Thoughts on Chinese music/hybrids

[davidbadagnani]

In reply to utmostvacuity2:

In high school I was exposed to gamelan and other Asian music through an interest in Asian-influenced contemporary composers John Cage, Lou Harrison, Alan Hovhaness, et al., and through listening to John Schaefer's "New Sounds" WNYC program.

In college at Florida State University (as an oboe major) I quickly became interested to learn Chinese music after seeing fliers in the music department that there was a Chinese instructor teaching erhu and pipa (I chose erhu, then switched to sheng). The fact that more and more North Americans are becoming interested in and studying Chinese music seems like a natural process, inevitable as more and more highly trained Chinese virtuoso musicians settle in almost every major U.S. city.

Did you know that the first American Chinese music group was Lou Harrison's trio, made up of himself, Bill Colvig, and Richard Dee? Of the three, Richard is the only one still living, and I hope to interview him about this. They performed hundreds of times all over America in the 1960s, Harrison having learned from Liang Tsai-Ping.

The most inspiring work going on with Chinese/non-Chinese hybrids are in the "Asian American jazz" movement, which has also absorbed expatriate Chinese musicians and non-Chinese musicians. Fred Ho seems to do the most interesting work, followed by Jon Jang, Liu Qi-chao, Francis Wong, Mark Izu, et al., and also people like Randy Raine-Reusch and Han Mei, and Lee Pui-ming in Canada. Wu Man's work with the Silk Road Project (especially her playing Renaissance music on ruan) is very interesting as well. I also think some mixtures of Chinese instruments in Chinese rock by Cui Jian, Second Hand Rose, Lunhui, etc. are interesting.

In my own work with Pointless Orchestra I've mostly used the Cantonese houguan, in combination with Filipino kulintang, Japanese koto, double bass, and African percussion. Strength of Chinese music, I think, are the extreme subtlety of timbre, ornamentation, phrasing, and expression, and the sheer strength of melody. One deficiency for conservatory performers is lack of improvisational ability; even the best players have to work hard to teach themselves to improvise. This doesn't seem to be as big a problem for people like Liu Qi-chao, who is from the Shandong wind-and-percussion tradition, where wild "free jazz"-style improvisation is an integral part of the tradition.

My own feeling is that the strongest Chinese music is not the state-sponsored symphonic/conservatory music originating in the 20th century but the rural folk music and ancient ritual music. Like Medieval European folk song or Appalachian ballads (or guqin music, for that matter), if the music was great when it was first composed, it's still great today. Over-refined music composed on western models (like the mini-three-movement "concertos" for pretty much every Chinese instrument that I have dozens of cassettes of) is usually not as interesting for me.

[calden]

davidbadagnani said:

My own feeling is that the strongest Chinese music is not the state-sponsored symphonic/conservatory music originating in the 20th century but the rural folk music and ancient ritual music. Like Medieval European folk song or Appalachian ballads (or guqin music, for that matter), if the music was great when it was first composed, it's still great today. Over-refined music composed on western models (like the mini-three-movement "concertos" for pretty much every Chinese instrument that I have dozens of cassettes of) is usually not as interesting for me.

Interesting thoughts, David. I'm going to have to explore some of the names you gave out in your post.

My specialty is playing trad Irish and Scottish music in a performing and recording band. We love to do sets of our favorite session tunes, which have come down through centuries of being played and loved and taught informally, to suddenly pop up in a Wednesday night jam at the pub. I've always been entranced by the notion of simple little tune with an odd title, in form no different from thousands of other tunes, and using lots of little melodies that appear in other tunes of the same genre, suddenly grabbing me and seducing me with one little hook or turn of melody. Ah, that's the most powerful of music, isn't it? You'll be humming that little hook for days, so simple, but you're wondering how you hadn't thought of it before.

I find the same things in Chinese music - I can play the same erhu tune for 20 minutes and not grow tired of it. Every time I come round to that one little place where that one change of rhythm or melodic oddity comes in - I find it like greeting an old friend, and it's just as satisfying as the first time I felt it.

And THAT'S what I love about folk music. It's not about refinement, but rather about the essence of the melody.

Carlos

[davidbadagnani]

I tried to listen to your audio samples (Celtic Nots) but none of them worked. BTW the guest book posting saying "keep politics out of Irish music" made me laugh out loud.

About the connections between Irish and Chinese music, I play both too, and have long thought that Irish instrumental/dance music is perhaps the closest tradition to Chinese silk/bamboo music. You can see the parallels in the video documentary "The Chieftains in China" (have you all seen this?). The similarities for me include the fact that both traditions consist of a single-line melody with heterophonic/individual variations in ornamentation, ensemble instrumentation free, all high instruments, informal setting for performance (pub vs. teahouse), "folk"/amateur tradition that is nevertheless highly refined, importance of fiddle and flute and relative unimportance of drums, etc. etc.

