Organizer: Helen Rees, University of California, Los Angeles
Chair and Discussant: Evelyn Rawski, University of Pittsburgh
Vocal and instrumental performance and reception are an integral part of Chinese life: rare are the religious events, political rituals, funerals, weddings, and social gatherings that lack music, while the music industry rakes in billions of yuan per year. Moreover, the importance of how things sound has long been recognized by Confucian and Communist critics alike. Yet in mainstream Chinese Studies, music is generally marginalized, considered a specialist frill rather than a vital component of the culture that historians, political scientists, and anthropologists analyze in order to understand China. It is not unusual to find scholarly articles that barely mention the presence of musicians at rituals, let alone discuss what, when, and why they play, or textual studies that ignore the performativity of oral literature.
Our panel is based on the premise that it is time for sinologists of all disciplinary backgrounds to pay attention to the sounds of China. "Thick description" of the sound component to events can reveal ideological biases, transnational aesthetic trends, ethnic interaction, regional cultural patterns, social dynamics, and even irony and humor. Asking why people perform and listen to particular genres opens up new angles on cultural development, while deconstructing the narratives "natives" make of their local sound world offers fresh insight into different thinkers’ Weltanschauung.
Music, we argue, is sound evidence: inseparable from the daily life of Chinese citizens, it is as central to cultural understanding as the visual arts, literature and film that are so often the focus of inter-disciplinary studies.
Non-Musical Information in Chinese and Korean Musical Documents
Robert C. Provine, University of Durham
A wide variety of Chinese and Korean historical documents contain information on music, whether in sections wholly devoted to music (such as monographs on music in standard histories) or intermingled with other information (as in "veritable records" of individual reigns). Such documents include classical texts, ritual manuals, standard histories, encyclopedias, translators’ dictionaries, philosophical writings, and various other materials. Music has a particularly strong presence in works on ritual (as reflected in the common term liyue/yeak, "ritual and music") and measurements.
The substantial weight given to music in so many historical documents is already reason enough to give it serious consideration when dealing with those documents for seemingly unrelated purposes. Taking a broader view, music was an important aspect of the Chinese cultural sphere, and in this connection a scholar investigating China’s relations with her neighbors ignores music at considerable peril. The music sections of historical materials have much to say, for example, about perceived and practiced relationships between China and Korea, giving much evidence to assist in reading between the lines of the sources.
In this paper, I give a number of examples of the utility of music for non-musical investigations, including such things as: music as an indicator of Chinese-Korean relationship, correlations of music with Confucian philosophy, the fidelity of apparent Korean imitation of Chinese documentary models, international connections reflected in musical instruments and performances, and the relationship of music to measurements.
From Folk Music to Art Music: The Many Faces of the Solo Dizi Tradition
Frederick Lau, California Polytechnic State University
The very obvious guiding hand of Communist ideology has led many scholars to view state-supported cultural expressions in post-1949 China as a product and direct consequence of the political and cultural change implemented since the 1950s. Indeed, Communist ideology is often viewed as authoritative, its effectiveness unquestioned. At the same time, contradictory tendencies generated in practice have often gone unnoticed. This paper focuses on the changing image and characteristics of solo dizi (flute) music, an institutionalized genre that offers an aural window into the tension between ideological ideals and actual cultural practice in Communist China.
Solo dizi music emerged as a genre shortly after 1950 under the sponsorship of state music institutions, particularly conservatories. Earlier dizi pieces were mostly derived from regional instrumental traditions. Gradually, arrangements of revolutionary songs and other pieces began to be made, and finally new compositions were added to the repertory, resulting in a shift in the image, reception, and presentation of the music. In this paper, I describe the changing image of dizi music: from folk music to revolutionary music, from ethnic music and non-Western music to an elitist concert tradition for the stage. These changes not only reveal a simple shift in political climate and aesthetic choice, but also capture the irony embedded in the attempted implementation of the utopian vision of Communist ideology. Analysis of the sound and presentation of selected solo dizi compositions demonstrates that solo dizi music has gradually alienated itself from the masses for whom it was originally intended.
Cultural Negotiation in the Televised Musical Shows Celebrating the 1997 Reunion of Hong Kong and China
Siu wah Yu, Chinese University of Hong Kong
For the celebrations marking Hong Kong’s reunion with China in July 1997, musical shows were televised both before and after July 1st. These included symphonic music—an excerpt from Tan Dun’s Symphony 1997: Heaven, Earth, Man and popular music, including Hong Kong pop stars like Andy Lau and Fei Wong. The focus of attraction in Tan’s symphony was his use of the 2400-year-old Zeng Hou Yi bells excavated in 1978. The use of imperial bell-chimes paralleled that of the ancient ritual tripod (ding) designed for the same occasion. For the popular items, dance, acrobatics and arranged "Chinese folksongs" were presented in the style of the annual Miss Hong Kong pageant. However, the visual symbols behind the pop stars’ soft singing style were unmistakable trademarks of Chinese Communist ideology.
For Chinese who have basic education in Chinese culture, the bell-chimes and tripod, both obvious symbols for the sovereignty and centralized authority of the emperor, had unmistakable historical and political resonance, as did the Communist symbols prominently displayed during the Hong Kong-style popular shows. This paper focuses on the negotiation between Chinese Communist culture, Chinese imperial history, and the westernized local Hong Kong culture that has emerged in the past half century. Both visual and aural symbols were vital to this negotiation; I discuss the implications and associations they brought to the people of Hong Kong.
Hearing History: Ethnic Interactions in Musical Performance
Helen Rees, University of California, Los Angeles
The many anthologies of Chinese minority music generally divide the different groups up neatly according to their official ethnic labels. Scholarly articles do, however, acknowledge the musical permeability of ethnic boundaries, suggesting a rich aural legacy of ethnic interaction. Listening carefully to today’s minority performers offers important evidence of historical and contemporary relationships among China’s different ethnic groups.
My first case study focuses on the Naxi of Lijiang County, Yunnan Province, who are known for a variety of different song, dance, and instrumental forms. Yet some of the most famous Naxi musical genres are extremely localized even within the county, while others show strong influence from neighbors such as the Tibetans and Lisu. The Naxi vocal and instrumental ensemble genre "Dongjing music," which has attracted hordes of foreign tourists to the county and toured internationally, is actually of Han derivation; indeed, it strongly underlines a centuries-old history of sinicization among the urban Naxi elite. One can trace a musical map of ethnic interaction and cultural identity throughout both pre- and post-1949 Lijiang.
My second case study concerns the Yi pop group Mountain Eagle (Shanying) from Liangshan, Sichuan Province. Skillfully superimposing Yi lyrics, visual symbols and musical color on a pan-Chinese pop base, the musicians have created a distinctive, contemporary Yi sound much appreciated by other Yi. This appropriation of today’s national pop culture offers lively aural evidence of just how far it has penetrated even in minority regions.
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