Monthly Archives: October 2024

Soundscapes of Dunhuang

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Dunhuang gig

Along with the Silk Roads, that reliably popular buzzword, the Mogao Buddhist cave complex outside the oasis town of Dunhuang occupies a unique position in studies of medieval Central Asia. Having thrived for a millenium from the 4th century CE as a staging post along the trade and pilgrimage route, by the 14th century Dunhuang was a backwater—until its long-hidden treasures were discovered by European explorers in the early 1900s.

Wang Yuanlu
Daoist priest Wang Yuanlu, who entrusted many manuscripts to Aurel Stein
and Paul Pelliot from 1907. Source.

Dunhuang caves

The manuscripts are written in a variety of languages, with Chinese predominating.

Alongside the British Museum’s current Silk Roads exhibition, the British Library’s International Dunhuang Programme has an impressive collection, sampled in the display “A Silk Road oasis: life in ancient Dunhuang“—with an imaginative soundscape compiled by the industrious Wei Xiaoshi of the China Database for Traditional Music (CDTM). Among a series of related events, this week Wei curated a concert at the BL.

The soundscapes of society are important. Early caves like those of Dunhuang contain a wealth of music and dance iconography, much studied in China. Instruments * depicted there—mainly as part of ensembles—have been reproduced by Chinese scholars. Echoes of the medieval oasis-towns were heard at the court of the Tang capital Chang’an (modern Xi’an), venue for the first world-music boom (see here, and here). Yet early iconography and texts are silent and immobile (alas, the Dunhuang caves haven’t yielded any caches of A/V recordings!). ** And whereas Western performers in the modern tradition of HIP have paid attention to the sound and performance practice of medieval European music, within China attempts at recreation have yielded less palatable results (cf. Tang music), leaving too much at the mercy of the modern imagination—a bandwagon onto which composers and performers climb all too readily without undue concern for authenticity.

The unspoken issue of context deserves pondering. Early murals show idealised representations of the distinct social milieu of celestial musicians (apsara, Chinese feitian 飛天) before the gods; as in Europe, their function in a pious medieval society was far different from that in galleries and museums today. Similarly, modern sonic recreations are performed on the concert stage (cf. Bach)—a venue far removed both from those of the murals and from the diverse human contexts of traditional social musicking in ancient and modern China, whether sacred or secular.

cave 112

Musical ensemble from Cave 112 (detail), mid-Tang, including zheng zither (front left).
Source.

Doubtless thanks to a limited budget, it was a relief that Wei Xiaoshi adopted the modest rubric “Contemporary echoes of an ancient legacy”, making no pretence of recreating the medieval soundscape, thus avoiding the kitsch spectaculars that are rife in China.

Three accomplished solo performers performed in turn: the Uyghur Shohret Nur on rawap and dutar lutes with busy, percussive pieces from his hometown of Kashgar; the Amdo-Tibetan Ngawang Lodup accompanying his florid singing on mandolin (an instrument widely adopted in modern times by folk musicians around the world) and dramyin lutes—also featuring, to my distress, the notorious “singing bowls” (which “there is no credible historical evidence, whatsoever, of Tibetans ever having used”, in the words of Tenzin Dheden); and the innovative Chinese Wu Fei on zheng zither (whose modern version, FWIW, is remote from that seen in the Dunhuang murals) and vocals. They ended with an improvised trio that I can only describe as strange.

The audience didn’t seem to mind the tenuity of any relation with Dunhuang, ancient or modern. Rather, the concert made a pretext simply to admire the artistry of these fine musicians—from roughly the same part of the world, a millenium after the murals were depicted. Still, were one to present a concert complementing exhibits from the court of Charlemagne (e.g. here), it would hardly seem relevant to present traditional musicians from various parts of France. A millenium is a long time.

It was never going to seem suitable to air the topic of politics, but it was an elephant in the room. As Wu Fei replaced the Uyghur and TIbetan performers on stage with her polished conservatoire-style zheng playing and vocal items, it might just have crossed one’s mind how Han-Chinese rule since 1950 has engulfed Uyghur and Tibetan societies.

Anyway, while research on medieval Dunhuang occupies its own niche, it’s always good to be reminded, however impressionistically, of the variety of living musical traditions throughout the ethnic bazaar of Central Asia, as they have evolved over time (cf. the 2002 Smithsonian festival, or this tasteful concert). For another Silk Roads concert at the BM, click here, and for a symposium, here.

* * *

Dunhuang photoPhoto from German Central Asian Expedition, undated (early 20th century):
shawm and percussion accompanying pilgrims (cf. the Uyghur mazar). Source.

Putting medieval iconography and modern concerts to one side, I muse idly on the potential for documenting folk expressive cultures around Dunhuang since their heyday—from the 14th century down to today. So I look forward to reading the recent compilation Dunhuang minjian yinyue wenhua jicheng 敦煌民间音乐文化集成 [Anthology of folk musical cultures of Dunhuang], comprising three volumes on folk-song, “precious scrolls“, and regional opera.

Dunhuang mapThe Dunhuang region today. Source: Google Maps.

Nearby along the Hexi corridor, household Daoist groups perform rituals—for these and other living Han-Chinese traditions in Gansu, click here, and for the cultures of other ethnic groups in the Amdo region, here. For the troubled history of the Dunhuang Academy in the 1960s, note volume 2 of the memoirs of Gao Ertai. For museums and soundscape, see China’s hidden century. Posts on the Tang are rounded up here.

* A personal favourite of mine is the konghou harp, whose rise and fall were similar to that of Dunhuang itself: following the early research of Yuan Quanyou, see e.g. here, here, and even wiki. 

konghou DunhuangKonghou, Cave 285, 6th century (detail).

** By a considerable margin, this beats my fantasies of discovering ciné footage of the Li family Daoists presiding over the 1942 Zhouguantun temple fair, or of the first performance of the Matthew Passion.