[davidbadagnani]

When I said "ensemble instrumentation free" I meant "whoever shows up can play" -- i.e. in an Irish session, 5 fiddles, 2 flutes, and a guitar is just as good as 1 fiddle, 3 banjos, and a bouzouki; same in Jiangnan (within reason, of course).

[davidmdahl]

davidbadagnani said:

My own feeling is that the strongest Chinese music is not the state-sponsored symphonic/conservatory music originating in the 20th century but the rural folk music and ancient ritual music.

I feel the same way in general. The funny thing is that when talented people get creative in a genuine way, good things can happen. When I started to investigate traditional Vietnamese music, I had a strong bias against the so-called "neotraditional" conservatory music. Much to my surprise, some good music has come out of the effort to homogenize and update traditional music. I particularly enjoy the contemporary dan tranh music from Thuy Hoan of Tieng Hat Que Huong. I am less familiar with modern Chinese music, but I bet there is some good stuff mixed in with the chaff.

Of course, there is not a lot of chaff left in the traditional literature. It is a bit of a shame that only a small percentage gets played.

Best wishes,

David

[davidmdahl]

davidbadagnani said:

When I said "ensemble instrumentation free" I meant "whoever shows up can play" -- i.e. in an Irish session, 5 fiddles, 2 flutes, and a guitar is just as good as 1 fiddle, 3 banjos, and a bouzouki; same in Jiangnan (within reason, of course).

Three banjos? Yes, and when you add three drunk novice bodhrans, and a couple of piano accordions, you have the makings of a real crackin' session. <g>

I see a lot of interesting commonalities between Chinese and Irish music, but I have a tough time envisioning a drunken silk and bamboo band tearing up the joint.

Best wishes,

David

[SCWGuqin]

My perspective on Chinese music comes basically from qin; I generally like to focus on the most "classical" forms from various cultures. I know "classicism" can be difficult to define, but I think we can all recognize certain distinctively valuable things shared by, e.g. qin, shakuhachi, ragas, maqamat, gamelan, and Bach. I often take the position of comparing amongst all the world classical systems, both musically and in their cultural context, and trying to figure out what each might contribute to a "global supermusic", whatever theoretical entity that might be.

For years I've known that my deepest attraction of all is to the qin. But I also love, revere, and study traditions from outside China--especially South Indian (Carnatic) music, with which I've been fusing in concert for a couple of years. Often I'm so overwhelmed by how amazing these other musics are that I have to stop and consciously ask myself why qin is so special to me. Thinking about these things, while continuously practicing the qin in both traditional and not-so-traditional ways has led to continuous changes in my understanding of what music is.

If you look at most off-the-cuff descriptions of music x or y, probably two elements will shine forth again and again: pitch and rhythm. People casually divide music into "polyphonic", "heterophonic", "monophonic" etc. based on how many pitches occur at the same time, and in what relationships; a pitch that shifts across time (=in some kind of rhythm) seems indispensible to most music (as normally understood). OK, given that, the next question is: what makes a pitch-time combination or articulation beautiful or evocative of some experience? (Since we might also agree that stimulating feelings in a listener is the root of musical 'effectiveness'.) From here the next step is to jump into questions of temperament and mode. I'll leave that for another time. Bottom line: several of the non-Chinese systems I work with have *staggeringly* complex and effective theories about pitch and time--you need only read up on or listen to ragas to understand that. Confronted with such a vast theoretical edifice, I often feel perplexed about the case of China: where's the theory? Where are the 72 parent diatonic scales? The hundreds of rhythmical modes? While I know something like 'qin theory' in the pitch/time sense does exist, I get the impression that it's just not very important to qin players--they don't learn it. (Probably they don't feel the need to since there is NO detailed framework for composition or improvisation in qin music--a CRITICAL lack that I may return to in another post.) There are times when I throw my hands up in despair and leave blinding melodic-rhythmic sophistication, as well as emotional range, to the people who use modulating microtonal heptatonic modes and improvise heavily: Indians, Persians, Arabs, etc. A lot of my own experimenting with qin music leans in this direction.

