A folk song concert staged in Chinese and French will be held in Shanghai during the May Day holiday.

The concert is part of the celebrations of the 50th anniversary of diplomatic relations between China and France.

The concert on May 1 and 2 at Shanghai Life Hub @ Jinqiao and Life Hub @ Anting features Emel Mathlouthi, Irma Pany, Mosi and Wutiaoren.

Mosi, a musician and singer-songwriter from Daliang Mountain in Sichuan province, has been in Beijing for more than five years. Before becoming a professional musician, he learned Japanese and worked as a Japanese-language teacher at a kindergarten.

Mosi's pristine voice transports the melodies, memories and melancholies of his rural hometown of Daliang Mountain into an urban setting. He conveys memories of the valleys, forests, houses, childhood and landscapes. His recent work Only in Your Hands Will I Die has become increasingly popular after he performed in a TV contest for original songwriters.

Tunisian diva Emel Mathlouthi is a songwriter, composer, guitarist and singer. Mathlouthi boasts an exotic and silky voice and a captivating style with rock, oriental and hip-hop influences.

Wutiaoren, an urban folk music duo from Haifeng county of Guangdong province, sings in their local dialect. Their humorous musical renderings of urban migration, alienation in modern society, and the joys and pains of young people in small southern towns have touched hundreds of thousands of people.

Irma Pany, known as Irma, is a Cameroonian singer-songwriter living in France. She's known for her soft vocal and hazy aura - a voice that is refreshingly smooth. Her voice may be immediately recognized from her performance in I Know, a Google Chrome commercial in Europe where the song has had massive exposure. Irma will perform songs of her soon-to-be-launched album Face at the concert.

The venue, Life Hub @ Jinqiao and Life Hub @ Anting, is famous for its open, spacious court and well-designed layout that enables visitors to enjoy a day with families, with facilities for entertainment, shopping and dining.

Organizer and music critic Sun Mengjin says exchanges between Chinese and French musicians have reached a stage where people are looking for diversified, original and multi-genre works, compared with a decade ago, when musical exchanges mainly relied on listening to albums.

Now the live shows and musical events bring artists and audiences closer together, Sun says.

wuyiyao@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 04/27/2014 page9)