I’m always late to the party, but thanks to the splendid Turkish Airlines, after the spellbinding safety video I accompanied the delicious in-flight meal by watching
Barbie (Greta Gerwig, 2023).
With a cast led by Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling, it’s both hilarious and sobering. Foremost among the excellent articulations of the current human predicament is America Ferrara’s monologue:
The patriarchy, and mansplaining, are gleefully exposed. But how subversive is it? How feminist? Besides a thorough article on wiki (including sections on “Critical response”, “Feminism”, Masculinity”), and this further survey of reviews, Vogue observes:
While some are praising the film for its tongue-in-cheek approach to girlhood, womanhood and, erm, dollhood, many others have described it as white feminism wrapped up in a pink, Mattel-labelled bow. I’m here to argue that those two things can be true at the same time.
Last week on the eve of Nowruz, just back from Istanbul, I was happy toattend a concert of shashmaqom in the Brunei Gallery at SOAS, featuring two fine musicians from the Academy of Maqam in Dushanbe, Tajikistan: Sirojiddin Juraev on long-necked lutes and Khurshed Ibrohimzoda on vocals and tanbur plucked lute.
As I seek a rudimentary education on this suite repertoire of refined Sufi poetry accompanied by instrumental ensemble, in my explorations below (typically) I merely “gaze at flowers from horseback” 走马观花.
Shashmaqom originated from the numinous cultural metropolis of Bukhara, with related traditions evolving in centres such as Tashkent and Ferghana. For the greater region, Theodore Levin has adopted the term Transoxania, favoured by his fieldwork colleague Otanazar Matyabukov (“OM”)—stressing its “underlying geographic and social coherence rather than its more recent ethnic and political divisiveness”.
From The hundred thousand fools of God.
Basic sources on shashmaqom include an essay by Alexander Djumaev, the Musics of Central Asia site; Will Sumits’ chapter 15 in Michael Church, The other classical musics (cf. Musics lost andfound, chapter 17); “Central Asian Republics” in The Rough Guide to world music: Europe, Asia, and Pacific; and sections in the New Grove Dictionary of music and musicians and TheGarland Encyclopedia of world music.
Rather than attempting to define “classical” (cf. What is serious music?!, Joining the elite musical club, and in the introduction to my series on the Beatles) or to regard shashmaqom as a “living fossil” of courtly art music from a bygone society, it surely makes sense to understand such a tradition as part of the widespread, shifting maqam family of repertoires crossing national and class boundaries, albeit subject to canonisation (“maqām-isation”) even before the interventions of modern state regimes (see Rachel Harris, The making of a musical canon in Chinese Central Asia, pp.9–10, 97–9, 107–8).
Under the Soviet era, while shashmaqom was the object of official posturings about its “national”, “elite”, or “popular” status, it “found itself at the centre of a nationalistic tug-of-war” (in Sumits’ phrase), with competing Tajik and Uzbek versions.
So it’s high time for me to revisit Theodore Levin‘s “pioneering cultural odyssey” The hundred thousand fools of God: musical travels in Central Asia (and Queens, New York) (1996, with CD). Despite its brilliant title, I suppose I was somewhat resistant to the book at first: reading it just at a time when I was deep in Chinese traditions of village ritual that were (then) remarkably unmediated by conservatoire-style remoulding, I found it unfortunate that so many of Levin’s interlocutors were representatives of state ensembles. Whereas Veronica Doubleday and John Baily, living in Herat on the eve of the Soviet invasion, had been able to immerse themselves in the grassroots world of social musicking, Tashkent was different; when Levin arrived there in 1977 his institutional base was doubtless inevitable. On that initial stay he can have had little access to the social milieu that OM later described to him (pp.33–4):
The entire unofficial cultural network and economic system that supported the central events in Uzbek social life—the toy (wedding), âsh (literally, “food”—an early morning quasi-religious gathering of men given separately by the fathers of both bride and groom before every Uzbek marriage), and ziyâfat, gap, gurung, or majlis, as intimate evening gatherings of friends for conversation, food, and music are variously called—had existed all along in the shadow of the official cultural life played out in concert halls and theatres, at public ceremonies and on radio and television.
Source: The other classical musics.
The tradition of gap is related to the Uyghur mäshräp, now the object of a new wave of repression in Xinjiang.
But if Levin too was perhaps frustrated that his initial clues to this elusive world were largely based on second-hand accounts rather than direct observation, he writes most insightfully about his encounters, with revealing stories of senior musicians’ lives. On his later visits to Tashkent with OM from 1990, he was able to attend gap and âsh ceremonies, meeting latter-day abdâl Sufi dervish “fools of God” (cf. Uyghur ashiq).
Back in 1977 Levin regarded the shashmaqom as stagnating—”a musical system propped up from above by the policies of Uzbekistan’s culture apparat” (“Frozen music”, pp.47–51):
Though I couldn’t put my finger on it, something had seemed not right about the performances of Shash maqâm I heard when I first came to Tashkent. Put simply, they lacked life. As taught at the Tashkent Conservatory, the Shash maqâm could have been compared to a dying person being kept clinically alive on a respirator. The respirator was controlled by the Ministry of Culture. It was the Ministry that had approved of the resuscitation of the moribund Shash maqâm in the late 1950s and had stage-managed its ideological repositioning as a leading exemplar of Uzbekistan’s “national” music (this after a near-death experience in the early 1950s in which the Ministry had decreed that the Shash maqâm had been too close to the feudal culture of the emirs, too distant from “the people”, too infused with undercurrents of Sufism, and thus had to be suppressed).
Still, as I learned of the troubled maintenance of folk ritual activity in China through the Maoist decades (see e.g. Gaoluo), I doubted if the turgid state ensembles could really have monopolised the musical market before 1990. Indeed, Levin continues with a vivid section on Turgun Alimatov (1922–2008), whom he met between 1990 and 1994. As Alimatov recalled, after his radio ensemble was disbanded in 1952,
I played at weddings with two brothers named Bâbâ Khan and Akmal Khan Sofixânov. Their father, Sofi Khan, was a famous hafiz [classical singer]. In those years, there were several musical dynasties which had a high calling […]. In contrast to other singers, the Sofixânovs performed exclusively songs with a religious content. They were religious people themselves, even during the time when religion was strictly forbidden. People who rejected religion simply didn’t associate with them, and for their part, the Sofixânovs stayed away from atheists. They were invited to the houses of believers.