But of course there's more to pitch/time 'effectiveness' than number of modes or systematic improvisation. Qin music exemplifies how you can strip down to just five notes, minimal lyricism in phrasing (by this I mean textures that imitate the voice, most primally evocative of instruments), and eliminate improvisation, and still do shockingly amazing things. Pitch/time effectiveness is basically communicated in terms of proportion, repetition/variation, and other fundamental aesthetic relationships--which can just as well be communicated with fewer notes as with more. Just as an extended raga can have a profound architecture, so the best qin pieces can forever beguile (the one I'm actively thinking of whilst writing this is Yu Ge).

But whereas most musics deal explicity with pitch/time, I think one thing uniquely qin is the idea of focusing on dynamic structure *moreso* than pitch/time. Traditional writing about qin aesthetics, or at least what I've read, is overwhelmingly concerned with how to articulate notes, with accent and nuance rather than the nuts and bolts of which pitches get laid out over what time. I think this might be a uniquely valuable focus that non-Chinese musicians can learn from the qin.

Then there's the whole level of 'extra-musical associations'. Qin music seems second to none, for better or worse (probably both), in its obsession with alluding outside the music and especially with transforming the player and listener.

OK, I've run out of energy. This was just supposed to be some quick jots anyway. Bottom line for now: I think qin music could seriously benefit, and qin musicians should seriously experiment with, the systems of melodic articulation (with improvisation) from the Morocco-thru-India belt, with their attendant huge emotional range and vast technical resources. They could of course benefit from absorbing many other things as well, but those are the systems I have the most experience with, so I feel most confident recommending them. (Given that melody is hard enough, truly integrating qin with Western harmony might be a Herculean affair.) While qin has unique and valuable pitch/time resources, the emotional range of qin can and should be expanded. I've found that when I play more lyrical, heptatonic, modal-improvisatory music on the qin, the results are truly intoxicating--the unique qualities of the instrument make possible all kinds of variations that even the non-Chinese originators probably haven't tried. (This comes especially in the area of moving tonal center, which the Arabs are quite comfortable with but scares the sh*t out of Indians I play with.) Meanwhile, what the qin contributes is (1) in the area of pitch/time, extremely sophisticated treatments dealing *specifically* with VERY RESTRICTED possibilites, (2) vast resources for dynamic/inflectional/accentuation focus, and (3) a truly unique focus on extra-musical associations as indispensible to music.

[calden]

davidbadagnani said:

I tried to listen to your audio samples (Celtic Nots) but none of them worked. BTW the guest book posting saying "keep politics out of Irish music" made me laugh out loud.

About the connections between Irish and Chinese music, I play both too, and have long thought that Irish instrumental/dance music is perhaps the closest tradition to Chinese silk/bamboo music. You can see the parallels in the video documentary "The Chieftains in China" (have you all seen this?). The similarities for me include the fact that both traditions consist of a single-line melody with heterophonic/individual variations in ornamentation, ensemble instrumentation free, all high instruments, informal setting for performance (pub vs. teahouse), "folk"/amateur tradition that is nevertheless highly refined, importance of fiddle and flute and relative unimportance of drums, etc. etc.

Right on, David. I see the exact same connections and parallels, including the regional variations. I have an Irish musician friend who can tell what part of what county someone is from by the way they play fiddle.

Politics and Irish music? Oh yeah. We have an anti-gun song. Or rather I should say and anti-gun-culture-infatuation song. Every so often someone in a pro-gun group hears it and gets all their friends to listen to it and write us so it sounds like a groundswell opinion.

As for our audio - did you try www.celticnots.com? That should be up and working. If not, go to CDbaby.com and search for Celtic Nots - we have four or five CDs there and you can get sound clips for all our tunes. Try "Pharaoh" from the CD "Why Not" for our version of a great Richard Thompson tune, with me on erhu.

Carlos

[davidbadagnani]

Well, we've got to hear you play, then. You discuss some pretty heavy stuff. Hmm, connections to Carnatic music? It might work on qin, as the sarod (though North Indian) also has a fretless fingerboard and the chitravina and mohan veena are played with a slide... There have been some Indian/Chinese collaborations with Jiebing Chen and V. M. Bhatt on the Water Lily Acoustics label in recent years (they claim the first). By the way, the largest Carnatic festival outside India (the Thyagaraja Aradhana) starts here in Cleveland in two weeks--45 concerts over 2 weeks. I find that, as far as the slow (alapana) sections go, it is these days often performed in a very cursory way by the vina, flute, and violin players, as if they can't wait to show off in the fast sections. In this way, maybe qin music has an advantage, as the best players really do express the slow free rhythm sections in a very deep way.

