For anyone who happens to be in Shanghai in late August, the ever-enterprising Centre for Ritual Music at the Shanghai Conservatoire is holding a five-day festival of films on music ethnography, in collaboration with the Shanghai National Museum of Ethnology, from 26th to 30th August. More on Facebook, WeChat, and douban, as well as clips here.

The festival is based on Chinese-language films, with further guest items including Anthony Seeger’s Why Suya sing. Ritual is a major theme, with Daoist ritual featuring in films from Guangdong and Zhejiang, as well as my own Li Manshan: portrait of a folk Daoist (which is narrated by Li Manshan himself, with English subtitles for which Chinese audiences have been grateful!).

The accomplished Cheng Qiaoqiao 程俏俏 gives a thoughtful perspective on the New Year songs of the Kam people in Guizhou. A short film by Liu Guiteng evokes the rituals of spirit mediums in Qinghai, and “Big nose” and Body music explores the fieldwork of the late Jack Body among ethnic groups of southwest China—also a theme of briefer student presentations.

When thoughtfully made, films about music are always about social life, and often about ritual. As I keep stressing, it is an unfortunate trait of academia that the study of Chinese religion is still dominated by representations in silent immobile text, thereby downplaying the soundscape, actions, and “red-hot sociality” of ritual events.

Fine as the festival lineup is, there still seem to be few such films (edited, with research-led commentary) in the public domain (see e.g. here, under “Film”). The event is devised by Xiao Mei 萧梅, herself a distinguished music-anthropologist whose short films on spirit-mediums in Guangxi and rain rituals in Shaanbei are remarkable. For more films, see here.