Alimatov told Levin how he used to take part in many Sufi zikr-samâ rituals at which the Sofixânovs would perform (cf. Turkey). And he contrasted such devout behaviour with that of a lowly class of musician known as attarchi—with whom he also used to associate (cf. the underworld of old Lhasa). On this CD (Ocora, 1995), recorded by Levin, Alimatov moves from long-necked bowed lute sato to the plucked tanbur:
The ghijak spike fiddle is common to Transoxania and Xinjiang. But whereas in Xinjiang the soulful satar had long been at the heart of the Uyghur muqam, in Transoxania the sato had long been dormant when Alimatov revived it in the 1950s, followed by his pupil Abduvali Abdurashidov in Dushanbe (see below). And here is Alimatov on tanbur in 2001, recorded by Jean During, leading scholar of Central Asian maqam:
Levin continues with a revealing account of Arif Xatamov, another “unrepentant traditionalist who bemoaned the spiritual superficiality of contemporary music”—here’s a 2013 CD from Alchemy (as playlist):
And in the following chapter on Bukhara (note Levin’s CD Bukhara: musical crossroads of Asia [Smithsonian Folkways, 1991] and Shashmaqam: the tradition of Bukhara [New Samarkand Records, 1999]), while learning of the depth of Sufi and Jewish traditions he pursues shashmaqom in greater depth, finding more “frozen music”:
The worker’s state whose goal had been to eliminate class barriers in art had vilified the Shash maqâm as an elite art and tried to expunge it from cultural life. When that had failed, it had then tried to transform the Shash maqâminto a popular art. But Soviet cultural stategists had gotten everything reversed. In Bukhara, the Shash maqâm and other “heavy” music had been a popular art. And when they had tried to turn this music into a “national” folk art, they had inadvertently created an elite art: elite, that is, because it had all but lost its audience. No-one wanted to listen to a music whose soul had been usurped by the state.
The ponderous ideology of the state troupes still persisted in the early years after independence from Soviet rule. But since then, as the concert market has liberalised, shashmaqom has found a niche in the “Heritage” and “world music” industries, affording a home for some fine, creative musicians.
The hundred thousand fools of Godcontinues with chapters on musical life in the south of Uzbekistan, Khorezm, the Upper Zarafshan and Yagnâb, and Shahristan, where Levin encounters a range of musical activity in social contexts—Sufi rituals, weddings, epic singers, healers. The book is another accessible classic of ethnomusicology, valuable both as an account of the nuanced views of musicians striving to emerge from the Soviet-style cultural yoke, and in paving the way for detailed ethnographies of traditional musicking in Transoxania.
* * *
Anyway, if I find a radical gulf (or might I say gap) between folk and conservatoire in Han-Chinese musicking, it seems I should be rather more broad-minded on the journey further west. In 1950s’ China, when “old artists” were recruited to the new state song-and-dance ensembles and arts-work troupes, they often found themselves busy accompanying a bland, politicized repertoire quite divorced from their former folk practice, which they now abandoned. [1] Conversely, prestigious musicians in the Uyghur homeland and in Central Asia, rather separately from their duties in the state ensembles, often seem to have quietly maintained more traditional styles and contexts.
While I’m keen to learn more about shashmaqom-related grassroots social life(however attenuated by modernization), this kind of music is always easier to find online in commodified versions on stage—including this short UNESCO presentation. Here’s a film from the Aga Khan Music Programme, which has played a major role in enhancing the global profile of Central Asian musics, and in sponsoring centres such as the Academy of Maqam:
Invisible face of the beloved: classical music of the Tajiks and Uzbeks. Music of Central Asia, vol. 2 (2006):
Vol. 7, In the shrine of the heart: popular classics from Bukhara and beyond (2010), introduces other regional traditions worth pursuing.
Abduvali Abdurashidov, the main guide in Invisible face of the beloved, leads this fine Tajik chamber ensemble on sato at a 2010 Paris concert, with singer Ozoda Ashurova, [2] Pasha Hanjani on ney—and a young Sirojiddin Juraev, whose visit to SOAS inspired this little survey:
Abdurashidov appears on the CD Tadjikistan: chants et musiques classiques (Ocora, 2013):
I’m enthralled by the CD Shashmaqom: Dugoh maqomi (Inédit, 2002), again recorded by Jean During:
For more, see again here, under Audio and video recordings, §8.
Again (cf. Taiwan), I note that one consequence of a superficial survey like mine is an undue attention to the “star” performers, rather than the unsung participants who are at the heart of grassroots musicking (cf. China).
The hundred thousand fools of Godconcludes in Queens, New York, where a notable Bukharan Jewish tradition of shashmuqom has taken root. The Ensemble Shashmaqam there is comprised of emigrés from Uzbekistan and Tajikistan (heard on Levin’s 1991 Smithsonian Folkways CD Central Asia in Forest Hills); in this concert they celebrate the artistry of three leading women performers who have performed with the ensemble over the years. In 2014 Evan Rapport supplemented Levin’s account in Greeted with smiles: Bukharian Jewish music and musicians in New York.
So much for homework. Since China opened my eyes and ears to musicking as a vital part of social gatherings (life-cycle and calendrical ceremonies, and so on; cf. Society and soundscape), I’ve had conflicting feelings about “concerts”—events that we so easily take for granted. Of course I grew up with Western Art Music in concert (see e.g. here), and I’ve been complicit in presenting Chinese ritual traditions on stage (e.g. here, and on tour with the Li family Daoists—contrast my film); just that I’m sometimes struck by how such reification can skew our impression of the vitality of expressive culture in local society.
As Djumaev observes, while the new academies seek to adapt the traditional master-apprentice (ustod-shogird) system, a range of strategies for transmission has emerged in response to changing times. Still, however sensitively accomplished musicians may devise classroom teaching, I still find it an alien, stultifying environment for such a culture (cf. Training Daoists in Shanghai).
At SOAS last week, the concert and the preceding workshop were engagingly introduced by Saeid Kordmafi, new lecturer in the Music Department. In duet Sirojiddin Juraev (YouTube playlist) and Khurshed Ibrohimzodahave a wonderful understanding, their musicking at once natural and intense, never showy. Ibrohimzoda’s vocal items (some incorporating a vertiginously high tessitura—apparently his personal taste rather than a feature of the tradition) alternated with instrumental solos on plucked lutes and an intimate meditation on bowed sato. For all my concerns about the academy, their spiritual focus would surely have impressed venerable senior masters like Turgun Alimatov and Arif Xatamov. The dancer Madina Sabirova adorned two items, the singing in the lively finale revealing a more popular folk style.
Across the muqam world, as Levin (pp.55–6) notes, “rigidly structured, closed repertoires like the Shash maqâm had given way to autonomous pieces performed in a relatively personalised style”. The innovations of Turgun Alimatov remind him of Jean During’s remarks on modern change in Persian art music, characterising the shift as a “transformation from classical formalism to Romanticism”,
in which music is cleansed of its status as a sacred object in order to become recentred in the interiority of the individual. […] The values of inspiration, creativity, originality, and personality of style and improvisation have become exalted to the detriment of conformity to standards, fidelity to repertoire, and fixed composition.
While I might suspect that this downplays the creative individuality of the master musicians of Yore, it looks like an inexhaustible topic for debate.
