Yijia celebrates her ancestors in new single "Yi The Sun"

As in her latest single "Yi The Sun," Yijia is building that bridge between the present and the past, one pulsing beat at a time. A standalone single from an upcoming album, the song is a thrilling cut-and-paste mix of futuristic ambient-psychedelic trance and the eerie echoes of traditional Yi ethnic music from Southwest China.

There's a striking story behind "Yi The Sun" to match its sound. Yijia stumbled upon the rare field recording of Yi music through a musician friend and was swept away by its otherworldly tones. But what felt like a mysterious pull soon revealed itself to be a more profound connection: Yijia's DNA test results showed that he is more than a quarter Yi, even though he grew up without access to the culture or its language. In that moment of discovery, the song became not just a piece of writing, but an act of reclaiming my identity.

Yijia conjures a post-apocalyptic homecoming returning to Earth after an eon in space, and grounding yourself in a place that has completely changed. She crafts this vision into a hypnotic blend of trance beats and ancient voices, a musical realm where tribal echoes intertwine with the dance floor. "Sometimes I like to say that it's taking my ancestors clubbing," Yijia says, a sentiment that perfectly captures the spirit of the genre-bending, playful track.

On "Yi The Sun," Yijia is threading memory, heritage, and imagination into something brand new. It's futuristic and primeval, personal to Mr. Jonze but universally applicable. The single pulsates with the promise of her upcoming album, giving listeners both a beat to dance to and a story to contemplate. "Yi The Sun" is a cosmic homecoming that tradition holds hands with tomorrow.

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