Henan: folk instrumental traditions

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Despite all its flaws, the vast Anthology of folk music of the Chinese peoples remains an essential starting point to survey the ritual life and soundscapes of regional folk cultures. For the province of Henan, I’ve written posts on bards and spirit mediums; now, while bearing in mind the volumes on folk-song, narrative-singing, opera, and dance, I’ve been skimming the Anthology volumes on instrumental music, where much of the material on ceremonial and ritual life appears (cf. my surveys for Fujian, Liaoning, and Tianjin, as well as Two local cultural workers):

  • Zhongguo minzu minjian qiyuequ jicheng, Henan juan 中国民族民间器乐曲集成, 河南卷 (1997; 2 vols, 1,515 pages).

Though the great bulk of the volumes consists of musical transcriptions (never very helpful in the absence of available recordings), and the quality of the textual essays is even less satisfactory than in many of the other volumes, clues may be found in the terminology for regional genres and names of bands and musicians.

Henan mapHenan municipalities. Source.

While the early history of musical cultures in Henan is reflected in a wealth of iconography and excavations (for which, see further Zhongguo yinyue wenwu daxi, Henan juan 中国音乐文物大系, 河南卷, 1996), the main material is based on fieldwork on living traditions. Major themes in the modern transmission of local cultures, always suppressed in PRC historiography, are poverty and the memory of trauma (cf. Memory, music, society, and Sparks). But the Anthology rarely offers glimpses of this submerged history; in the narrative-singing volumes for Hunan province I found some passages bearing on the famine around 1960 (here, and here), but Henan suffered even more grievously, and looms large in studies of the national catastrophe. *

Shawm bands
By now we are used to finding the Anthology‘s most substantial coverage devoted to “drumming and blowing” (guchui), referring to shawm bands serving life-cycle and calendrical ceremonies. After the general survey (pp.9–11), the introduction to these bands (pp.29–35) preceding the many transcriptions is brief and formulaic.

Henan pics 4

Xiangbanzi, Sanbi, Xinyang
Shawm band, Xunxian funeral
Shawm band, Linxian funeral

Bands are commonly known as xiangqiban 响器班, and the shawm as dadi ⼤笛, often supported by the related wind instruments xidi 锡笛 and menzi 闷⼦. Many bands have added the sheng mouth-organ since the 1930s.

The introduction confirms the lowly outcast status of the musicians in the “old society”. Locals distinguish those who only play shawm (qingshui 清水) and those who also work as barbers (hunshui 混水). In Zhoukou municipality alone, 300 bands were documented at the time of compilation.

In sections near the end of vol.2, following introductions to the Song family shawm band of Kaifeng (a kind of folk academy for the state troupes) and the shawm band of Shibukou in Lankao county (pp.1422–23), brief biographies (pp.1425–35) contain further clues. Many of these musicians came to the attention of collectors through being absorbed into the state troupes, but any of their lives would make an illuminating in-depth social study—incorporating the history of Maoism, the famine, and the 1980s’ reforms.

Henan pics 2

Guanzi player, Tianshan village, Longmen, Luoyang
Xun ocarina player, Puyang
Shang Yuanqing on shawm, Neixiang
Shengguan players, Xinzheng.

Female members of shawm-band families seem to have begun taking part earlier than further northwest (cf. Hubei: The Chinese shawm: changing rural and urban images).

Henan pics 3

Chuida in Neixiang county, and Bayin louzi of Zhoukou
Sixian luogu, Shangcheng county
Shipan, Yima municipality.

Also subsumed under the rubric of “drumming and blowing” are groups in central and northwestern Henan led by guanzi oboe or dizi flute: the shipan ⼗盘 of the Luoyang–Sanmenxia region (named after its ten-gong yunluo, and akin to ritual shengguan ensembles just north); the amateur bayin hui ⼋⾳会 around Jiaozuo (with a more diverse instrumentation) and bayin louzi ⼋⾳楼⼦ of Zhoukou municipality (named for their processional sedan), once patronised by Shanxi merchants.

Bayin louzi

Zhoukou Bayin louzi 1423

Clues to the Shanxi origins of the Bayin louzi in Zhoukou.

String ensembles
By comparison with wind bands, string ensembles (“xiansuo”) are rather under-represented in modern Chinese folk cultures (see e.g. Amateur musicking in urban Shaanbei; Musicking at the Qing court 1: suite plucking). In Henan the main genre is bantou pieces 板头曲 (pp.724–894), along with their zheng zither repertoire, largely collected around Zhengzhou (cf. The zheng zither in Shandong)—the instrumental component of the dadiao vocal tradition, based on 68-beat variants of the folk melody Baban.

Cao Dongfu
Cao Dongfu.

Despite biographies of the celebrated zheng masters Wang Shengwu (1904–68), Ren Qingzhi (b.1924), Cao Dongfu (1898–1970) and his daughter Cao Guifen (b.1938), one gains little impression of the recent maintenance of this tradition.

Blowing and beating
Without acquaintance of “blowing and beating” (chuida) pieces around the Funiushan and Dabieshan mountains, I’m unclear how they differ in style from the shawm bands discussed above. In Shangcheng county on the northern slopes of Dabieshan, mixed ensembles with strings and percussion (sixian luogu) are found. The famine around 1960 was particularly devastating in the Xinyang region; bands there, derived from shadow puppetry, are said to have “developed” greatly in the 1950s.

Henan pics 1

“Greater tongqi“, Zhumadian
Pangu, Kaifeng
Percussion ensemble, Weidu district, Xuchang
Percussion ensemble, Mixian county.

Festive percussion ensembles are introduced in a rather good article (pp.1061–66), including tongqi she 铜 器 社 societies (cf. Xi’an) originally serving temple fairs (with 87 groups active in Xuchang municipality alone at the time of compilation), and the funerary jiagu 架鼓 of Taiqian county, northeast Henan.

More solo pieces are identified than for most other provinces (pp.1197–1334), although most perhaps belong under ensemble and vocal categories: for dizi flute, regional types of bowed fiddles (zhuihu, zhuiqin, sihu, “soft-bow” jinghu), the rare bowed zither yazheng, zheng plucked zither (related to the bantou tradition), and sanxian plucked lute.

“Religious music”
Noting that the very concept of “religious music” is misleading, I often wish that local music collectors would engage with folk ritual practice—and scholars of religion with its soundscape. For regions such as Fujian, on whose local Daoist “altars” scholars have published detailed monographs, little can be learned from the sections on “religious music” in the Anthology; but for regions where serious scholarship is deficient, these sections at least promise some preliminary leads. Despite the long-term social impoverishment of communities in Henan, folk ritual practice there appears to maintain its vigour, yet the minimal Anthology fieldwork yielded disappointing results, and the topic still doesn’t seem to have attracted scholarly attention.

