The artists are members of Yunnan Yuansheng Indigenous Music and Dance Studio, a newly established non-profit organization under BAMA Mountain Culture Research Institute at the Yunnan Academy of Social Sciences. It is comprised of indigenous Yi and Wa artists from remote villages throughout Yunnan Province. These artists were members of Yunnan Ethnic Culture Preservation Institute (1993-2000) founded by the late Mr. Tian Feng, a well-known Chinese composer, situated in the town of Anning, outside of Kunming. The Institute was created in 1993 in order to preserve and teach the cultural traditions of Yunnan's ethnic groups. After Mr. Tian's death in early 2001, a businessman, Mr. He Jinxin, tried to sustain the institute. However, by the end of 2002, this nine-year effort came to a close. Professor Lan-Lan Wang of Connecticut College, with the support of a Rockefeller Foundation grant, and with the help of China Yunnan International Culture Exchange Center and Yunnan-based filmmaker Liu Xiaojin, gathered 20 artists from the Institute who are now scattered throughout the western region of China in preparation for a planned United States tour in 2005. This gathering encouraged and inspired these artists to form an organization: Yunnan Yuangsheng Indigenous Music and Dance Studio, with the purpose of preserving, presenting, teaching and documenting the indigenous cultural traditions of the villages where the artists live and work. The artists invited Liu Xiaojin who spent seven years documenting the process of Yunnan Ethnic Culture Preservation Institute, to serve as their director. This new organization is now formally established and registered with an advisory board consisting of cultural specialists and researchers from Yunnan.