Provided to China Daily

"Many red songs tell stories about the revolution and mention many place names, so I learned a lot by singing them," Uwechue says.

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"In Africa we don't have such music and it took me a lot of time to learn how to sing them."

Before he learned about the background to these songs, Uwechue once made a cultural faux pas by adding a few Michael Jackson-style dance steps to a performance at a singing competition.

"One judge gave a stern criticism of my performance, and told me to do some study on the background of the song," Uwechue says.

To better understand red songs, Uwechue would try to watch a video of any song he was learning. Whenever he came across something he did not understand, he asked one of his Chinese friends to explain it to him.

In 2001, Uwechue entered a red song competition in Jiangxi province. He came in sixth out of about 200 competitors.

Uwechue came to China in 2008, following his older brother. Emmanuel Uwechue was already well known in China as he had sung on many Chinese TV shows, including the Spring Festival Gala. His brother's success convinced Uwechue to try his luck in China.

He says it took him six years to learn to adapt his natural style to suit Chinese songs, but now prefers local songs and rarely sings in English.

Uwechue has about 20,000 followers on Sino Weibo, China's biggest micro-blog site, and came fourth on Star Boulevard, one of China's most popular grassroots talent shows.

Fascinated by Chinese culture, Uwechue has also learned some songs from classical Chinese operas.

With a pastor father, Uwechue grew up surrounded by church music. He fell in love with music at a young age.

By the age of 10, Uwechue had joined the church choir and was performing onstage. Later he sang at weddings and in bars. And in 2008 he followed his brother to China to pursue his dream of a singing career.