Transcriptions of Buddhist pieces, mostly instrumental, come from Yuanyang, Qixian, Minquan, Zhengyang, and Wuzhi counties, with only two vocal items (from Xinxiang municipality). This section strangely neglects the prominent Xiangguo si temple in Kaifeng, whose “music” was commodified even before the Intangible Cultural Heritage era, although the temple’s Republican-era gongche solfeggio score is reproduced in an Appendix (pp.1441–85). Daoist pieces are transcribed from Yanling, Xunxian, Pingyu, and Huaibin counties; the introduction (p.1378) also mentions a household Daoist group in Gegang district of Qixian county.

Henan pics 5

[Household?] Buddhist ritual specialists, Xinxiang municipality
Buddhist monks, Lingshan si temple, Luoshan county
Household Daoist presides over funeral, Tongbai county.

Hints of ritual life come in the guise of two brief biographies of wind players who were recognised at regional and provincial festivals in the 1950s:

  • Zhang Fusheng 张福生 (Daoist name Yongjing 永净, b.1918) came from a hereditary family of Daoists; he fled the 1942 famine along with his father and seven Daoist priests to make his home at the Guangfu si temple in Yanling county (p.1428).
  • Sun Hongde 孙洪德 (Buddhist name Longjiang 隆江, b.1927) came from a poor village in Minquan county; when he was young his mother gave him to the village’s Baiyun si temple, and later he moved with his master Canghai to the Tianxing si temple in Jiangang district of Shangqiu municipality (p.1430).

So far I have found few clues online to augment this paltry material, though a brief 2004 article on “Daoist music” in south Henan (where the officiants are commonly known as daoxian 道仙) is based on fieldwork with six “altars” (tan 坛) there. Further leads welcome!

* * *

A/V recordings of such folk traditions are hard to find online; some brief clips appear on douyin, e.g. “folk ritual from Xinyang” here. Perhaps still more than with local traditions of instrumental music further north and northwest, most of these genres are inseparable from folk-song, narrative-singing, and opera—as a reminder of the importance of vocal music, here’s a clip of “wailing for the soul” (kuling) for the third anniversary of the death:

In the Shaanbei revolutionary base area in the 1930s, cultural cadres struggled to valorise folk performing traditions that were so inextricable from the “feudal superstition” which the CCP was seeking to overthrow (see here). The long process of sanitising such traditions has now reached its nadir in the dumbing-down of the ICH. So, however unsatisfactory, the Anthology remains an essential starting point for fieldwork on local traditions of expressive culture in China, allowing us to adjust our perspective from the “national music” of the conservatoire style, through facile epithets (coined in the 1950s) standing for the music of a large region (Hebei chuige, Jiangnan sizhu, and so on), right down to grassroots fieldwork—town by town, village by village.

While the Henan volumes contain useful material on late imperial and Republican history, what we now need are detailed ethnographies for the whole period since the 1949 “Liberation”, as the social fabric of local communities served by such traditions struggled to survive political and economic assaults.

* For Henan, see e.g. Ralph Thaxton, Catastrophe and contention in rural China (2008), and Peter Seybolt, Throwing the emperor from his horse (1996). For more sources on the famine, see under Cultural revolutions.

Images of Zen

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The wondrous truth of the Buddhas is not concerned with writings

諸佛妙理，非關文字

—Huineng

The Western vogue for Zen was already well established when I sought to learn about it in my teens (see here). Alongside the surveys of Christmas Humphreys, Alan Watts, and classics by Eugen Herrigel and R.H. Blyth, I read the works of D.T. Suzuki with an enthusiasm that I now learn was misguided. [1] But as scholarship expanded vastly, I was discovering other fields to plough, drawn towards the ethnography of folk religion in China. Lately I’ve been wondering why the two most popular Western images of Zen are so elusive in China—the koan encounter dialogues and zazen seated meditation. So I’ve resorted to the useful wiki series on Chan and Zen (see also Zen narratives, Koan, and Zazen; cf. the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy).

Research on religion (both its early textual history and its current state) is clearly quite different from “doing religion”. For historians and ethnographers, participant observation is optional; and practitioners of religion need not be versed in scholarly literature. Indeed, writing about anything is different from doing it—music, for example. I’m not exactly arguing with the concept of academia—even I am not quite so fatuous. But Chinese Chan and Japanese Zen make particularly stimulating examples of the contrast.

* * *

Early Chan patriarchs stressed a “separate transmission outside the scriptures, not relying on words and letters” (cf. early Daoist writings such as Laozi, “The way you can follow is not the eternal way; The name you can name is not the eternal name”). However, quite remote from our modern iconoclastic image of Zen, the doctrinal history of Chan is remarkably verbose and discursive. [2] This contradiction is itself the subject of much verbal analysis!

The modern Western fantasy of Zen is based on the numinous reputation of the Tang dynasty. Much of the evidence for the early history of Chan is based on the transmission texts, sermons, and doctrinal writings of leading patriarchs such as Bodhidharma, Shenxiu, and Huineng—received images of whom are based on their portrayal by Song-dynasty writers. As Mario Poceski observes (Ordinary Mind as the Way: The Hongzhou school and the growth of Chan Buddhism, 2007),

The connection with the glories of the bygone Tang era bestowed a sense of sanctity and was a potent tool for legitimising the Chan school in the religious world of Song China.

From such sources, gong’an/koan “encounter dialogues” and commentaries emerged. The early masters were prolific writers, even if some recognised the dangers: in the 12th century, Dahui Zonggao “is even said to have burned the woodblocks of the Blue cliff record, for the hindrance it had become to study of Chan by his students”. One revealing theme is the many cogent criticisms of the koan system, both within Chan and by modern scholars. Poceski again:

Although Zen is often portrayed as promoting spontaneity and freedom, encounter-dialogue exegesis actually points in the opposite direction, namely towards a tradition bound by established parameters of orthodoxy

—the masters’ exegeses reinforcing their status and authority, and impressing their literati patrons.

