Craig Clunas gleefully spotted this clip (posted by Tong Bingxue on what I still like to call “Twitter”), performed by the Yuzhang Daoist Music Troupe 豫章道乐团 (original here):

The troupe (YouTube playlist) is based at a temple in Nanchang (in Jiangxi province, where some of the most vibrant household traditions of Daoist ritual are to be found, BTW)—but regional style is irrelevant here. There are two issues in need of unpacking:

First, Beethoven—much as I like to blame him, in this case he’s obviously Not Guilty (cf. Monty Python: “the second tune, which Beethoven said on his arrest was ‘just a harmless bit of fun’…”). Anyway, the Yuzhang Daoist Music Troupe clearly aren’t in the market for a Beethoven work that might evoke a suitably profound and abstruse mood, like the Heiliger Dankgesang of the A minor string quartet—rather, they’ve gone for the ultimate cliché, Für Elise—such a heavy albatross around the necks of generations of hapless piano students. And if we have to hear it yet again, this arrangement has a certain charm, I suppose, in a cutesy chinoiserie kinda way—a step up from its use for the garbage trucks of Taiwan (“Whenever I hear Für Elise, I feel like I need to take out the garbage as well”).

But quite apart from the choice of piece, far more insidious is the style of instrumental ensemble itself. Adopted in recent years by such “Daoist music troupes” (a concept that I dismantled here!), it’s based on the modernised “national” conservatoire style.

In both musical and religious affairs, it would clearly be wrong to expect central authorities to have more taste than local cultural officials. Since the White Cloud Temple in Beijing led the way, * the chimera of the Intangible Cultural Heritage also plays a dodgy role in encouraging this kind of style, with Disneyfied staged performances of “Daoist music” given by temple groups such as the White Cloud Temple in Shaanbei.

So here we have a mixed-gender ensemble (itself an affront to tradition, but hey) playing modernised sheng, erhu, yangqin, ruan—a Veritable Smorgasbord™ of kitsch. The style is garish enough when it’s just accompanying Daoist hymns, but with this video, what ARE they thinking?! To imagine that Furry Lisa (as it’s known in the biz) would be just the thing to enhance their international credibility—just picture the troupe’s apparatchiks in a meeting:

After decades creating a debased concept of “Daoist music” to delude the ignorant masses, what more can we do to consolidate our reputation? Aha, I know!!!

Beat that, Richard Clayderman. One can only look forward to a Yubu Can-can. Re-education required (though not in a 1958-labour-camp kinda way). Meretricious (and a Happy New Year)!

I mean, Don’t Get Me Wrong, I’m all for experimentation—in a suitable context (e.g. “world music” versions of Bach). Of course there is a certain audience for this kind of thing in China, and even abroad; some listeners whose taste monitor isn’t programmed for China may find it charming, and It’s a Free Country (Yeah right—Ed.]. It is what it is. The ethnographer may feel obliged to document all kinds of activities, but whether or not we believe in the Wisdom of the Ancient Sages, it’s our solemn duty to ridicule such folly, which distorts and cheapens the whole notion of Daoist ritual and its soundscape [Go for it—Ed.].

Meanwhile, away from the concert platform, household Daoists like the Li family in Shanxi continue to perform life-cycle and calendrical rituals for their local communities—and so do temple priests, even in Shanghai and Beijing.

Related posts are The folk–conservatoire gulf and Different values. For a vignette on what the conservatoire style does to folk music in Shaanbei, click here. See also Chinese music clichés, and “international cultural exchange”.

The only way I can bear to hear Furry Lisa is with the brilliant Two Set Violin (complementing their Mahler 5 and Pachelbel’s capon):

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* Under the misguided rubric of “Daoist music”, the style was “developed” in the 1980s at the White Cloud Temple (Baiyun guan 白云观) in Beijing, headquarters of the national Daoist Association and official showcase for the acceptable face of Daoism under Party control. By 1985 the venerable Min Zhiting (1924–2004)—whose former priestly career had hitherto been based in Shaanxi—was chosen to teach at the temple, going on to serve as figurehead of the Daoist Association. But despite his great wisdom, the temple authorities were adept at serving the demands of Party conformity.

There’s a certain merit in the temple’s performance of the daily services, or occasional rituals such as Flaming Mouth (yankou), as they still practise the tradition of vocal liturgy accompanied only by percussion—albeit in the “southern style” that has been widely promoted in recent years. Among many videos on YouTube, here’s the final part of a yankou in 2015:

Their newly-added conservatoire-style instrumental ensemble itself derives from the silk-and-bamboo music of the Shanghai region; however, its ethos is remote even from the melodic ensemble that occasionally punctuates Daoist ritual around south Jiangsu, let alone around north China (see under Three baldies and a mouth-organ, and Daoists of Hunyuan, under “Perils of the ICH”)..