In its latest reinvention of tradition for the concert platform, shashmaqom is most beguiling—I just wonder whether it might be creating a new kind of “frozen music”. As always, I’d like to learn about its prospects for a viable social life beyond the concert hall.
[1] See e.g. A Daoist serves a state troupe. Though the opera and narrative-singing troupes were also the objects of intense remoulding (see e.g. my post on Gansu, and sequel), their musicians were often better able to preserve a more traditional style. Re my aversion to the conservatoire, I’m reminded of the Chinese text on the SOAS T-shirt, magnificently misread by one of my Daoist mentors as “anti-academy”…
[2] For the modern admission of female singers into maqam ensembles, see again Djumaev. For the Ferghana tradition, a female star of maqom is Munojot Yoʻlchiyeva (b.1960), also introduced by Levin (pp.77–80). In Europe, CDs have been issued by Ocora (1994, 1998) and World Network (1997). Here she is in concert:
In 1998 Maria João Pires * received a last-minute phone call asking her to stand in for another pianist at a lunchtime performance the next day in the form of an open rehearsal directed by Riccardo Chailly at the Concertgebouw. Only when the orchestra started playing, before a live audience, did Pires realise she had prepared the wrong Mozart piano concerto—not K466 but K488. The film—part of Attrazione d’amore (Frank Scheffer, 1998)—shows “an extraordinary moment of pained realisation and miraculous recovery, that has gone viral several times over the last ten years”. **
The core of the concert was Mahler 5; as Chailly observes, “Mahler was a great Mozart conductor”, so he scheduled the D minor concerto K466, whose agitated mood is somewhat akin to that of the Mahler symphony.
Classic FM’s Joanna Gosling shared the video on Twitter and reinstated its place in the Internet hall of fame all over again. A few days later, Joanna sat down with Maria to speak about the famous incident, and the thoughts that were racing through her mind during those crucial moments at the piano, 25 years ago.
I don’t find the interview (here) so revealing. WAM pundits inevitably make it into another story of triumph over adversity—the classic ethos of the romantic concerto (see Zen in the art of the baroque lute, under Beethoven). To be sure, it’s a high-risk test of brain memory and muscle memory.
I totally agree that in terms of seeking complete fidelity to the notes dictated in the score (like a canonical sacred text), it’s a remarkable feat. Modern WAM audiences expect “perfection”—in this narrow sense (cf. Rhapsody in blue). Now, don’t get Me Wrong: I love Pires’s musicking, I love Mozart, and once she sets forth on the tightrope it’s really moving; *** it just got me thinking outside the box in that ethno-lite way that sometimes befalls me (e.g. here, and under Mahler 3)…
In the audience, some listeners might know the piece, others might not; most will be familiar with Mozart’s style. This wouldn’t help Pires relax much. But pianists like her will have known most of the Mozart concertos since at least their teens, and performed them regularly ever since; her fingers and brain would be instinctively attuned to playing pieces in D minor in the classical style, with all their harmonic, melodic, and expressive permutations, all the predictable sequential modulations. As she explains, she had performed K488 a couple of weeks before, K466 not for about ten months. I wondered if the Concertgebouw librarian might have rushed to their archive find the score for her.
While Mozart couldn’t have played any of his concertos nearly so often as a modern soloist, he would surely have been happy to rise to the challenge; to some extent, in concert he would expect to diverge from the score—as does his modern avatar Robert Levin, such as on his recording of K488 (!) (try the slow movement), and notably in his improvised cadenzas.
Anyway, in that video the challenge for Pires was to regain memory, not to respond by creating something new and original. I’m just curious what might happen if one just went with long experience and built on it, as in jazz (such as Kind of Blue, one of the great unrehearsed albums). Pianists might welcome the challenge more readily with a solo sonata, but it becomes hard with a rigid orchestral accompaniment—perhaps it could work with string quartet. The tuttis, and the accompanied passages, would at least help the pianist recognise the harmonies which she is to embellish.
It probably wouldn’t sound quite like this:
Back with the Concertgebouw incident, Pires doesn’t appear so keen to join in with all the celebration:
Gosling: How do you feel about it, in terms of where it sits in your career? Is it a high moment for you? Pires: No.
The pros and cons of soloists performing with or without the score have been much discussed in articles such as this—where I love the shock-horror heading
Advantages of using a score in concert People might think you’re improvising otherwise!
The niche of WAM (highly pressurised whether or not you know what you’re going to play) is inflexible, reified—or rather, it has become so. In this it seems rather exceptional among traditions around the world (see Unpacking “improvisation”), in which (whether or not they have notation to consult) there are always rules, but a certain creative latitude is built into the performance event (some examples: maqam, folk-song, shawm bands).
Still, even in north Indian raga, I imagine some singers who, having practised (say) rāg Malkauns from young, might be disconcerted to be asked to perform it at short notice, when it’s not a regular part of their repertoire. Does anything similar happen in rock? It seems unlikely in blues; in jazz the amount of “improvisation” and rehearsal varies quite widely. If a bandleader calls up a trumpeter to stand in with a solo in A night in Tunisia but she mistakenly brushes up on A night in Milton Keynes [Fictitious Glen Miller number—Ed.], I doubt it would be such a big deal (among many discussions of the role of memory in music, see e.g. Daniel J. Levitin, This is your brain on music, Chapter 7).
Another impertinent culinary analogy: **** rather than opting for a restaurant where the chef picks vegetables fresh from the garden to create a delicious dish, WAM audiences have ended up ordering a pre-packaged ready-meal.
But I try your patience. For good measure, here’s Maria João Pires in later years with a beautiful, prepared performance of the (“right”!) concerto, with socially-distanced orchestra:
* On the Iberian nasal ão sound, note Ogonek and Til—complete with limerick.
** I still can’t quite imagine the scene. Sure, Pires probably went directly from the airport to the hall, but you’d think conductor and soloist would have a minute or two before going on stage, just to hum through tempi for the three movements; and anyway, if it’s an open rehearsal, surely they can stop, and explain to the audience (charmingly) that there’s been a mix-up but that Pires will do her best?
*** BTW, leading into the pianist’s first entry, a passage like this is an instance of what makes playing Mozart’s 2nd violin parts such a joy:
It’s even more gorgeous in the major the second time round (from 6.00 in the complete video).
**** This complements my critique of over-reliance on silent manuals in the study of Daoist ritual (Daoist priests of the Li family, p.371, cited here):
Scholars of Daoist ritual who avoid addressing music (or more coyly, disclaim expertise in it) are fatally limiting their ability to engage with ritual. It’s like someone with a fine kitchen and loads of glossy cookbooks, who draws the line at handling food or cooking.
It’s always worth consulting the Taiwan series Minsu quyi (Journal of Chinese Ritual, Theatre, and Folklore”, introduced here). I look forward to reading the two volumes (2023, vols. 221 and 222) of
“Special issue on popular beliefs, religious texts, and local communities in the sinophone world: in memory of Professor Daniel L. Overmyer” 民間信仰、宗教經典與地方社會：紀念歐大年教授專輯.
