FWIW, in my post Other publications I’ve just appended a very brief outline of the, um, progression of my work on China. Do take a look!
From 1986, as I converted from Tang music to fieldwork on living traditions of local ritual—groups serving life-cycle and calendrical rituals, I focused first on amateur ritual associations in Hebei villages (notably Gaoluo) and then (after an interlude on shawm bands), on hereditary occupational groups of household Daoists around north China (notably the Li family Daoists in Shanxi).
All this accompanied a shift from studying reified “music” to the ethnography of changing ritual practice in local communities, and documenting the vicissitudes of people’s lives—before, during, and since the decades of Maoism.
