New apprentice player of erhu and crazy about it

[claudee]

Hello all

It took me a while to find you on the net.

I am Claude, a French Canadian (Caucasian) from Montreal, who loves Asian music, most particularly erhu music, an instrument I am learning to play with a Chinese erhu teacher since January 2006. Some of the pieces I can play relatively smoothly now are: Jasmine Flower (of course), Little Swallow, Moon River, Annie's song, Edelweiss, Amazing Grace, Danny Boy, Turn!Turn!Turn (to everything, there is a season). My favorite erhu players are Wang Guotong, Min Huifen, Ma Xiaohui, Yu Hongmei, Jiang Jianhua, Shen Qi (my teacher), Chen Min and Chen Jiebing.

You can find more info about me in my site at www.myspace.com/erhu1 as well as more info on my teacher, Shen Qi at www.myspace.com/shenqi . I also refer this discussion forum on my Myspace; hope this will help increase our community (although, amazingly there seems to be yet very few adepts of erhu or Chinese music among the 100 millions or so members of MySpace).

I'll be around a lot. First months of learning were awful for me, including the cultural clash. But we had a breakthrough a couple of months ago and, now, I am convinced I can progress and enjoy playing erhu until I depart ;D .

I even started using the two-strings of the instrument and the way it works as a model to present project management concepts to my students and customers- (I am a project management consultant and this is how I earn the money to pay for the free time I need for my new passion : playing and listening to erhu music). It is the way I found to play erhu, even when I am at work (what is work, if not another way to have fun ?)

Happy to be among you and share passion, tricks and anecdotes

Regards from Montreal

Claude (AKA Erhu, the Apprentice)

[calden]

Claude:

Welcome, and it will be good to have your input. The originator of MySpace, Tom, (who everyone gets as a friend when they sign up,) lists erhu as one of his hobbies.

Jeremy Moyer, a Canadian, is an excellent erhu player. He is currently in Shanghai studying.

Carlos

[claudee]

Pleased to meet you Carlos.

And thank you very much for the info about Tom. I knew of Jeremy Moyer ; I think he was a Montrealer for a while, didn't he ?)

Looking forward to exchange on my erhu ventures with an esteemed erhu teacher . This will be fun !

Regards

Claude

[davidmdahl]

A big welcome to you Claude! I am a fan of your teacher Shen Qi. Her CD of trad. tunes on erhu and guzheng is one of my favorite CDs of any type of music. I love her smooth expressive style. In particular, her performance of Liang Xiao has been a big inspiration for my own study of the tune.

I actually wrote to Qi last night thanking her for the clip of the Yao Dance with the monochord (plus erhu & guzheng) on myspace. I play the Vietnamese monochord (dan bau) and have been looking for Chinese tunes to play on it. I already play a few with my erhu teacher and always pleased to find another Chinese tune that works well on monochord.

During my erhu studies, I have frequently been assigned tunes that do not sound very Chinese to me. Often times these are Chinese tunes but have been obviously inspired from Western music. Then there are Western tunes that have been appropriated, such as Edelweiss. The Chinese love for this tune is amazing. Recently I played a medley of Swanee River and Aloha Oe. What led to those entirely unrelated tunes getting stuck together is a mystery to me.

Best wishes,

David

[calden]

Edelweiss!!

WHen I lived and taught in China in 1986, we were treated to a welcoming banquet when we first arrived. We met all 400 students at a big party! We were overwhelmed by the foreigness of it all, living in a northern industrial city with very few foreigners.

They sang Edelweiss! That was a real bizarre experience.

Carlos

[claudee]

Thanks for the welcome David,

I am amazed and pleased to know you know about Shen Qi. I have my lesson this morning with her and I will mention you and your email. She is still very much a foreigner among us, even if she has been in Montreal for more than 12 years. And sometimes I feel there are many things we say and write that she does not understand. She plays erhu all the time (no vacation!) and I guess she just do not have enough time to become familiar with our language and our way of thinking !

I find interesting Carlos' anecdote about Edelweiss. I have a similar one for Vietnam. I went there 5 times between 1994 and 1998. Once I was in Hanoi (at the West Lake Hotel) and there was a folkloric group there, including a dan bau player and guess what, they played "J'irai revoir ma Normandie" (an old french song) as if it was a vietnamese song. Very surprising. They also served orange duck (Canard à l'orange) but the funny thing is that actually the duck was cut and served IN an orange.

I have a dan nhi too, plus 2 erhus : one plain blackwood one and a very ornamented one from Taiwan (you can see the sound resonator of this one as my "photo" on MySpace (and me playing it in my slideshow).

Hope we'll have other chances sharing anecdotes like that. ;D

Claude

[davidmdahl]

Wow, 1994 must be near the beginning of the opening up of Vietnam again to Westerners! I was in Hanoi in 2001. While there were plenty of Europeans and Australians in evidence, I did not run into very many from North America. Of course, I was not looking very hard either. <g>

I remember a magical evening at a restaurant on Hoan Kiem Lake in Hanoi listening to a band of musicians playing trad. music. At one point they segued to "Oh, Susannah", which rather surprised me. The interesting thing is that many tunes like Susannah are essentially pentatonic and easily playable on Asian instruments.

Hanoi still has many reminders of the French occupation, including the architecture and food. More than once, elderly shopkeepers tried out their French on me when it was obvious that we could not converse in Vietnamese.

Again, welcome to the forum. I look forward to sharing stories and the love of the music.

Best wishes,

David

[calden]

Another tune that my students loved and sang was "Red River Valley." I tried telling them that to most Americans this conjured up images of a cowboy ridin' the range, sittin' on his horse, singin' about his sweetheart to the rising moon, but they didn't get the imagery.

They also loved The Carpenters and John Denver, and could sing a number of songs by those artists. But they had never heard of The Beatles and I fondly remember introducing several students to "Yesterday" by doing a real-time translation!

Carlos

[song]

Welcome to the forum Claude!

Regards,
Sung Wah

[maaltan]

davidmdahl said:

Hanoi still has many reminders of the French occupation

Yeah, when did that happen? I finally got around to watching the movie "apocolypse now" and they stumbled upon a french plantation. I was never taught anything about a french occupation. I even had a history teacher that was in vietnam and he dwelled upon the subject for about 2 months.

People liked dropping books in class and freaking him out. Poor guy, being a bit older now I see that it was not funny.

[davidmdahl]

The French started occupying parts of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia during the 1840's and by 1887 ruled all of Vietnam. After the defeat of the French in the battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954, the French left Vietnam and the country was partitioned into North and South Vietnam. Soon after that the Americans stepped into the picture. The history from then on may be more familiar.

Best wishes,

David

[dsouthwood]

When I was growing up (I'm 64 now), all of the books and maps listed what we call Southeast Asia as "French Indochina." It's nice to see that colonial names are being replaced all over the world, such as Bombay, India, reverting to "Mumbai."

Anyway, I'm looking forward to trying "Edelweiss" on my erhu.

[maaltan]

interesting... i wonder what other tibits of information was left out in classes to make the US sound like "the one and only worthy of survival".

[jtangsw]

welcome Claude.

I'm new to the erhu too. Hope to share knowledge with everyone here.