Indeed, Overmyer would have been much pleased by these studies.
Part One, with an Introduction by Chao Shin-yi and Wang Chien-chuan, has articles on spirit writing and sects in Taiwan, south Jiangsu, and Yunnan. Part Two comprises articles by
John Lagerwey on the history and customs of an Anhui village, focused on its chief temples, ancestor halls, and festivals—in particular, fengshui
Wu Xiaojie and Liu Yun, exploring Pu’an beliefs in anlong xietu (Retaining the Dragons and Thanking Earth) rituals
Chen Minghua on the Luo sect and the Green Gang (Qingbang)
Nikolas Broy on the Taiwanese longhuapai initiation festival and zhaijiao vegetarian sects
Xu Tianji and Luo Dan on the sectarian scriptures of ritual experts in southeast Hebei
Wang Yao on the pantheon emerging from the cult of the General of the Five Paths (Wudao jiangjun 五道將軍) in Hongtong, Shanxi
Ma Zhujun on gender, intimacy, and deity-human relationships in “precious scrolls” about the Lady of Mount Tai in north China, with a focus on gender.
For a survey of ritual and musical traditions in Taiwan, and some background on how their modern histories vary from those of the mainland, click here. Many of my own field reports on local ritual in rural north China are collected here.
It was the first of sixteen film collaborations between the director (1910–98) and Toshiro Mifune (1920–97)—after they parted ways, neither was quite the same again. The film finally opens my eyes to Mifune’s genius—much as I love Seven samurai (1954), for me the hero is the Zen swordsman Kyūzō; I find Mifune’s buffoon persona something of a parody.
Here’s Drunken Angel:
Made while Japan was still occupied by the Americans, the film had to comply with US government censorship rules, which forbade scenes critical of the occupation. As Ian Buruma notes in a fine review, the set
consisted of a filthy sump surrounded by ruined buildings, shabby wooden houses, and the facade of a sleazy nightclub. It was a setting that could have been found almost anywhere in Tokyo in 1948, or any other bombed-out Japanese city where postwar life revolved around the teeming black markets. One of the wonders of the early postwar Japanese cinema was the public appetite for realism, and the pestilential sump, filled with toxic garbage, stood as a symbol for all that was rotten about life in the wake of a catastrophic wartime defeat. The cheap hookers lurking in the shadows, the young thugs fighting over territory, loot, and “face”. To have “face” in a particular district meant that you had the run of the place, taking what you needed for nothing and making huge profits off the backs of Japanese citizens who struggled to survive. Many of these petty (and not so petty) gangsters had been soldiers in a holy war to expand the glory of the Japanese Empire. Kamikaze pilots whose sacred suicide missions were aborted when surrender intervened became criminals exploiting the people for whose honour they had just months before sworn to sacrifice their lives. But some, in a perverse way, transformed their military code of honor into a gangland code that was just as deadly.
Small-time yakuza playboy Matsunaga (Mifune) develops a complex, fractious relationship with the brusque alcoholic doctor Sanada (Takashi Shimura—as Brian Eggert notes, “the first of several Kurosawa pictures where he would play spiritual guide to Mifune’s apprentice”).
The English subtitles are impressive. Sanada shows feminist credentials, protecting his nurse, a former girlfriend of sinister yakuza boss Okada:
You’ve got it all wrong, mister. Times have changed since you went in the cooler. Your feudalistic ways don’t fly now. Want me to spell it out for you? It doesn’t matter what you call her. She’s got to want you. Ever heard of equality?
In the opening scene a lonesome drifter plays a blues before the pestilential cesspool; later his guitar is snatched by Okada, just out of prison (his more genteel number less suitable than Kurosawa’s first choice Mack the knife—the rights to which were too costly). In the nightclub dance scene (53.30), the garish Jungle boogie is an homage to Gilda—for the music, see Michael Harris, ”Jazzing in the Tokyo slum: music, influence, and censorship in Akira Kurosawa’s Drunken Angel”, Cinema Journal 53.1 (2013).
By starting with Shimura’s point of view, we see the gangsters’ moral rot in the context of the entire neighbourhood. Scorsese achieves his critiques of the gangster mentality from intimacy, living within that world exclusively, so we understand the appeal and eventually its hypocrisy, and with The Irishman, its banality as well. Kurosawa achieves the same, but with the distance from it that Shimura’s point of view provides.
I still find it worth reminding you of my page Rethinking Zhengyi and Quanzhen, for its fundamental rethink of Daoist ritual practice.
In my book In search of the folk Daoists of north China (2011) I began exploring the false dichotomy between Orthodox Unity (Zhengyi 正一) and Complete Perfection (Quanzhen 全真) branches(note especially pp.17–18). The page on my blog augments the material there in the light of further fieldwork.
Whereas the household Daoist groups of south China have dominated previous research, numerous groups of household Daoists are also active throughout the north—and they may nominally belong to either Orthodox Unity or Complete Perfection branches. But such simplistic pigeonholing may distract us from the details of their ritual practice; in both their rituals and ritual manuals I can rarely discern any significant distinction between them. When the Complete Perfection branch evolved in the 12th century, its priests (both temple and household) inherited a long tradition of Orthodox Unity ritual practice: as John Lagerwey once observed to me, “that was the only show in town”. And while a distinct Complete Perfection literature did evolve (see my book, pp.203–207), their ritual practice never developed into a separate corpus of Complete Perfection ritual texts.
That explains why such an august Complete Perfection temple priest as Min Zhiting was constantly citing Orthodox Unity ritual manuals from the Daoist Canon; and why the best mainstream source for the ritual texts of the Li family (Orthodox Unity) household priests in Yanggao is the repertoire of modern “Complete Perfection” temple practice like the Quanzhen zhengyun and Xuanmen risong.
Household Zhengyi Daoists of the Li family, Shanxi.
In some places now—since around 2000—the picture is further confused by a certain “centripetal” tendency. With wider access (such as the internet), some groups that have always been Orthodox Unity may be exploring ways of “legitimising” themselves by seeking manuals from prestigious central sites like the White Cloud Temple in Beijing, and having costumes and hats made which make them appear to be Complete Perfection Daoists. They may even reform their “local” ritual practice by adopting elements from the “national” White Cloud Temple.
The local ritual scene is further obfuscated by a tendency among some scholars (both local and central) to assume that if a group is household-based, then they must be Orthodox Unity—a problem I have already queried. We really must debunk this assumption. Among my articles on Local ritual, the household Daoists of Changwu in Shaanxi turn out to belong to the Huashan branch of Complete Perfection, and the household Daoists of Guangling in Shanxi appear to come from a Longmen tradition. Actually, this is not so clear-cut—even non-Quanzhen priests might adopt Longmen titles (note sources by Vincent Goossaert cited in my In search of the folk Daoists, p.18 n.34).
