Different values

I’ve written a series of posts on the various ways of playing Chinese fiddles:

And some related articles:

Much of my work revolves around trying to understand the mindsets of rural Chinese dwellers, as in that last post. Now I come to think of it, that’s almost an incidental definition of ethnography. But it’s not entirely a contrast between urban and rural: the difference between traditional style in literati and folk genres (both part of a long imperial tradition, and closely related) seems slight, whereas the modern conservatoire ethos—romantic and Westernized—is quite remote from both.

The term yijing 意境 has a rather more arty literate feel than the trendy English “mindset”, more like “aesthetic”, and in talking to educated urban Chinese I use it quite often to illustrate the issue. But—ironically illustrating the issue further—I don’t quite know how rural Chinese people might express it, though they have plenty of terms to describe different ways of performing within their own style.

Learning with the Hua band, 2001

Learning with the Hua band, 2001.

24 thoughts on “Different values

  1. Pingback: Blind minstrels of Ukraine | Stephen Jones: a blog

  2. Pingback: New musics in Beijing | Stephen Jones: a blog

  3. Pingback: Musicking worldwide: a new category! | Stephen Jones: a blog

  4. Pingback: Musical cultures of east Europe | Stephen Jones: a blog

  5. Pingback: Guide to another year’s blogging | Stephen Jones: a blog

  6. Pingback: Musicking at the Qing court 1: suite plucking | Stephen Jones: a blog

  7. Pingback: New tag: fiddles! | Stephen Jones: a blog

  8. Pingback: Indian and world fiddles | Stephen Jones: a blog

  9. Pingback: The folk–conservatoire gulf | Stephen Jones: a blog

  10. Pingback: Das Land ohne Musik | Stephen Jones: a blog

  11. Pingback: Walking shrill: shawm bands in China | Stephen Jones: a blog

  12. Pingback: Yet more Chinese clichés: music | Stephen Jones: a blog

  13. Pingback: Italy: folk musicking | Stephen Jones: a blog

  14. Pingback: Training Daoists in Shanghai | Stephen Jones: a blog

  15. Pingback: Suzhou Daoists, England 1994 | Stephen Jones: a blog

  16. Pingback: Heritage: a roundup | Stephen Jones: a blog

  17. Pingback: Shawm and percussion bands of South Asia | Stephen Jones: a blog

  18. Pingback: Iran: chamber music | Stephen Jones: a blog

  19. Pingback: Uyghur culture in crisis | Stephen Jones: a blog

  20. Pingback: A secret language in north Shanxi | Stephen Jones: a blog

  21. Pingback: Ritual artisans in 1950s’ Beijing | Stephen Jones: a blog

  22. Pingback: Coronavirus: mourning Li Wenliang, and blind bards | Stephen Jones: a blog

  23. Pingback: The changing musical life of north India: social structure, and the sarangi | Stephen Jones: a blog

  24. Pingback: Coronavirus: mourning Li Wenliang, and blind bards – Dinesh Chandra China Story

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s