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Post by lumry on Mar 27, 2006 1:53:51 GMT
anyone here listen to them?...i love there music and how it mixes the old and new together!
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Post by davidmdahl on Mar 27, 2006 9:25:17 GMT
I have to admit that I prefer traditional arrangements with traditional instruments to the popular fusions with a Western rhythm section. I did use the 12 Girls Band version of Liu San Jie for learning Chinese style on the monochord. They deserve a lot of credit for demonstrating the versatility of Chinese instruments.
Best wishes,
David
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Post by paulv on Mar 27, 2006 14:27:13 GMT
I have to admit that I prefer traditional arrangements with traditional instruments to the popular fusions with a Western rhythm section. .......... They deserve a lot of credit for demonstrating the versatility of Chinese instruments. I share David's comments. Unfortunately, most musicians need to create music that sells. This is another reason why I left my music career decades ago. Regards, Paul...
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Post by calden on Mar 27, 2006 14:47:35 GMT
I have a very mixed reaction to this group. On the one hand I love any kind of experimental fusion and trying old things in different ways. Beyond the novelty and glitz of dressing up good-looking young women who play traditional instruments and plugging them into a rock/pop show format, it does in fact bring some very good things to the public's attention, and that can't but be good. I mean, if it inspires even one person to try one of these instruments and discover this huge body of material and tradition, that's good. On the other hand there is so much pop music, especially Asian pop music, that just about turns my stomach. It's not the performances so much as the western-style harmonic arrangements and synthesized percussion that is laid underneath traditional music. It's way overproduced, and you can't really hear the fine tone of the instruments because they're buried in the mix - the erhus often sound like a bunch of dancing bees in a cartoon or something. The mix of Asian trad music and western-derived production values just seems way out of place, like an American tourist donning a Samurai warrior costume. Ow! My eyes! My ears! Having said all that, I do put the CDs I have of them on once in a while to get melodies, or to play for someone. I must say that as a Celtic musician I also have the same odd repulsion/fascination with the huge celtic shows I see sometimes on PBS specials - you know, The women of Ireland, Lord of the Dance, things like that - a beautiful and swirling-round-the-stage creature playing some Celtic fiddle piece while pony-tailed drummers are pouding out a rhythm behind her, and a full orchestra kicks in. My reaction is - Leave the music alone! It's fine the way it is - you're mucking it up with all the junk! But this kind of thing has indeed turned fans on to my band, for example: www.celticnots.comQuite a mixed reaction. Carlos
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Post by Charlie Huang on Mar 27, 2006 17:16:59 GMT
Hmmm, I'm so-so with them. Like Carlos said, I appreciate them trying to get 'traditional' music to a younger audience, but I'm slightly concerned about how they tweak it into something that fits popular stereotypes rather than be creative.
I heard their rendition of Beethoven and... let's say even the Westerners next to me found it rather murderous. And the synthasization of the music, as Carlos said, tends to cover up what beautiful music could be heard if they played a pure instrumental piece.
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Post by calden on Mar 27, 2006 17:38:37 GMT
Priceless Quote Of The Month:
"rather murderous..."
Carlos
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Post by kyokuhon on Mar 27, 2006 17:48:41 GMT
I've never heard them, though the posts here confirm my suspicions about their style. Being a Euro-American, I've often wondered what Chinese people thought of this style of music. I, too, prefer my traditional music (and I mostly only listen to traditional music) to be served up "straight", but I'm concerned that trying to preserve someone else's music in amber is being a bit of a cultural imperialist. Then again, I guess thinking that "Chinese people" as a group have definable musical preferences is also being a bit of a cultural imperialist. Best to all, and keep playing. K.
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Post by calden on Mar 27, 2006 18:18:43 GMT
Good point about the Cultural Imperialism. I've thought of that a LOT in my travels to China. I often felt disappointed in seeing Pizza Hut, Kentucky Fried Chicken, MacDonalds, etc., all OVER the place - even in the backwater suburbs of Qingdao where I used to live. What really tipped me over the edge was seeing Starbucks in the Forbidden City. I've got a picture to prove it ( hope I get this right) : But after suffering through this foolishness I quickly observed that I was a lot more agitated by it than anyone in the local population, and maybe it was MY expectations of what China ought to be that was being disturbed. I try and keep this in mind as I listen to the 12 Girls Band, and think about the quality of music (or lack therof) rather than the notion of what Asian music "ought" to be to my very Western educated ears. Carlos EDIT: You don't need to add the *s. CCC
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Post by Charlie Huang on Mar 27, 2006 18:22:55 GMT
God, Carlos! Ever heard of the 'edit' button?