So while both the ritual texts and ritual sequences of the two notional branches are rather similar, what always makes local traditions distinctive is the way in which the texts are performed. Even here there’s another erroneous cliché that needs debunking. Generations of scholars of Daoist music have parroted the notion that in style the “music” of Orthodox Unity (conceived narrowly as “household” or folk) Daoists is more popular and lively, whereas that of Complete Perfection (again, conceived narrowly as austere monastic) Daoists is solemn, slow and restrained. This derives entirely from an unfounded theory about household and temple practice. We only need to watch my film about the Li family band to realise this simply won’t do. The basic style of Orthodox Unity Daoists (exemplified by the zantan hymns that permeate all their rituals) is extremely slow and solemn—but as you can hear, it is indeed punctuated by exhilarating moments. The idiom of (household!) Complete Perfection Daoists is certainly no more “solemn”. Both branches may use melodic shengguan instrumental ensemble—and if anything, that of the Orthodox Unity groups tends to be more slow and solemn.
Indeed, when I showed Li Manshan my videos of funeral segments by the Complete Perfection household Daoists in Shuozhou just south of Yanggao, he found their performance “chaotic” (luan). Orthodox Unity groups in Yanggao like that of Li Manshan pride themselves on the “order” (guiju) of their performance. My only ongoing note on this is that several household Complete Perfection groups (such as in Shuozhou and Guangling) may have preserved the element of fast tutti a cappella recitation of the jing scriptures better than in some Orthodox Unity traditions like those of Yanggao. But that doesn’t bear on the false stylistic dichotomy. Like Life, It’s Complicated… We always need to expand our database and use our critical faculties, rather than parroting outdated clichés.
Do refer to my original page, with its greater detail! More essays on conceptual issues in Chinese ritual under Themes in the top menu—besides many fieldnotes on Local ritual…
While Daoism and Zen have long become glib buzzwords in the West, some such as R.H. Blyth and Alan Watts have given informed treatments, and some like Gary Snyder embody the ethos. In another post I alluded to Daoist wuwei while feeling sad that we can’t attribute the expression “Don’t just do something, stand there!” to Miles Davis.
Helen De Cruz contributes a thoughtful study from her background as performer and scholar of baroque lute and archlute. In studying a Zamboni prelude with her teacher, she elaborates on his advice “Be more Zen”:
to give shape to the extemporising, improvisatory nature of a prelude one should achieve more with less, giving an air of effortlessness to quick runs using difficult and sometimes awkward grips. The composition of a prelude embodies the aesthetic of studied effortlessness: at first, the notes sound spontaneous, searching, reaching, as if the player is merely tuning her instrument and improvising. But then, as the harmonies are given increasingly definite shape through blossoming arpeggios, the ear inclines to expect the next note with increasing confidence, and finally it all comes together: the earlier hesitant notes get their meaning, and the mind discerns the cohesive whole—it turns out not a single note was coincidental.
The term sprezzatura * (akin to “effortless grace” or “studied carelessness”) was introduced by the Italian Renaissance philosopher and diplomat Baldassare Castiglione in his etiquette manual Il Cortegiano (1528), written for the “small but chic” court at Urbino. Essential skills for the courtier included dancing, wrestling, fencing, horse riding, sports (such as tennis), and playing a musical instrument. The goal was “to steer away from affectation at all costs, […] to practice in everything a certain nonchalance [sprezzatura] that shall conceal design and show that what is done and said is done without effort and almost without thought”.
While the concealment of art can be affected, the aesthetic is still prized today—for instance, in men’s fashion,
where one aims for an appearance of effortless grace in what is in reality a carefully curated wardrobe. It is part of how athletes are judged. […] The aesthetician Tom Cochrane equates sprezzatura with the aesthetic of cool, which he describes as containing “elements of aesthetic power or sublimity, specifically an elevation above the passions and indifference to danger.” The graceful courtier is (seemingly) unconcerned with the effect he has on the audience. Ultimately, he is unconcerned with himself, he has lost all self-consciousness in the intrinsic beauty of his actions.
De Cruz notes that early discussions often focused on the practice of ritual. “To achieve true mastery, you must lose yourself in a skilled task that harmonises you with your physical and mental environment, and you will achieve mental quietude as a result.” Inevitably, I think of my great household Daoist mentors Li Qing and his son Li Manshan, both lowly peasants; this is also a question of charisma, not always a major theme of studies of Daoist ritual…
The early Daoist classic Zhuangzi evinces the art of the bell-stand maker, wheelwright—and butcher: as de Cruz explains a much-discussed passage,
Lord Wenhui watches in silent admiration as his butcher (who is also his cook) is cutting up an ox: “every move of his feet, every thrust of his knee—zip! zoop! He slithered the knife along with a zing, and all was in perfect rhythm, as though he were performing the dance of the Mulberry Grove or keeping time to the Jingshou music [ancient ritual items, the former part of rain ceremonies].
“Ah, this is marvelous!” said Lord Wenhui. “Imagine skill reaching such heights!”
Cook Ding laid down his knife and replied, “What I care about is the Way [dao], which goes beyond skill. When I first began cutting up oxen, all I could see was the ox itself. After three years I no longer saw the whole ox. And now – now I go at it by spirit and don’t look with my eyes.”
“Perception and understanding have come to a stop, and spirit moves where it wants. I go along with the natural makeup, strike in the big hollows, guide the knife through the big openings, and follow things as they are. So I never touch the smallest ligament or tendon, much less a main joint.”
Zhuangzi also tells the story of a man swimming in fast-running currents, who tells Confucius:
I have no way [無道wu dao]. I began with what I was used to, grew up with my nature, and let things come to completion with fate. I go under with the swirls and come out with the eddies, following along the way the water goes and never thinking about myself. That’s how I can stay afloat.
De Cruz comments astutely:
Note the details in this story: the man has long hair that streams down, rather than being tied up in a knot, indicating he is of lower class. He sings not in a ritual context, as the Confucians would require, but out of sheer, unadulterated joy. Confucius is the main Confucian sage but (in Zhuangzian fashion) cannot fathom how someone is able to make such a dive and come out alive. Rather than a specific affectation, the swimmer has “no way.” He exhibits the essence of sprezzatura in his graceful movements and his indifference to danger.
For both folk and art music in the time of Vermeer, click here.
She cites the 17th-century English lutenist Mary Burwell:
One must then sit upright in playing to show no constraint or pains, to have a smiling countenance, that the company may not think you play unwillingly, and [to] show that you animate the lute as well as the lute does animate you. Yet you must not stir your body nor your head, nor show any extreme satisfaction in your playing. You must make no mouths, nor bite your lips, nor cast your hands in a flourishing manner that relishes of a fiddler [!]. In one word, you must not less please the eyes than the ears.
the aptitudes for which [playing the harpsichord] calls are natural to everyone—much like in walking, or, if you like, running.
