Xie Tianxiao [sina.com]

Established Chinese rocker Xie Tianxiao is promising a new style of music for China in his album due for release at the beginning of next month: "The Chinese style of reggae."

That will be also the title of the album, which combines traditional Chinese instruments, such as the guqin, with Jamaican reggae music.

The guqin has a history of more than 5,000 years and belongs to the family of "zither" instruments. "You need to have the feeling for playing it. Just practising is not enough," he says in an exclusive interview with Xinhua News Agency

For Xie, it is also a homage to Bob Marley, who personified the Jamaican brand of reggae before his death in 1981.

"I have been always fascinated by him and planned for a long time to make a reggae album. Now I have," Xie says, snapping his fingers all the while to a reggae rhythm. His long black hair bobs in time.

"In combination with Chinese traditional sounds you create a complete new style of music."

He describes music as like an ocean: "Its the endless vastness I get my ideas and inspirations from."

The rock star, who was awarded Best Male Rock Vocal Performance and Best Live Performance honors at the Midi Awards at the end of October, first came into contact with reggae during a year-long stay in San Francisco in 2002.

The fascination remained after Xie and his band, "Cold Blooded Animal," founded in 1997, decided to go back to China.

The regarded their style as too similar to Western bands and they preferred to develop an individual style in which their Chinese origins would be obvious.

Xie, who was born in 1972 in the town of Zibo, Shandong Province, started his music carrier at the age of 9 in the role of "The Monkey King" in a local opera production of "Journey to the West."

In 1990, he began composing his own songs and moved to Beijing.

Between 1997 and 2002, Xie and "Cold Blooded Animal" performed hundreds of gigs in China, Europe, Japan and the United States, where they were the first Chinese rock band to appear at the South By Southwest Music Festival in Austin, Texas.

In 2004, the band released the album "Xie Tian Xiao X.T.X" and also renamed the band with this title. That was the first time the band broke with the three-instruments mode and adopted traditional Chinese instruments.