donkeyfish (2025) two voices and percussion · 6 minutes · advanced
donkeyfish was written for the 2025 Yale Song Lab.
Mandarin Chinese, the most widely-spoken form of Chinese, has four tones, which are represented in pinyin with various symbols above the vowels.
When I was three or four years old, I spent much time practicing vowel sounds in Mandarin Chinese. I was a child of Chinese immigrant parents, and I had speech difficulties in both Mandarin and English growing up.
I was given a book of Mandarin syllable sounds when I was a small child, to practice pronouncing each syllable. I spent a lot of time repeating these sounds, in quick succession.
In Mandarin, I particularly struggled a lot with the vowel sound ü.
I could never properly pronounce the difference between lü (donkey) and yü (fish), and I remember I was often jokingly asked if I was trying to pass the fish or donkey at the dinner table as a result.
donkeyfish imitates the process of learning to speak Mandarin at a young age.
One player is the "teacher", enunciating Mandarin syllables with tones repeatedly in a spoken tone. The other player (the "learner") is singing the syllables on pitches, trying to guess how the tones should fall, and conflating the tones in Mandarin with pitches.
Both players are intentionally struggling with the syllable ü, especially the "learner", who often bends and manipulates the pitch of the ü sound in an effort to find the right tone.