As regards Chinese music/qin theory, I think there undoubtedly is theory for these musics, and I'm not sure I'd say that qin music is missing anything particularly; it is what it is. But it might be that the elements you discuss from other parts of South and West Asia were rejected by the Chinese musician-scholars. It's not as if they never heard these heptatonic improvisational musics, because there were something like 9 orchestras from all over Asia resident in the Chinese capital, Chang An, with numerous Persian and other Central Asian musicians even teaching members of the royal court to play the "barbat" lute, as it was then called. They must have simply rejected the elements that were believed not to fit with Chinese musical aesthetics, which had developed for over 2,000 years prior to that time.

[davidbadagnani]

Oops, I should have said that the last paragraph refers to the Tang Dynasty.

[davidbadagnani]

I think that applying western concepts to the qin will be very interesting. It shouldn't be any different than what musicians in India or Africa have done with the guitar, what Burmese musicians have done with the piano, Brazilians with the musical bow, etc.

[davidbadagnani]

davidmdahl said:

Three banjos? Yes, and when you add three drunk novice bodhrans, and a couple of piano accordions, you have the makings of a real crackin' session. <g>

I see a lot of interesting commonalities between Chinese and Irish music, but I have a tough time envisioning a drunken silk and bamboo band tearing up the joint.

Ha ha! Watch out for the suona band guys, though! I think even Confucius warned parents not to let their daughters date them.

[Charlie Huang]

I heard a while ago that Chinese music use to be heptatonic and fully improvisational. As soon as the Chinese music theory began to be intergrated into instrumentalisation, this began to disappear. It is probably only in qin music, which is less hooked onto these theories, that has partially escaped from this (you can tell from looking at ancient scores).

I think Chinese music deals more with emotion and feeling of a piece in a state of freedom, whilst other music deal with emotion and feeling within a state of rhytmn. For qin music, rhythm is not that important as you're not playing with other instruments; the only rhythm you follow is your heart's rhythm. The Chinese tend to have the notion of less is more, and the stuff about wu-wei, Mozi's saddness about dying silk, "he who works on a different strand destroys the whole fabric", etc.

[davidbadagnani]

That is very interesting. I recall that there's a track on the "Ancient Music of Chang'An" CD on a French label, maybe Auvidis (it has a black cover), a trio for pipa, ruan, and zheng or something, that seems heptatonic and melodically it sounds very strange, not very "Chinese" in the current understanding of the term. But I'd guessed that this scale (if the music on the CD is authentic) might have come from somewhere west of China during the Tang Dynasty. Anyway, the two "missing" scale degrees do make appearances from time to time in primarily pentatonic pieces.

[davidmdahl]

davidbadagnani said:

Ha ha! Watch out for the suona band guys, though! I think even Confucius warned parents not to let their daughters date them.

Erhu players like to fiddle around too. <g>

Perhaps there is a Chinese "Country" tune "Mothers, don't let your daughters grow up to love musicians!".

Apparently I am still suffering the effects of April Fool's Day.

Best wishes,

David

[davidmdahl]

davidbadagnani said:

By the way, the largest Carnatic festival outside India (the Thyagaraja Aradhana) starts here in Cleveland in two weeks--45 concerts over 2 weeks. I find that, as far as the slow (alapana) sections go, it is these days often performed in a very cursory way by the vina, flute, and violin players, as if they can't wait to show off in the fast sections. In this way, maybe qin music has an advantage, as the best players really do express the slow free rhythm sections in a very deep way.

I attended a one-day Thyagaraja Aradhana a few years ago not far from my home. While I enjoyed it very much, I can't imagine how two weeks of it would feel. (I have seen several Wagner Ring Cycles, and that is another intense experience over just one week.) There is a lot to appreciate about Carnatic music, but I prefer North Indian. I love how masters such as Pt. Hariprasad Chaurasia can say so much with just a few very long notes. I almost never hear such profundity on dizi. Maybe that is meant to be reserved for the xiao and qin, and of course erhu.

Best wishes,

David

[SCWGuqin]

You know someone is hardcore when they stick in the "Pt." in writing. What's the Muslim counterpart, "Ud."?

[davidmdahl]

utmostvacuity2 said:

You know someone is hardcore when they stick in the "Pt." in writing. What's the Muslim counterpart, "Ud."?

LOL! Hmm. I don't remember the abbreviation for Ustad, if there is one. In Vietnamese, the honorific for Teacher/Professor is "Thay".

Best wishes,

David

[SCWGuqin]

Regarding profundity and the dizi--I tend to assume that, within certain constraints, nearly any instrument can be profound (or 'classical' as my personal jargon might prefer it). 'Profound' transverse flute traditions include those from India, Europe, and (possibly?) Japan. What keeps people from doing profound music on the dizi? I agree that I almost never hear it done, but is this owing more to the physical properties of the instrument or the "cultural properties" of the players?