She cites the flow theory of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi:
Self-forgetting opens the mind to the intrinsic beauty of skills we exhibit in the flow state,
explaining
In Zhuangzi’s butcher and swimmer and in Mary Burwell’s lutenist, the practitioner refuses to be identified with their performance, thus overcoming the self-centredness that often accompanies achievement.
This may be one reason why I became so resistant to Beethoven, for whom struggle—audible struggle—was central, becoming dominant in the romantic aesthetic of the virtuoso concerto soloist, striving to overcome.
De Cruz concludes:
We achieve an overall pleasing effect when we are in harmony with our physical constraints. When we achieve wuwei in skilled performance, we deliberately submit ourselves to our environment and to the limitations of our bodies—we place our actions rather than ourselves centre stage. We can say that sprezzatura presents a philosophy of life, an approach to our environment and our surroundings that acknowledges our bodily imperfections and our situatedness, and that yet enables us to achieve through non-action and mental stillness a kind of perfection that our audience can delight in and enjoy. Sometimes the beauty and wonder we bring into the world has more to do with our non-action than with our action.
Making a valuable corrective to Party propaganda, it’s a repository of alternative sources on the history of modern China,
dedicated to making accessible the key documents, films, blogs, and publications of a movement of Chinese people seeking to reclaim their country’s history. Unlike official government or university archives, the China Unofficial Archives is open, free, and accessible to anyone from any walk of life. The site is fully bilingual in Chinese and English.
The site is still growing, with new sources in the pipeline. The sidebar lists useful rubrics:
Era
Format
Theme
Creator.
Themes—covered by Western academics (see e.g. Cultural Revolutions, and under my Maoism tag), but whose Chinese sources are less easily accessed—include
Land reform before and after 1949
Covid-19
Famine
Farmers’ rights and rural issues
Non-Han ethnic minority groups
Women and feminism,
and (still in progress),
Faith-based persecution and crackdown—including yet another moving film by Hu Jie on the tribulations of a Christian Miao community in Yunnan, Maidichongde gesheng 麦地冲的歌声 (The songs of Maidichong village, 2016), subject of a separate post.
I will doubtless be posting on some topics that particularly interest me—for instance, I’m keen to get to grips with
Like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel Never ending or beginning on an ever spinning reel […]
Or the ripples from a pebble someone tosses in a stream […]
Like the circles that you find in the windmills of your mind!
I’m both amused and bemused when readers of my posts react to the myriad highlighted links with a certain alarm at finding themselves pursuing my arcane thought-processes down the rabbit-warren that this blog has become (e.g. in my annual roundups, “like a suburban Sisyphus doing and undoing a jigsaw”).
The links are of two kinds: to articles, websites, or pdfs by other authors, and to other posts on this site. They are rarely a red herring, or a wild goose chase—honest guv. While the Plain People of Ireland are quite entitled to their dismay, the consternation of erudite academics seems curious, when they are used to taking in their stride in-text references and ponderous Teutonic footnotes (like de Selby in The third policeman)—keen to consult a reference to Karlgren’s Grammata Serica Recensa which in turn will lead them to early Sogdian manuscripts and thence to medieval viniculture… Only you no longer have to spend a day consulting index cards in a library. And I like to think that I’m performing a public service by distracting such scholars for a moment from their niche focus on Song-dynasty Daoist ritual texts or baroque performance practice—whether by broadening the scope of enquiry or by being reminded of an apposite joke (see e.g. my taxonomy of Chinese jokes, under The joys of indexing). And (suitably equipped with a long ball of string) you can always find your way back to where you started.
Sir, you try my patience!
I don’t mind if I do—you must come over and try mine sometime.
— Groucho.
Even those less obsessively monocultural readers must be used to consulting websites full of links to related topics—like when an online article about the latest pompous idiocies of The Haunted Pencil leads you to other iniquities of the Tory “government”. Perhaps part of the challenge of my personal labyrinth is that its associations are so diverse, keeping you guessing. But that’s Like Life, innit?!
Oops, I seem to have done it again here… Please excuse me! But anyway, my Word Press stats suggest that remarkably few readers ever click on the links (even within roundups, or playlists such as this, where not doing so is like consulting a library catalogue but not looking at any of the books)—which causes me a certain distress 😟 (see The art of emoji)… Go on, give it a whirl!
Fujianprovince in southeast China is one of the most vibrant areas to explore folk and ritual expressive cultures, which its local scholars have been particularly avid in documenting. Its traditions—always rooted in life-cycle and calendrical ceremonies—are known to outsiders largely through the Minnan region in the south of the province, particularly the treasury of nanyin ballads [1]—not least because much of the culture of the island of Taiwan across the strait derives from its Hokkien migrants (click here).
The visits of my early fieldwork years were inevitably superficial, “gazing at flowers from horseback” 走马观花. For background, Li Quanmin’s 1961 field report—during a lull between Maoist campaigns—was already based on collections by local cultural workers. After the hiatus of the Cultural Revolution, Fujian minjian yinyue jianlun福建民间音乐简论 (1986) by Liu Chunshu 刘春曙 and Wang Yaohua 王耀华 made a worthy survey for the early reform era, including both vocal and instrumental genres.
Meanwhile the compilation of the monumental Anthology of folk music of the Chinese peoples was under way; and it’s taken me all this time to get round to browsing the 2,775 pages (!) of the two instrumental music volumes for Fujian,
Zhongguo minjian qiyuequ jicheng, Fujian juan中国民间器乐曲集成, 福建卷 (2001), again with the experienced Wang Yaohua as editor-in-chief.
Ritual pervades all genres of folk expressive culture: in the Anthology, it is a major theme of the volumes for folk-song, narrative-singing, opera, and dance. In the instrumental music volumes, even genres that lack explicit liturgical content are also invariably performed for ceremonial occasions—but a further reason to consult them is that the specific rubric of “religious music” has been consigned there. I’ve described the flaws of the Anthology project in my
“Reading between the lines: reflections on the massive Anthology of folk music of the Chinese peoples”, Ethnomusicology 47.3 (2003), pp.287–337.
Apart from the Anthology‘s valuable Monographs for opera and narrative-singing and brief textual introductions to genres, its volumes consist mainly of transcriptions, of limited value without available recordings. Conceptually its classifications are rudimentary, but it opens up a world of local cultures.
For Fujian, whereas nanyin is amply documented on CD and film, most other genres are unique to the province and hardly known outside their own locale. So I find these volumes a revelation, opening up many perspectives (particularly for the late imperial and Republican eras) and making one of the most impressive introductions to the riches of expressive culture in China. It confirms my observations about the resilience of tradition in the PRC—for all the cultural riches of Taiwan, they are dwarfed even by the single province of Fujian, despite the traumas of three decades of Maoism there.
