew chemicals.

“When we went on, I was explaining to everyone about organic rice farming,” he said, laughing. “I was overeager.”

The broadcast “didn’t show much of that”, he said.

Yet the band members – who by that point consisted of Ba Nong; Shi Ba, the other farmer; and the former bricklayer Lu Min – also made clear that they were not rejecting modern life, but adapting it.

They talked onstage about breaking up harvest days with red wine. Often described as folk music but frequently crossing into rock or blues, their songs are as likely to feature electric guitars as a whistle made of fresh-picked leaves.

Big Dream, a song written by Shi Ba, cemented Varihnaz’s popularity on The Big Band. The lyrics span a migrant worker’s life, from childhood to old age, and narrate his exhaustion trying to make a living.

Many audience members cried during the taping. The song went viral, with some declaring it an anthem for a disillusioned generation.

Fame brought critics, too. Some viewers accused the band of overly romanticising the countryside, or of exaggerating their farming lifestyles as a marketing ploy.

Ba Nong was unbothered. Everything was romanticised, he said, pointing out that many young people flocked to cities because of TV shows, only to be disillusioned.

Besides, he was not calling for everyone to become a farmer. Ba Nong knew his lifestyle was not for everyone. He was promoting a mindset.

On the first night of the tour, at a sold-out venue in the city of Guilin, Varihnaz shifted between slow songs led by a hand-carved flute and Field Song, a pulsing number in which Lu Min struck the tip of a hoe with a drumstick as Ba Nong curled over an electric guitar.

When they sang in Zhuang, Mandarin translations were projected behind them. One song, Extermination Curse, was composed entirely of names of pesticides, recited in a monastery-like chant.

Halfway through the performance, Ba Nong clicked through a slideshow, teaching the audience of around 450 people about natural farming techniques. He and Shi Ba had brought bags of their rice for purchase.

In describing why they liked Varihnaz, several audience members used the word “pure”.

“This is the era of clicks,” said 31-year-old visual artist Yu Zhujun. “Everyone is trying to get ahead. But they just stay true to themselves, perform when the time is right, and then go home to their own lives.”

Mr Li Jingwei, a 24-year-old university student, said he grew up in the countryside of northern China and had also longed to escape. He planned to stay in the city for now but admired Varihnaz for highlighting the beauty of what he had left behind.

“To be able to get this emotion from others, and let myself settle down and find a good job, is enough,” he said.

While Ba Nong expressed some disappointment that Varihnaz’s new popularity had not translated into more people reassessing their own routines, he knew that was a lot to expect.

The band has already achieved more than he ever imagined. Guangxi’s main broadcaster recently aired a programme starring Varihnaz as ambassadors of pastoral bliss, and the band planned to record an album this month at the studio of one of China’s most renowned indie rock bands.

Still, Ba Nong has no expectations for how long Varihnaz’s fame will last.

“If we become outdated, that’s fine,” he said. “I can go back to farming peacefully.” NYTIMES