Popular image notwithstanding, I deduce that beyond those monks and patrons, penetrating the gnomic aphorisms of the Tang and Song masters has played only a minor role in temple routine. Conversely, Chan Buddhists have always esteemed the Mahāyāna scriptures: even in the Tang, the Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra and Diamond Sūtra were considered important texts. 

Among Western scholars, Bernard Faure has an informed view of the broader picture (see e.g. Chan insights and oversights: an epistemological critique of the Chan tradition, 1993). In his Introduction to Chan Buddhism in ritual context (2003) he gives a useful survey of the field.

Chan/Zen studies are, on the whole, divided between textual/ philological and historical approaches on the one hand, and hermeneutical and philosophical approaches on the other. […] We are still lacking works considering Chan and Zen as complex cultural systems and trying to place them in situ

—this more anthropological approach “in reaction against the spiritualist tendency of traditional historiography and against historicist reductionism”. In the same volume, Wendi Adamek notes:

In the eighth century, Chan masters were no longer simply meditation masters and they had not yet become Zen masters, those enigmatic eccentrics who have made their mark in contemporary popular culture.

The modern visitor to Chinese temples may be perplexed by the apparent absence of the “Zen spirit” there. [3] But, far from some recent dilution, ever since the early history of Buddhism in China, Buddhists have put varying emphases on three types of training inherited from India: vinaya, the rules of discipline; dhyāna, meditation; and dharma, mastery of the Buddhist texts. Wiki cites McRae:

Chan was not nearly as separate from these other types of Buddhist activities as one might think […] The monasteries of which Chan monks became abbots were comprehensive institutions, “public monasteries” that supported various types of Buddhist activities other than Chan-style meditation. […] There was never any such thing as an institutionally separate Chan “school” at any time in Chinese Buddhist history. 

Thus as Chan was integrated with other schools (notably Pure Land, Huayan, and Tiantai), while leading masters continued to write abstruse treatises, temple life revolved around the discipline of institutionalised religion. Once we grasp all this, the apparent conflict between early and later history becomes less incongruous.

Xuan Hua
Xuan Hua meditating, Hong Kong 1953. Source: wiki.

Modern reformist Buddhist movements are the subject of much research. Chan is at the core of the teachings of renowned masters in the PRC, Taiwan, and the USA—who are no less generous with words than their medieval antecedents, like Western pundits such as Gary Snyder and Alan Watts (cf. Krishnamurti, and Paths for the reluctant guru).

* * *

Besides the wealth of hermeneutical studies of Buddhism, one finds scant ethnographic material for normative practice—the daily lives of ordinary temple monks (whether today, in the Ming, or in the Tang). For the late imperial era, fiction may provide a useful source (cf. Ritual in the Dream of the Red Chamber).

A basic acquaintance with temple life in modern Chinese society provides the important perspective of physical diversity—from the grand, prestigious temples of cities and mountains, to medium temples with a modest staff, to small village temples with only a caretaker. Children were often given to small local temples as a means of survival; piety on the part of the parents might play a role, but spiritual concerns were often remote.

I’ll end with some impressionistic instances of usage where the term chan may mislead.

Just as chansi 禪寺 refers generally to a Buddhist temple, other uses of the term chan often stand broadly for Buddhism—as in the interdenominational liturgical compilation Chanmen risong 禪門日誦. As Faure observes, ritual has long played a major part in Chan, although he doesn’t seem to address the particulars of liturgical practice (for folk Buddhist ritual, see here).

ChanSource.

In Japan, zazen seems to be an intrinsic part of temple life; at outward-looking temples in China and abroad there has been something of a recent boom for meditation classes for laypeople (e.g. here), in response to demand. Chan meditation wasn’t limited to Chan temples, but I wonder how widely it is (and was) practised in local temples.

In temples the term chan is common in chanfang 禪房 or chantang  禪堂, which rather than “meditation room” is now just a common room or assembly room (for basic depictions, see e.g. here, and here). The term chanfang may even stand for the temple itself; found in sources from Li Bai to The Dream of the red chamber, it’s still in common parlance.

At the back of my mind in composing this post was the rough diagram that Li Manshan drew for me of the former Temple of the God Palace (Fodian miao 佛殿廟) in his home village (see Daoist priests of the Li family, pp.47–8, and our film, from 8.35), including a chanfang. Though the temple was quite imposing by the standards of a poor village, its 1876 stele lists only two monks. In many smaller temples, neither formal meditation nor scripture study are necessarily part of the schedule; the daily routine may consist largely of tasks such as sweeping the courtyard, preparing food, and maintenance. Whether or not monks regard such mundane chores as part of their Chan/Zen cultivation, in our times the idea of Zen as pervading worldly activities, from tennis to conducting, has become popular.

Meanwhile for academics, the study of Chan and Zen becomes a career, full of lectures, conferences, bibliographies; practitioners may find such erudite academic discourse alien from their own quest. And I’m just as guilty, adding yet more words on one of the most verbose sites ever. Having grown up with the romantic early image of Chan and Zen, I’m now impressed by all the scholarship unpacking its later doctrinal history. But just to reiterate my glib point, it goes without saying (sic) that historical research is very different from the quest for spiritual enlightenment, and daily temple routine is something else again—illustrating again how our image of the Wisdom of the Mystic East diverges from practice on the ground. 

These are some of the issues that I haven’t yet found addressed in the extensive literature. Last word to Alan Watts:

If you are hung on Zen, there’s no need to pretend that you are not. If you really want to spend some years in a Japanese monastery, there is no earthly reason why you shouldn’t. Or if you want to spend your time hopping freight cars and digging Charlie Parker, it’s a free country.

[1] The cogent early criticisms of Suzuki by Hu Shih have been reinforced by David McMahan and John McRae; Bernard Faure describes Suzuki’s writings as “pious verbiage” (for more, see Chapter 2, “The rise of Zen Orientalism” of his Chan insights and oversights). While Alan Watts goes easy on Suzuki, I’m always impressed by his 1959 pamphlet Beat Zen Square Zen and Zen.