* * *
The main rubrics adopted for the instrumental volumes of the Anthology (a rough-and-ready national framework, based on the classification developed since the 1950s and later elaborated by Yuan Jingfang) are:
“compound” (zonghexing综合性, referring mainly to a substantial vocal component)
“silk-and-bamboo” sizhu 丝竹
“drumming and blowing” guchui 鼓吹
“blowing and beating” chuida 吹打, with a more diverse instrumentation than guchui
percussion bands luogu 锣鼓
“sacrificial music” jisi yinyue 祭祀音乐 and “religious music” zongjiao yinyue 宗教音乐(Buddhist, Daoist, both temple and household—the latter covered far more comprehensively in separate projects by Chinese and foreign scholars).
Besides all the articles introducing particular local traditions, brief yet instructive sections are appended with histories of some notable groups (pp.2687–99) and biographies of performers (pp.2700–19), sampled below.
As throughout China, social performance is dominated by ensembles (see e.g. Liaoning), some occupational, others amateur. By contrast with the “conservatoire style”, instrumental solos play a very minor role in folk practice—here represented only by pieces for the zheng zither around Zhao’an and Yunxiao (pp.1683–1754), just east of Chaozhou in east Guangdong—another enclave for zheng solo repertoires.
* * *
Even for the Quanzhou region of south Fujian, while nanyin 南音 is a main focus, it is only part of a diverse scene. Nanyin has become a significant cultural element in the rapprochement between Fujian and Hokkien communities overseas. With so much research elsewhere, the Anthology section (pp.31–46, transcriptions pp.37–354) may not detain us long, though we should also consult other volumes, notably those for narrative-singing—both “music” (Zhongguo quyi yinyue jicheng, Fujian juan 中国曲艺音乐集成, 福建卷, pp.45–1102!) and the monograph (Zhongguo quyi zhi, Fujian juan 中国曲艺志, 福建卷).
Beiguan 北管 isa major genre in Taiwan (see again here), but in Fujian (where it is particular to Hui’an county near Quanzhou) it has a far less extensive repertoire (pp.355–60, transcriptions pp.361–97; biographies 2716–18).
Local traditions under “silk-and-bamboo” (a rubric as unwieldy as the others) include
shiyin 十音of the Pu–Xian region (Putian and Xianyou) (aka shiyinbayue 十音八乐, with the added format of shawms and percussion: for video clip, see under Walking shrill)
“guyue” 古乐 of Zhao’an in the southern Zhangzhou region, related to Chaozhou ensemble music and the zheng zither repertoire
shiban 十班 groups around west Fujian.
“Greater guchui” procession in Anxi.
Shawm-and-percussion bands, again serving life-cycle and calendrical observances, are ubiquitous throughout China, including all regions of Fujian—though they are hardly known outside local communities. Under the heading of “guchui” are introductions to
Ningde in northeast Fujian (for a shawm band in Xiapu, see also pp.2696–8).
around Fuzhou, Annan chi 安南伬 (and introduction to a renowned band in Linpu village, pp.2691–2)
in Fuqing south of Fuzhou, jin guchui 金鼓吹
“lesser guchui” of Xianyou and “greater guchui” of the Pu–Xian region.
Biographies of Pingtan paizhi master Wang Shanglong and Chen Renzhen.
Since imperial times, shawm bands were often transmitted through regional military garrisons, such as
longchui 龙吹 around Quanzhou (text pp.784–5, transcriptions pp.786–96), introduced in my Folk music of China pp.312–18, CD #12 (in the sidebar on this blog, audio gallery #15, with commentary here), and another instance is
paizhi of Pingtan island平潭排只 (text pp.663–4, transcriptions pp.665–708; biographies of Wang Shanglong 王尚龙 [1846–1917] and Chen Renzhen 陈人祯 [1911–88] p.2707, with a brief introduction to the latter’s band on p.2695).
shiyin十音 around Quanzhou (Folk music of China, pp.318–20)
naoting 闹厅 of Yongchun (cf. film footage of Yongchun migrants to Malaysia, here)
shawm bands in Anxi and Xiamen
for Changtai near Zhangzhou, greater guchui and lesser bayin—introducing the Qinghe guan 清和馆 society, whose masters trained over fifty groups in the vicinity.
Transmission of Raoping chui in rural Longyan, p.931.
Around west Fujian:
Raoping chui饶平吹 of Longyan (and introduction to a village band pp.2695–6)
shifandiao 十番调 of Yongding
wuyin 五音 of Shanghang
and genres in Wuping, Liancheng, and Changting.
In central Fujian, bands in counties of Sanming municipality.
In the north, shawm bands in counties of Nanping municipality
In the east (opening vol.2), shawm bands of the She minority 畲族 around Xiapu, Fu’an, Ningde, and Yong’an.
“Blowing and beating” Under the rubric of chuida (a more diverse instrumentation than the “guchui” shawm bands):
around the provincial capital Fuzhou, shifan 十番 (for various groups in the region, see also pp.2692–4)
shijin 拾锦 of Fuding, and genres in Fu’an and Gutian
in the Zhangzhou region, Siping luogu 四平锣鼓 of Nanjing 南靖 county (see also p.2696).
in north Fujian, Shifan luogu 十番锣鼓 [2] of Wuyishan, and groups in Pucheng.
Percussion ensembles include
taiping gu太平鼓 around Fuzhou, and
goutou 沟头 of Fuqing
jin guluo 金鼓锣 of Zhouning further north
genres in the south and west of the province.
Ritual As we saw, while all genres of expressive culture are pervaded by ritual, in the Anthology the major rubric of “religious music” has been allotted to the instrumental music volumes. Though the articles of the lengthy section for Fujian (pp.1757—2683) fall far short of detailed monographs elsewhere (e.g. the Daojiao yishi congshu series for household Daoists), they constitute subsidiary references that may yet offer further clues (for early film footage, see Religious life in 1930s’ Fujian).
In the constant struggle with taxonomy (note the thoughtful studies of Catherine Bell), the editors’ ritual categories are unsatisfactory—in folk practice, even the terms “Buddhist” and “Daoist” are porous, as is clear from several volumes of the Daojiao yishi congshu. Before the listings of temple and household Buddhist and Daoist genres under “religious music”, they have inserted a section on “sacrificial music”, comprising
“Three in One” (Sanyi jiao 三一教) groups in the Pu–Xian region (see also biography of Liu Maoyuan 刘茂源, b.1916, pp.2710–11)—note Kenneth Dean, The Lord of the Three in One: the spread of a cult in southeast China (1998)
for the She minority around Ningde and Fu’an, a rather detailed article with the misleading title “music of mediumistic rituals” wushu daochang yinyue 巫术道场音乐 (pp.1837–42, liturgical texts with scores 1843–93; also biography of sixth-generation master Zhong Fuxing 钟福星 [b.1930], p.2718). Known here as wangshi 尫师 (an interesting character, wang), such ritual specialists are Daoist exorcists in the Lüshan or Maoshan tradition, presiding over the complex liturgical sequences of jiao Offering and mortuary rituals (cf. this 2017 article), just like their Han Chinese counterparts elsewhere in the province (below under “religious music” > Daoist > household)—as distinct from the self-mortifying spirit mediums who also play a significant role in Fujian rituals (see e.g. Dean’s splendid film Bored in heaven).
