There is no such thing as art that is detached from or independent of politics
—Mao Zedong
For those with access to WeChat, the CDTM音网 public account there is clearly a major resource for Chinese music studies. On their recent post is a substantial introduction to my 2004 book Plucking the winds, a diachronic ethnography of ritual life in Gaoluo village just south of Beijing (see this roundup)—just as I finally get round to working on a new film on the 1995 New Year’s rituals there!
The WeChat article is based on a review of my book by Zhang Lili—though it was originally published in 2019, she is more thoroughly familiar with my work on Gaoluo than anyone in China, and the CDTM editors have done an attractive job, adding colour images as well as tracks from the audio CD that comes with my book.
While I’m both honoured and diffident at finding Chinese scholars taking note of my work, I like to cite the (satirical) saying 外来的和尚会念经 “The monk from outside knows how to recite the scriptures”: after all, there are plenty of fine Chinese ethnographers from whom we can learn (such as Guo Yuhua and Xiao Mei).
And it reminds me how hard it is for PRC scholars to absorb Chairman Mao’s wise words “There is no such thing as art that is detached from or independent of politics”. I addressed this issue in the Coda of Plucking the winds (pp.344–355; Chinese translation in Zhongguo yinyuexue 2005/3), and in this post on self-censorship.
Through the period that I was doing fieldwork, I came to feel that such topics were not entirely out of bounds in the PRC, but now I understand that it is increasingly impossible to air them. This is not the fault of Chinese scholars—even before any higher authority can censor their work, they instinctively censor themselves (cf. Tibet: ritual singing in an Amdo community).
So in China, all this talk of “social context” largely steers clear of politics. The WeChat review mentions “campaigns” in passing, but at the heart of my historical account is the travails of the Maoist decades: the trauma of collectivisation, the breakdown of revolutionary hero and vocal liturgist Cai Fuxiang, the famine, the brief revival of 1961–64 before the Four Cleanups and Cultural Revolution. A good introduction to these themes, based on my book, is my post South Gaoluo: a tribute to two ritual leaders.
In the earlier chapters of Plucking the winds, other topics that PRC scholars instinctively downplay (again, quite understandably) are the 1900 Boxer massacre and the story of the Catholics. I also emphasise the support of village cadres—through all regimes—for their local cultures. And I continue to observe crises and conflicts for the period since I made my base in Gaoluo—theft, ideological disputes within the association, and so on.
South Gaoluo:
left, the 1930 donors’ list;
right, the 1931 Catholic church.
So if Chinese musicologists are indeed searching for what is special about my work, how it differs from that of their own, then it is this inclusion of politics in the story. * If my book has any importance, then that is it; it could point the way for Chinese scholars, but in the current climate, such a perspective can only remain opaque. I’m not complaining, and I’m not so naive as to expect more coverage of these topics in China—just saying, like… And perhaps my own emphasis on politics in my posts on this blog is in part an attempt to fill the gap (e.g. Memory, music, society, and Gansu: connecting social trauma and expressive culture).
Senior members of the ritual association, 1995.
* * *
Another recurring theme of mine is that research on such groups shouldn’t be confined to musicological circles (see e.g. Unpacking “Daoist music”). As I explain in my overview of our Hebei project, despite the misleading name yinyuehui 音樂會, these are ritual organizations, and as such they are the proper subject of scholars of folk religion (ample evidence in our fieldnotes, under “Hebei” in the Menu). At the same time, as I also keep saying, soundscape should always be a major aspect of such study.
So yet again I find myself having to bang on about that term yinyuehui! Having used the literal translation “Music Associations” in Plucking the winds, I later avoided the term, since both its components are likely to confuse urban-educated people:
- yinyue 音樂 refers not to any “music” (and certainly not to any secular music), but strictly to the solemn shengguan wind ensemble that serves funerals and calendrical rituals in conjunction with vocal liturgy and percussion—all transmitted via Buddhist and Daoist temples. Sure, that’s quite a mouthful…
- nor is hui 會 a secular term—it’s not an “association” in the modern sense of xiehui 协会 (as in “Chinese Musicians’ Association”, and so on), nor is it a cosy amateur entertainment “club”; rather, it’s the hui of huidaomen 會道門, so they are ritual organizations descended from sectarian groups (such as Hunyuan, Hongyang, and LaoFomen) under the umbrella term of “White Lotus” religion. (The term huidaomen, of course, may alarm timid PRC students, since CCP propaganda generally prefixes it with the adjective “reactionary”!)
So a narrow focus on “music” entirely fails to capture the essence of these ritual groups. Yet besides politics, folk religion too is an increasingly sensitive issue in the PRC; scholarship there looks ever more sanitised.
The CDTM editors prepared the review with impressive urgency, and I didn’t have time to haggle over the title—to better reflect my own approach to the topic, I might have suggested
The travails and soundscape of folk religion in north Chinese society
华北民间宗教社会活动的风波与音声
* Perhaps I should specify. In Western studies of Chinese music, I feel that the ideology of elite theorists plays an excessive role, from the writings of Confucius to textual sources on the Tang court, Ming imperial Daoism, and notably the revolutionary operas and songs of the Maoist era. What I discuss is not that whole apparatus, but thick ethnographic description of the impact of campaigns on the lives of ordinary people and the ability of grassroots communities to maintain their local traditions.
Stephen Jones: a blog 