[2] I was drawn to this theme by a recent article in Sino-Platonic Papers (no.353!), Ming Sun, “Speaking what cannot be spoken: poetry as a solution to the ineffability in Chan rhetoric”. More generally, Adam Yuet Chau critiques the dominance of the “discursive mode” in “doing religion”.

Sun’s article also led me to “beating and shouting” (banghe 棒喝), practiced from the Tang by Mazu’s Hongzhou school, which

developed “shock techniques such as shouting, beating, and using irrational retorts to startle their students into realisation”. Some of these are common today, while others are found mostly in anecdotes. It is common in many Chan traditions today for Chan teachers to have a stick with them during formal ceremonies which is a symbol of authority and which can be also used to strike on the table during a talk.
These shock techniques became part of the traditional and still popular image of Chan masters displaying irrational and strange behaviour to aid their students.

“Beating and shouting” was revived from the late Ming by Miyun Yuanwu (see e.g. Jiang Wu, Enlightenment in dispute: the reinvention of Chan Buddhism in seventeenth-century China (2008, reviewed here). I’m not familiar with the practice in modern Chinese temples (though it is introduced e.g. on Xing Yun’s site, along with copious commentaries), but it sounds somewhat akin to the enduring practice of ritualised debate in Tibetan monasteries (see under Daoism and standup).

Welch cover[3] For the practice of Buddhism in modern China, note the trilogy of Holmes Welch. At a tangent is Bill Porter’s quest for the spiritual life of modern clerics and hermits.

Here I won’t extend my remit to Daoist meditation techniques, the wealth of scholarship on which is again introduced on wiki. Of course, the regulated life of Daoist temple priests also stands in contrast to the writings of early Daoist sages popular in the West.

Mahler 2 with MTT!

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*Yet another post in my Mahler series!*

To follow Mahler 3 with Michael Tilson Thomas and the LSO earlier this year, I just heard them giving the first of two performances of the 2nd symphony (main post here) at the Barbican.

Screenshot

© LSO | Mark Allan. Source.

While Mahler 2 in concert cannot fail to be overwhelming, on Sunday its power was conveyed as much by the fervent communal devotion of performers and audience as by the elderly, frail conductor. As this review of the 3rd symphony in May commented, MTT “more or less held it all together… signalling a few entries and giving some directions. That, however, was the full extent of his input, a distant cry from his earlier years where he would have been athletically bouncing around and being criticised by some for his micro-management.”

M2 before choir

The orchestra must have risen gladly to the challenge of having to negotiate so much of the detail. The singers were also fine—Alice Coote in a rapt Urlicht, joined for the monumental finale by Siobhan Stagg and the London Symphony Chorus. As others have noted, the standing ovation was not so much for this concert as a homage to MTT’s lifelong music-making.

* * *

Immersed as I am in another round of editing my new film on the New Year’s rituals in the poor village of Gaoluo, the symphony made an extreme contrast, even if both rituals are in service of the divine. *

For Bernstein and Mahler, see Maestro.

* Another entry in my Martian ethnography (see e.g. here):

As I suggested in Plucking the winds, whereas cymbal players in WAM feel impelled to milk the rare climactic moments when they are required, in Gaoluo the great percussion suite, with all its solemn and balletic complexity, demands stamina, skill, and memory.

GL FDZ

Chinese espresso

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On another trip to Milan seeking to finalise the editing of my new film on the New Year’s rituals in Gaoluo with Andrea, taking a break at his local Chinese-run coffee bar makes a suitable backdrop to digest an interview with Grazia Ting Deng on her new book Chinese espresso: contested race and convivial space in contemporary Italy, based on fieldwork in Bologna.

Chinese espresso

Over the past four decades, Chinese residents have become one of the most prosperous and economically powerful ethnic and immigrant groups in Italy. The increasing number of “Oriental” faces as well as their products and their storefront enterprises are so visible as to constitute an integral part of the urban landscape and urban life. The seemingly mysterious economic boom of Chinese immigrants in tandem with China’s rise as a global economic power look like a counter current to Italy’s chronic economic stagnation. In Italy’s populist-nationalist discourse, the “China threat” has now taken on a new guise that merges admiration and resentment.

As a Chinese immigrant, Deng experienced institutional discrimination and everyday racism; as a woman, she faced the male/patriarchal gaze—from native Italian men, Chinese men, and other male immigrants. She found that Chinese bartenders are both subject to racialisation and reproduce it.

Chinese entrepreneurs usually purchase an existing coffee bar, often located on the periphery of the cities, embedded in neighbourhood life. Their main patrons are marginalised people, including working-class men of different generations who often have a migrant background from within or outside Italy. So their bars are sites where diverse racial and ethnic groups interact.

There the author found emotion, friendship, care, and a kind of social solidarity. However, as Chinese baristas sought to maintain the sociality of the space they managed, the way they policed their customers conformed to the moral expectations of “good” customers (white Italians) while excluding “bad” customers (foreign migrants) who risked destroying such sociality. This provided a context for tension and conflict.

Chinese baristas’ construction of a convivial social space is a dynamic process that runs in tandem with their own racial formations.

Deng found that social relations do not extend beyond the boundaries of the bar.

Italy’s more liberal sexual mores and pluralistic family structures that Chinese baristas have learned about from their customers seem to have confirmed their negative stereotypes of native Italians’ callousness regarding marriage and family. They contrast this with the traditional value of family integrity espoused by recent Chinese immigrants, who see this also as a prerequisite for upholding a family business and its economic prosperity. […]

Excessive consumption of alcohol and addiction to gambling—two fundamental sources of income for many Chinese-managed coffee bars—somewhat ironically become evidence allowing Chinese baristas, especially those who are Christian, to judge their customers as morally defective.

Coffee bar management has therefore reshaped Chinese baristas’ racialised perceptions of native Italians. […] A civilised, developed, and affluent Western country with only well-educated and respectable white Westerners turned out to be an Occidentalist fantasy.

 Social interactions are never gender, class, racially, or ethnically neutral.

