Sa Dingding (born 27 December 1983) is a Chinese folk singer and songwriter. She is of mixed Han and Mongol ancestry, and sings in languages including Mandarin, Sanskrit, Tibetan, as well an imaginary self-created language to evoke the emotions in her songs. She also plays traditional instruments such as the guzheng and matouqin (horse-head fiddle).
Born in Inner Mongolia, China, Sa is of Han Chinese ancestry from her father's side and Mongolian ancestry from her mother side, and she was influenced by the music of the ethnic minorities while living with her grandmother in Inner Mongolia until age six. She also became interested in Buddhism and taught herself Tibetan and Sanskrit. Later on, she moved to Beijing to study music at the People's Liberation Army Arts College.
At age 18, she released her first album entitled Dong Ba La under her birth name Zhou Peng, awarding her with the title of China’s Best Dance Music Singer.
In 2006, "Holy Incense" was used as the theme song for the movie Prince of the Himalayas, directed by Sherwood Hu.
In mid-2007, she released Alive, now available physically and as a download in many countries. The Hong Kong release of the album features a DVD containing music videos, a remix of "Alive", making of footage and a Chinese version of "Mama Tian Na", not featured on the album.
In 2008 she won the BBC Radio 3 Awards for World Music for the Asia-Pacific region, earning herself the chance to perform at the Royal Albert Hall to a Western audience. In the same year, she also released a two track single called "Qin Shang".
Dingding composed a song with Eric Mouquet of Deep Forest called "Won't Be Long" to raise funds for disaster relief after the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. The song was made available on Mouquet's Deep-Projects website. Mouquet and Dingding have collaborated on a forthcoming album Deep China.
Most recently, Dingding has appeared at Womad and the Harrogate Festival in the UK. On October 6, her official English website was updated with information about a European tour, going from November 7 to 17, making stops in Germany, London, Paris, Amsterdam, Las Palmas, Australia and New Zealand.
For Chinese composer He Xuntian's 2008 album, Tathāgata, Dingding contributed the vocals for the second track, entitled "Dátǎjiādá".
Her latest album, released in January 2010 is Harmony, with nine songs in Chinese. The album also contains three remixes of the title track, one by Paul Oakenfold.
There has also been news of Dingding singing the theme song for the film Gasp, called "Gēchàng De Lìliàng", in working with Howie B.
