Part-Time Farmers, Part-Time Rock Stars: A Chinese Band’s Unlikely Rise

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 rural Guangxi in southwestern 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 hyper-commercialized 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.