Sometimes, they would hire white baristas to submerge the Chinese ownership of a quintessentially Italian social space that they manage. On the other hand, Chineseness itself could also become an effective strategy in dealing with certain social situations. For example, Chinese identity, along with their supposed lack of linguistic skills, provided a good excuse and a strategy for Chinese female baristas to use to refuse unwanted communication and to dodge awkward and embarrassing harassment. […]

The coffee bar space was a kind of prism through which Chinese baristas acquired racial knowledge and produced a racialised world view. Their racialisation of both native Italians and foreign migrants reflects their double disenchantment with Italy, as well as the insecurity of their lives in this host country. […]

Many Chinese with whom I talked even questioned their decision to emigrate to this supposedly affluent and developed Western country. They commonly believed that Italians’ problematic work ethics and other perceived negative qualities were the real reasons for Italy’s economic stagnation, in contrast to the success of both the Chinese in Italy and China in the world. […]

Chinese baristas and many other Chinese entrepreneurs in Italy have been disappointed that their increasing economic prosperity has not translated into social respectability but, ironically, resulted in even more insecurity and exposure to crime. This predicament of being simultaneously economically privileged and socially vulnerable further fuelled Chinese baristas’ ethnic consciousness, while establishing boundaries to the conviviality that they cultivate.

For Deng’s related articles, see here.

Ethnomusicology rocks!

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Nettl

As a cogent survey of the vast topic of ethnomusicology, I never tire of recommending Bruno Nettl’s magisterial survey. To keep up with the state of the field, at the forefront of journals (click here) is Ethnomusicology, under the aegis of SEM. I’m quite resistant to conferences, but browsing the programme for this year’s SEM virtual gathering from 17th to 26th October makes an update on the breadth of research, both daunting and inspiring.

The talks, panels, and films on a wealth of themes subsume much of the globe, including devotional music, jazz, gender, post-colonialism, festivals, the internet, violence and trauma, historical ethnomusicology, and research tools. Just a tiny selection to whet your appetite, inevitably reflecting my own tastes:

On this blog, the world music category has a range of stimulating posts, including Society and soundscape and What is serious music?!, as well as series on raga and flamenco.

Chamber music of Iran 2

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Nasim e tarab

It’s only quite recently that I’ve started dipping my toes, or ears, into the vast ocean of maqam (see e.g. Iran: chamber music, Art music of Iran 3, and Shashmaqom). As part of the admirable Maqām Beyond Nation project, organised by SOAS and the Università Ca’ Foscari, Venezia, the Nasim-e Tarab ensemble of master musicians from Iran performed earlier this week at the Brunei Gallery, SOAS—last stop on a tour that also included concerts in Bologna, Venice, Bristol, Waunifor, and York.

Nasim-e Tarab (“The Breeze of Musical Enchantment”) is named after a Safavid musical treatise, compiled in Persian during the 16th century. The quintet is led by Saeid Kordmafi (santur), with Mehdi Emami (vocals), Siamak Jahangiri (ney), Hamid Ghanbari (percussion), and Saeid Nayebmohammadi (oud), all with illustrious pedigrees in Iran.

They performed a macro-suite consisting of four majles “sessions”, with metric cycles (of 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 13 beats) punctuating lengthy, ecstatic free-tempo sections. Mehdi Emami (listen e.g. here, and here)—a pupil of Mohammad Reza Shadjarian and Mohammad-Reza Lotfi, no less—sang with dignity and passion, adorned by a halo of santur (cf. Zithers of Iran and Turkey) and ney flute.

The material was composed and arranged [terms I’d be curious to unpack—cf. improvisation] by Saeid Kordmafi, based on his long-term research on and practical involvement in creative practices and their historical interdependencies in the Middle/Near East and Central Asia, endeavouring to address classical Iranian music from a transnational and historically informed approach. As the blurb goes on to explain,

The ensemble is part of a dynamic aesthetic movement in contemporary Middle Eastern classical music which challenges the rigid (and heavily political) boundaries between national traditions, in favour of a cross-cultural approach to the musics of the region. This approach acknowledges how musical practices and musicians moved, varied, and influenced each other in the Middle and Near East as well as Central Asia for centuries.

Nasim-e Tarab comes from the heart of a troubled and war-ridden region with a simple yet powerful message that we have far more in common to celebrate than differences to fight over.

Here’s a brief preview:

While such music is still doubtless performed for festivities and gatherings of aficionados (see under my original post) alongside the more formal presentations of the academy, outsiders like me will happily settle for a suitably intimate concert venue. I relished the musicians’ rapport—part of the impact of this genre derives from the performers’ unaffected stage presence, eschewing the kitsch ethnic costumes that bedevil much “world music”. By contrast with China, I’m always impressed how the conservatoire system that has evolved throughout this region manages to nurture an integral, creative relationship with tradition.

muqam SOAS
Image: courtesy @soasconcerts and @mikeskelton.

Even if the bewildering modal nest of radif, dastgah, and gusheh remains opaque to me, the whole maqām tradition is entrancing, in all its transformations.

See also under West/Central Asia: a roundup.

With thanks to Rachel Harris.

The idiot’s apostrophe

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apostrophe

A relaxation of official rules around the correct use of apostrophes in German has not only irritated grammar sticklers but triggered existential fears around the pervasive influence of English.

More fodder for punctuation nerds: I’m intrigued to learn from a recent Guardian article that the Council for German Orthography (YAY!) has made a concession to a growing trend.

For establishments that feature their owners’ names, German does not traditionally use apostrophes to indicate the genitive (Barbaras Rhabarberbar!); but signs  like “Rosi’s Bar” or “Kati’s Kiosk” have become common. Popularly known as Deppenapostroph (idiot’s apostrophe”), this is

not to be confused with the English greengrocer’s apostrophe, when an apostrophe before an ‘s’ is mistakenly used to form the plural of a noun (“a kilo of potato’s”).

—my own favourite being OBO’S for aubergines.

The article points out that the trend isn’t necessarily a mere kowtow to the encroachment of English: the Council has long approved the apostrophe for the sake of clarity, such as “Andrea’s Bar” to make clear that the owner is called Andrea and not Andreas. But it has sparked a pedants’ revolt [possibly pedant’s revolt? Generic singular à la greengrocer’s apostrophe and idiot’s apostrophe? Aargh], bemoaning the “victory march of English”.

Cf. The rise and fall of the semicolon.