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Post by Charlie Huang on Mar 27, 2006 18:37:26 GMT
I've never heard them, though the posts here confirm my suspicions about their style. Being a Euro-American, I've often wondered what Chinese people thought of this style of music. I, too, prefer my traditional music (and I mostly only listen to traditional music) to be served up "straight", but I'm concerned that trying to preserve someone else's music in amber is being a bit of a cultural imperialist. Then again, I guess thinking that "Chinese people" as a group have definable musical preferences is also being a bit of a cultural imperialist. Best to all, and keep playing. K. Don't get me wrong. I listen to a variety of genres (some more than others). American Country (mostly those from the Brokeback Mountain OST samples like Willie Nelson, Rufus Wainwright), British Folk (Seth Lakeman, God he's good), British Jazz (Jamie Cullum, what I call 'elegant Jazz'), J-pop (Maaya Sakamoto, other animé related songs), Classical, Japanese traditional, some British pop, etc. I find if you listen to only one genre of music, you can lose the ability to appreciate other musical genres (you are essentially blinded or brainwashed). So much so like the youths of our cities who listen to nothing but pop/rock/hip-hop/etc; then when they hear traditional melodies or classical, they find it boring (I've been told that qin music is boring by some youth in front of my face)! That's why I would listen to any music that is presented to me without any hesitation, even nu-metal, hip-hop and rap. When you learn to appreciate and understand a variety of genres, you will know what sounds good and what is rubbish; and be able to justify it it. Most youths like above example, can't legitimately justify it because they only rate other musics by what they only listen to (i.e. pop or whatever).
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Post by calden on Mar 27, 2006 18:56:57 GMT
Yah, sorry:
I don't put up enough photos to remember what to do when I want to put one up, then I have to search and find the past post that told me how to do it, then I forget to take out or put in some star or pound sign or something, bla bla bla. Thanks for fixing it for me.
By the way, I also listen to lots of music. My teen kids, especially my son, keeps me up to date with VERY GOOD music. One of his favorite bands is Muse, from England. Very dense and good stuff. They have heard so much erhu and Celtic music over the years - it's in their heads whether they like it or not. My daughter put together a family slide show from iPhoto and used "Sai Ma" as background music. It was perfect! I know to the uneducated listener it just sounds like generic Chinese music, but she GOT the feeling of it, the essence of it, and used it as music, not "color".
By the way, CCC, I was just looking at the painting under your posting name, and sort of casually figuring out the characters:
"Hmmm....okay, "shan" is easy...... looks like "bei" okay, back, got it, the top one looks like "duan", to break, can't be right, doesn't make any sense, must be some mountain name where it just happens to use words to sound like the name, "break, back, moun...... OOOOHHHH! Now I get it!"
Carlos
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Post by Charlie Huang on Mar 27, 2006 19:30:30 GMT
Took your time... ;D
S'not a painting, but an edited screencap of the final scene in BBM; the same scene that brought me to tears when I first watched it...
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Post by calden on Mar 27, 2006 20:59:02 GMT
Okay - I haven't seen the movie yet. I read the story when it came out several years ago and was quite moved.
Carlos
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Post by kyokuhon on Mar 27, 2006 21:38:07 GMT
Hey, I'm reminded of a story on a parody radio news show from the USA I heard awhile back. They claimed to be interviewing a Beijing resident who was protesting the opening of the first MacDonald's in China as cultural imperialism. The (bogus) quote: "Of course I'm upset. How would you feel if every town in the USA had Chinese restaurants?" K.
