CORSAK: Double Happiness

For rising producer CORSAK, when he talks to Apple Music about CNY, all of his memories from the festivities start with his grandma’s house.   “Bring up Spring Festival and I think of going to my grandma’s on New Year’s Eve,” he tells Apple Music. “While my parents were busy helping prepare our dinner, I’d sneak away to flip through picture books in my grandpa’s study.”    These days, CORSAK is more about making beats. The Shanghai producer is a driving force of China’s EDM scene, known for blending instrumental and electronic sounds of various timbres to make chilly electronic music more layered and inviting. As a top talent, CORSAK has created the popular hit “Reverse”, and has also collaborated with Alan Walker on the world-famous “Different World”. CORSAK is celebrating Chinese New Year with a playlist curated exclusively for Apple Music that blends the past and future, as well as East and West. “These songs are the ones that would be playing in my ear as soon as it was New Year when I was growing up. They’re part of my memories,” CORSAK says. “[But] if Chinese New Year has a theme song for 2020, it would be Baoshi Gem’s “Wild Wolf Disco.”    When it comes to Chinese New Year, perhaps the only thing more important than music at CORSAK's family reunions is the food. “Every year we’d have some regular dishes. My grandma is from Nanjing, so she makes Eight Treasure Duck. There’ll also be Shanghai dishes, like sixi kaofu, potato salad and red braised meatballs,” he says.   Customs also create happy memories, especially when they are shared with new friends from faraway places. “One year, my uncle living the US brought back two of his American students to spend the New Year with us. We lit off firecrackers together,” CORSAK recalls. “China’s a vast country, and every place has different New Year customs. What I know about the northeast, every family gets together to make dumplings, while in some places in the south—it’s wontons. But I think lighting off fireworks is something people do everywhere in China.”   The most universal New Year custom is sending blessings, and CORSAK is more than happy to share his with us using a single character: “Xi best represents my blessings. Because no matter if it’s a wish for good fortune and health for your whole family, in the end it all comes down to happiness.”