Another stopgap

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Hunyuan yankou https://stephenjones.blog/hunyuan-daoists/

There I was, hoping to publish some thoughts today on our (or at least my) misapprehensions about images of Chan/Zen, I find it’s gonna have to wait a while before I add to the already vast mountain of writings on the topic. So meanwhile, for anyone desperate to be entertained (yeah right), I’ll just remind you of some diverse posts that I’ve been retweeting recently:

I’m sure that’s more than enough for now…

The life of Jesus

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Dud and Pete Jesus

Further to Jesus jokes (and sequel), here’s a Dud n’ Pete sketch from 1971:

Dud and Pete had already attempted to air the theme in 1964 with The Dead Sea tapes, never broadcast for fears of infringing blasphemy laws. Less stimulating for a modern audience used to such irreverence, the filmed sketch perhaps needs to be regarded with historical ears and eyes. Not quite as polished as one might wish, it could do with some pruning, but the concept is stimulating—

“me and the lads were abiding in the fields…”, “getting a bit muddled up with his Ye’s”, “the worst bit of swaddling and wrapping I’ve ever seen in my life”, the perplexing gifts of the Three Wise Men, Jesus’s landlady, and (as immigration was becoming a hot topic) an early debunking of Jerusalem.

Such tropes were later immortalised in The life of Brian—a kind of, um, Bible for independent thinking, vignettes from which I’ve managed to cite in posts on Confucius, Krishnamurti, Alevi and Daoist ritual, Bach, and Cultural Revolution jokes.

Dud and Pete’s fantasy was part of the post-war satirising of conformist orthodoxy led by the Beyond the fringe team—Alan Bennett having a particular Anglican bone to chew (e.g. Sermon, Season’s greetings, and WWJD).

The Chinese shawm: changing rural and urban images

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Shawm-and-percussion bands occupy a lowly but vital position in folk cultures around the world. Throughout rural China they are the major performers for life-cycle and calendrical rituals, as is clear from the monumental Anthology of folk music of the Chinese peoples. * 

For folk expressive cultures, our evidence for change before the early 20th century is limited to the inspection of historical documents and iconography; for the whole modern period since the Republican era, our sources are hugely enriched by fieldwork. Continuity with the imperial heritage tended to be obscured by the political interventions of the Maoist era, but was revealed again by the massive revival of local traditions in the early reform period of the 1980s—documented in the Anthology and coinciding with my own fieldwork.

In two books (with DVDs) I introduced shawm bands of north Shanxi (2007) and Shaanbei (2009)—see under Other publications. In my survey Walking Shrill I outlined their lowly milieu: however indispensible,

shawm bands were always at the bottom of the social pile. Virtual outcasts, they were often illiterate, bachelors, opium smokers, begging in the slack season, associated with theft and violence.

For the period before and after the 1949 Liberation, some players were visually impaired, as shown in the rich material of the Anthology; while I still came across senior blind musicians during my own fieldwork in north Shanxi and Shaanbei through the 1990s, fewer remained active (similarly, sighted bards were encroaching on the livelihood of blind performers). But most sighted players still had a somewhat unsavoury reputation, partial to alcohol and amphetamines.

Coinciding with the revival, the Anthology fieldwork came at the most opportune time to document local traditions. But today’s society is already very different from that of the 1990s, with pervasive changes escalating . So I’m curious to learn how widely the outcast status of shawm bands still applies. We certainly can’t draw conclusions about the broad picture on the basis of the ideology of the urban troupes and conservatoires—the mere tip of a vast iceberg. Much of my work documents underlying rural customs that resist or circumvent such values—as they did even during the Maoist era. A different mode of state intrusion (or shall we say “presence”—e.g. Guo Yuhua ed., Yishi yu shehui bianqian) may now apply, but it’s never the whole story.

CWZ big bandChang Wenzhou’s big band at village funeral, Mizhi 2001.

I was not entirely oblivious to recent change. I described how shawm bands were turning to pop music, incorporating the “big band”, adding trumpet, sax, and drum-kit, in north Shanxi (2007, pp.30–38) and Shaanbei (2009, pp.149–53); and for the latter region I gave a vignette on the image presented by an urban troupe (pp.210–12, recast here). I have noted how the new wave of pop culture since the 1980s promised to be more successful in erasing tradition than political campaigns during the decades of Maoism.

* * *

Detailed ethnographic updates are scarce. At SOAS, Feng Jun has just completed a fine PhD thesis on paiziluo shawm bands in southeast Hubei—an instrumentation which, perhaps exceptionally, dispenses with drum in favour of gongs.

Left, paiziluo after dinner at funeral.
Right, two paiziluo bands performing simultaneously in the ancestral temple.
Images courtesy of Feng Jun.

Feng Jun discusses the role of these bands in funerals and ancestral ceremonies, which still require a largely traditional repertoire—whose modal variations she analyses in detail. But she also highlights weddings, which have long featured more innovative popular pieces (cf. my Shaanbei book, pp.188–9, and DVD §D2). Performers now “selectively appropriate diverse musical spectacles, particularly through the national Spring Festival Gala, and project their own re-imagining of these spectacles in the ceremonial spaces of village rituals.”

Left, brass band performing for village wedding.
Right, dancing to the song Rela nüren (“Hot and spicy women”).

The increasing participation of women is another trend that I haven’t kept up with. I noted how shawm-playing men might encourage their daughters to take part in the family band, at least before marriage, since the 1980s; but in Hubei, with men often absent as migrant labourers in distant towns, married women now not only take part in paiziluo groups but form their own brass bands—another radical innovation. Feng Jun goes on to unpack the practical impact of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH), now an unavoidable topic—where a plethora of detached academic analysis detailing its negative effects never manages to convey just how damaging it is.

In Hubei Feng Jun found no such prejudice against shawm-band musicians as has been documented in north China—which she explains by the greater lineage cohesion of southern society. This makes me wonder if their exclusion from mainstream society is less widespread than my material suggests. So we might consider two caveats referring to space and time: differing long-term regional customs, and recent social change. For the former, we might go back to other provincial volumes of the Anthology for more clues. As always, there will be regional variations, depending partly on the poverty and insularity of a locale. For the mid-20th century, I suspect my impression still holds good for the north and northwest, and for the Shandong–Henan region; perhaps less so as one goes further south.