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Post by davidmdahl on Mar 27, 2006 22:37:31 GMT
The (bogus) quote: "Of course I'm upset. How would you feel if every town in the USA had Chinese restaurants?" LOL! The irony is that there are apparently more Chinese restaurants in the USA than McDonald's, Burgerking, Wendy's et al combined. Notice that they don't include Starbucks in the list. <g> The sharing of the best and worst of Eastern and Western cultures goes on whether we like it or not. Those of us who love traditional music hope that the "real" stuff does not get lost in the shuffle. I see a lot of CDs labeled as "Traditional" Chinese music that are not even close. In a similar fashion, the "Celtic" music phenomenon has covered the Earth with varieties of pseudo-traditional music that are also all over the map in terms of good taste, and have little to do with actual traditional music. Since the music of a living tradition does not remain the same over time, we can only hope that good taste prevails and the good parts of the new ideas keep traditional Chinese music vital and relevant. Even though I am not crazy about the 12 Girls Band approach, it is good that the young are enjoying the music, and not just 47-year-old fuddy-duddies like me. <g> Best wishes, David
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Post by davidbadagnani on Apr 24, 2006 0:59:13 GMT
The head of Starbucks was just on "60 Minutes" (a CBS TV newsmagazine that airs in the U.S.), saying how proud he was of the Starbucks in the Forbidden City Carlos mentioned a couple of months back. Yuk.
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Post by Charlie Huang on Apr 24, 2006 7:19:34 GMT
The head of Starbucks was just on "60 Minutes" (a CBS TV newsmagazine that airs in the U.S.), saying how proud he was of the Starbucks in the Forbidden City Carlos mentioned a couple of months back. Yuk. "Proud?" More like shameless me thinks...
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Post by notmadeinzhongguo on May 7, 2006 23:40:44 GMT
if it inspires even one person to try one of these instruments and discover this huge body of material and tradition, that's good. Listening to a 12GirlsBand CD a few years back was the first time I had ever heard an erhu, fell in love with it at once. I will soon begin learning to play, so yeah, they got me into it. And while some of the techno style beats really don't sound that good (i.e New Classicism) I do enjoy most of their music.
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Post by jeongmee on May 15, 2006 17:19:02 GMT
i know that there's a lot of controversy on here but I'm gonna take my chance at it ... On one hand I can understand why there would be so much controversy about it but on the other hand it is interesting music and to me unique since I've never really heard a whole lot of asian music at all... So of course when I heard it I was hooked like some, but I can understand about keeping the culture real and alive. I have a question: What asian artists would most of you recommend?
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Post by jetz320 on Sept 4, 2006 1:36:31 GMT
If it weren't for this band, I wouldn't of ever been introduced into Chinese instruments!!!! They've got me so into the Instruments I'm learning four of them now. Soon will be five!!!
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zhou
Novice
Im bringin sexy back
Posts: 19
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Post by zhou on Sept 5, 2006 23:57:12 GMT
i have to be their biggest fan!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! yeah- like what jetz said, they are the ones who finalized my fate as a chinese musician! i now currently play over 15 chinese instruments!!!!!!!!
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Post by dsouthwood on Sept 24, 2006 16:52:47 GMT
I'm a hardcore traditionalist when it comes to music, but I'm a fan of the 12 Girls Band. I was able to see them live when they performed in San Diego, and that was a treat. I like that they play traditional instruments and that their main sound comes from those rather than midi, and they are talented musicians. I got interested in them because I played guzheng and that got me searching for anything I could find in Asian music. I'll credit the Girls for my decision to start learning erhu. I have seen videos of two clone groups, "Melody of Beauties" and "Dong Fang." The 12 Girls Band is far superior.
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zhou
Novice
Im bringin sexy back
Posts: 19
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Post by zhou on Oct 23, 2006 22:35:23 GMT
funny; ive never heard of either those groups, if you can tell me where you saw the video, that would be greatly appreciated
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Post by jetz320 on Oct 23, 2006 22:42:10 GMT
Oh yeah!!!!!! I've seen many try to be like them, but the 12 Girls band songs are way better!!!! Have you ever heard of 18 and Girls National Band?!
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zhou
Novice
Im bringin sexy back
Posts: 19
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Post by zhou on Oct 23, 2006 22:49:29 GMT
yeah, i just never looked up any of their music... is it any good?
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