Organizer and Chair: David W. Hughes, SOAS, University of London
Discussant: Frank Kouwenhoven, European Foundation for Chinese Music Research
The European Romantic concepts of "the folk" and "folk song," developed by the Austrian Herder and others in the late 18th century, impacted on England and Japan simultaneously a hundred years later, with quite different results. China found these concepts useful as well, interpreting and using them variously at different stages during the 20th century to suit political needs. Korea, while possibly originally receiving the Romantic notion of "folk song" through the filter of Japan, soon went its own way, and present-day North and South Korea now have quite distinct and distinctive approaches to the concept and its uses.
The three papers in this panel present aspects of the reception and social construction of the concept of "folk song" in China, Japan, and the Koreas during the 20th century. The discussant will aim to draw out the commonalities and contrasts in the treatment of folk song among these countries.
Although this panel focuses on East Asia, enlightening comparisons could be made with other parts of the world. A few of these will be offered during the panel, but most must wait for a book-length collection of which these papers will form a part.
Folk Song and the "Imagined Village" in Japan
David W. Hughes, SOAS, University of London
The concepts of "the folk" and of "folk song" reached Japan from Europe at the end of the 19th century as part of the Meiji-period Westernization. The modern Japanese term for "folk song," min yō, is a literal translation of the German word Volkslied.
This paper follows the vicissitudes of min yō during the 20th century. At first restricted to the literati, the term and concept spread gradually among the general populace-including, eventually, the "folk" themselves. Poets penned "new folk songs" (shin-min yō) which they expected (wrongly) would please the folk better than the original ditties; textile factory owners commissioned further examples to provide more edifying fare than the bawdy songs favored by their young female workers, and other "new folk songs" advertised local attractions as domestic tourism burgeoned. Meanwhile, certain traditional village songs migrated with their more skilled purveyors to the cities, spawning a professional min yō industry which has created several millionaire performers; back in the villages Preservation Societies attempt to re-assert local control over these songs.
Excepting the most recent "new folk songs," all min yō are acknowledged to have a "home village" (furusato) of origin. Moreover, min yō are felt to have the power to re-create the ambience and social relations of the traditional village even in modern urban Japan. This topic will be discussed with reference to Jennifer Robertson's work on the furusato concept, and contrasted to aspects of the English folk revival as described in Georgina Boyes' book The Imagined Village.
Generating Genre: The Negotiation of Cultural Categories in Chinese Music
Susan M. C. Tuohy, Indiana University
This paper explores the naming and classification of musical genres in China. Genre classification may appear to be a dry topic, relegated to an esoteric domain of musicologists constructing taxonomies of musical structure. Yet an examination of the practice of song classification reveals a complex-and at times, emotional-process involving nationalism, regionalism, politics, and class. Scholars have written of the influence on East Asian scholarship of the concept of "folk song" and related terminology developed primarily in 18th-century Europe. But Chinese scholars did not simply adopt this terminology and the theoretical and philosophical framework underlying it. Instead, these concepts interacted within and were shaped by the changing political, social and economic situation of China.
I examine the concept of "folk song" within a specific case study. I focus on a musical genre performed in northwest China and extend the study through several generic labels: folksong (minge), mountain/wild song (shan/ye ge), and hua'er (a song genre from northwest China). The historical development of the terms illustrates the changing meanings, purposes and structure of Chinese folksong research. And today these genre terms interact with more contemporary ones such as national "folk music" (minge) and popular music (tongsu yinyue) as controversies over cultural categories and meaning are carried out in the conduct of everyday social life and musical performance in Qinghai and Gansu provinces.
Minyo in Korea: Songs of the People and Songs for the People
Keith Howard, SOAS, University of London
The Koreans adopted the concept of minyo-"people's songs"-from the Japanese. The term first appeared in the vernacular press in the 1920s. Japanese record studios had began to release discs recorded in Seoul using professional singers. Minyo came to be associated with popular songs, often songs taken out of Korea's epic song genre, p'ansori, or t'ongsok minyo/shin minyo, new versions of folksongs designed to be sung on urban stages. In contrast, local song repertoires, the subject of the Austro-German concept of Volkslied, were hardly recorded and little studied. They were, somewhat derogatively, referred to in texts as t'osok miyo, and were known in the countryside by terms such as yennal sori (old songs).
Today, the concept is different. In South Korea, government sponsorship of the indigenous (promoted through the Intangible Cultural Asset System) and the supposedly political opposed appropriation of local culture by the student democratization movement ensure that local songs are raised on a pedestal as icons of Korean identity. In north Korea, popular songs, now updated by the regime in a way that filtered Zhdanov's socialist realism and Mao's Yen'an talks, have obliterated all trace of the old. Yet in the formal texts of both regimes, the term minyo goes unchallenged as the appropriate Korean term for the two contrasting interpretations of folksongs.
This paper is based on fieldwork conducted in South Korea since 1982 and in North Korea in 1992 and 1995