And even in more backward areas, as the country has become more affluent and villages further depopulated by migration to the cities, peasants seek upward mobility through education while the influence of national trends expands greatly through social media. For some shawm families, other more reliable and salubrious livelihoods beckon; but those younger generations who still take up the trade of their elders tend to spruce up their former lowly image.

Musical change is perhaps more evident in public events (including temple fairs), that can be exploited by cultural authorities, than in domestic rituals such as funerals or the activities of spirit mediums. Household Daoists are also invited for funerals in southeast Hubei—their rituals doubtless also changing, if less obviously than those of the shawm bands.

All this is probably a question of emphasis: pop music was already part of the rural scene by the time the Anthology was being compiled, but was mentioned there only in passing. Innovations that I still considered minor only twenty years ago would now be a significant part of our description.

* * *

In Walking Shrill I outlined the minor presence of the suona in the conservatoire (cf. jazz, which has also gained admission to the academy since the Golden Age). Indeed, while the term suona is used in historical sources, it now belongs to the conservatoire, folk musicians preferring a variety of local terms; where they do adopt the word, it is itself a badge of modernity.

Though the shawm lacks the suave image of erhu, zheng, or pipa, it has long had a foot in the conservatoire door. Under Maoism since the 1950s, state-funded Arts Work Troupes featured suona solos by celebrated “folk artists” such as Ren Tongxiang (heard e.g. on the archive CD Xianguan chuanqi). After the 1949 Liberation, some shawm players from hereditary traditions became conservatoire teachers, training younger generations from similar backgrounds—like Liu Ying, who found his way from rural Anhui to join the Shanghai Conservatoire soon after the downfall of the Gang of Four in 1976. And far more than other instrumentalists in the conservatoire, Liu Ying’s pupils tended to come from a poor rural background, the Shandong–Henan region (see here, and here) remaining the heartland for such recruitment.

Even if rural musicians won’t necessarily make a lot more money in this new environment than they would back home (cf. Ivo Papazov—see here, under “Bulgaria, Macedonia”), they will naturally leap at any prospect of upward mobility. The troupes and conservatoires make a promising route to urban registration, an escape from a tough life (cf. The life of the household Daoist); still, they will never be able to absorb more than a minor intake.

As to the shawm band musicians who remain in the poor countryside serving life-cycle and calendrical ceremonies, their lives and livelihoods are changing. But thanks to the internet, the polished style of the conservatoire virtuosi is one strand among a range of new images to emulate. 

Chinese scholars write academic theses on regional shawm-band traditions—although they are surely at a disadvantage under a system that still discourages the participant observation that is routine in Western ethnomusicology. So I suppose the idea of a PhD in suona studies, combining performance and writing, shouldn’t seem so comical to me. “China’s first suona Ph.D. is ready for her solo” is perhaps only a clickbait headline for the likes of me (cf. this more detailed article in Chinese).

Liu Wenwen youngA young Liu Wenwen performs with her parents. Source.

At the Shanghai Conservatoire, Liu Ying’s pupil Liu Wenwen (b.1990—no relation!) recently gained China’s first PhD in suona, for which she had to perform three solo recitals and write an original dissertation. Her father Liu Baobin is descended from a shawm lineage from southwest Shandong, and is said (here) to be a pupil of Ren Tongxiang; her mother Liu Hongmei comes from a long line of shawm players in Xuzhou in northwest Jiangsu. Unlike in the northwest, in the Shandong–Henan region the custom of absorbing female players into family bands appears to date back several decades. Practising from childhood under her parents’ guidance, Liu Wenwen began making journeys to Shanghai for lessons with Liu Ying, and by the age of 15 she enrolled at the conservatoire to study formally with him.

As household Daoist Li Qing found in north Shanxi when he escaped the worst of the famine by taking a job in the regional Arts Work Troupe, the conservatoire style consists largely of quaint “little pieces”, often using kaxi techniques to mimic bird-song. This repertoire never approaches the complex grandeur of traditional shawm suites (note Dissolving boundaries); and even when “little pieces” are a significant component of rural practice, they are performed (and creatively varied) within the context and rules of lengthy life-cycle and calendrical ceremonies.

In the troupes and conservatoires we also find change through different eras—not least in the spin put on the rural background. Under Maoism the suona soloists of the Arts Work Troupes fostered the image of peasants nobly toiling for the common cause, whereas publicity for today’s suave virtuosi deflects the political spin for a more glamorous image, with aspirational hype about “ascending to the hall of great elegance” (deng daya zhi tang) on the concert stage, trumpeting the success of modernisation. In both images the actual conditions of the countryside are irrelevant.

Left, village band performing for funeral, Shaanbei 1999.
Right, Liu Wenwen accompanied by Tan Dun. Source.

In the case of Liu Wenwen, gender again plays a role in innovation. On the international stage, her playing has made another bandwagon for composer Tan Dun. The differing contexts entail adaptations in costume; the headscarf of the male peasant, emblem of the revolution, is now only paraded for kitsch staged performances and the ICH. **

It’s worryingly easy for the conservatoire tip of the iceberg—and the ICH—to obscure both local traditions and the pervasive changes taking place in the countryside, revealed in fieldwork like that of Feng Jun.

See also The folk–conservatoire gulf, and Different values.

* Besides the Anthology‘s introductions to regional traditions, the volumes conclude with useful sketches of groups, and biographies; for some instances, see e.g. Liaoning, Tianjin, Henan, Fujian, Ningxia. See also Two local cultural workers.

** I wrestled with this issue in presenting the Hua family shawm band on stage; after teething issues in Washington DC in 2002, I was able to opt for suits without ties, a cool look that doesn’t conflict too much with their casual local attire. The band may have been gratified by their brief residency at SOAS in 2005, but, free of pressure to glamorize their image or simplify their repertoire, it was very different to the long-term cultural shift embodied by players like Liu Ying and Liu Wenwen.

BTW, when visited by academics, peasants may initially appear impressed; once they discover that we’re totally hopeless at any useful, practical task, their respect may turn to consternation as our credentials prompt envy at our mystifying ability to cadge an “iron food-bowl”. This is an element in the Li family’s magnificent Joke, which follows the final credits of our film!