Chanhe ritual, Fuzhou.
For both simplicity and clarity, these sections might rather have been subsumed under the single rubric of “religious music”—which includes
Buddhist:
liturgy of temple monks: Guanghua si temple in Putian, Kaiyuan si in Quanzhou, and Nan Putuo si in Xiamen
household ritual specialists:
chanhe 禅和 amateur ritual societies in Fuzhou (introduced en passant in my Folk music of China, pp.295–6)—another substantial section (see also biography of Xie Guiming 谢桂铭, b.1913, p.2709)
xianghua 香花 household priests in Putian (cf. Meixian in east Guangdong).
Household Daoist rituals, Putian.
Daoist:
liturgy of temple priests: Xiamen and Zhangzhou
household ritual groups in Putian, Xianyou, and Nan’an (for the latter, see also biography of Daoist Li Shi 李湿 [b.1932], pp.2712–13)—the scores useful, at least, for liturgical texts. Again, these sections will merely supplement detailed studies by scholars of religion.
Segments of mortuary rituals, Nan’an (again, cf. Ken Dean).
* * *
Even limiting our scope to instrumental music, it takes considerable conceptual adjustment to broaden our view of the musical culture of Fujian from nanyin to a multiplicity of groups such as shawm bands and ritual specialists. Unsatisfactory as the Anthology may be, beyond merely documenting “pieces” it reminds us that the lifeblood of all these traditions is social—and ritual—practice. Many individual genres are doubtless the subject of articles in Chinese journals since the publication of the Anthology, and one could make a base in any one county, indeed any one village, combining a wealth of material by observing life-cycle and calendrical activities. Meanwhile, even before consulting several thousand further pages of the Anthology for vocal and dance genres, these volumes provide valuable clues to the local ceremonial cultures of Fujian, the life stories of its transmitters, and social change, making a gateway to our studies of ritual life.
For a survey of folk traditions around the Tianjin municipality, again based on the Anthology, see here.
[1] This is a common reductive view. In surveying Chinese expressive culture, we must always beware merely regarding south Jiangsu as silk-and-bamboo, Hebei as songs-for-winds, Shanxi as “eight great suites”, and ethnic minorities as “good at singing and dancing”—just as we may reduce Spain to flamenco, Indonesia to gamelan, and so on.
Infatuated as I am with Mahler (series here), my posts on his symphonies inevitably include performances by Leonard Bernstein (see under The art of conducting). So I just had to watch Maestro (Bradley Cooper, 2023: in cinemas and on Netflix).
Movies about musicians are notoriously prone to faux pas (for some TV clichés, see e.g. Philharmonia, and Endeavour). Bernstein’s passion as a communicator brought an unprecedented popularity to WAM that it could never again achieve; Maestro is admirable for bringing him (if not his musical genius) to a wide modern audience.
Norman Lebrecht shrewdly observes Bernstein’s place in the roster of Great Conductors (The maestro myth pp.180–87, 192–5, and, confounding the myth that he rescued Mahler’s music from obscurity in Vienna, 198–205). Heart on sleeve, OTT, Lenny was an archetype for his era—by contrast with the austere Maestros of Yore, or indeed the benign, banal middle-managers and Early Music semi-conductors of later years.
As to Maestro, Alex Ross comments in the New Yorker:
Because Bernstein’s career unfolds in the background of his marriage, the film is relieved of the dreary trudge of the conventional bio-pic, which checks off famous moments, positions them against historical landmarks (the Cold War, the Beatles, the Kennedy assassinations). […] By and large, Maestro benefits from what it leaves out. Some viewers have complained that such major achievements as On the Town, West Side Story, and the Young People’s Concerts are mentioned only in passing. But Bernstein’s life was so stuffed with incident that nodding to each one would have drained the movie of momentum. One omission, though, left me perplexed: the studious avoidance of Bernstein’s radical-tending politics.
The roles of Lenny (Bradley Cooper himself) and his wife Felicia (Carey Mulligan) are brilliantly played, with all the tortuous public/private psychologies of their relationship. But indeed, the film omits their considerable social activism through a period of change; Cooper had intended to include the notorious “radical chic” 1970 party, but (as he explains in this podcast) he found it would have detracted from his main theme. So the screenplay invariably chooses the personal over the political. And I agree with other reviews that lament the wider avoidance of social history (e.g. another New Yorker article; myscena.org; The critic)—a tasteful script wouldn’t have to make such scenes into a “dreary trudge” at all.
What there is very little of is music. We barely see him conduct, we hear only snatches of his own compositions, and there are frustratingly few glimpses of his passion for communicating—through performance and education—the wonders and riches of classical music.
Bernstein’s own music does play a considerable role, without quite engaging us. But the most regrettable casualty is Mahler. Despite a scene that I’ll discuss below, the movie never broaches Lenny’s deep passion for his fellow conductor-composer—he must have seen himself as a reincarnation. In Lebrecht’s words (The maestro myth, p.185; cf. Why Mahler?, pp.239–41 and passim), Mahler was
a visionary who fought against humanity’s rush to self-destruction. “Ours is a century of death and Mahler is its musical prophet” [see e.g. my fanciful programme for the 10th symphony], he proclaimed, seeking to find himself a similar role.
Apart from the moving evidence of his performances, Lenny missed no opportunity to promote Mahler’s vision, and irrespective of the movie, it’s well worth returning to his extraordinary lectures on the topic. * Without hijacking the film’s main theme, one longs for a mention of Mahler’s name, or an image—although I quite see the risks of composing a line like “Oh Felicia, what would I do without you and Mahler?”!
We get to hear some of the Adagietto, though it’s such a staple of movie soundtracks that for many viewers it may sound merely like generic film music rather than the work of Lenny’s alter ego. Then the long scene of the monumental ending of the 2nd symphony at Ely Cathedral in 1973 is the perfect choice, and it should be overwhelming. But if the uninitiated don’t know what it represents (for Lenny and, well, for Western civilisation!), then again one might just think it’s some random piece of dramatic romantic music; or if you love Mahler as deeply as Lenny did, then you’ll be shocked at how the lack of context largely deprives it of impact—the scene’s main point seems to be his reunion with Felicia in a make-up kiss as he comes off stage.
Cooper, having learned assiduously to impersonate Lenny’s conducting for the Ely Cathedral scene under the guidance of Yannick Nézet-Séguin, looks admirably impressive on the podium—but it’s also a salient lesson in how impossible it is to mimic the art of an experienced conductor. The Guardian review cited above has details of how the scene was filmed, with comments from members of the LSO:
Every detail of the 1973 performance was painstakingly reproduced, from where each player sat (“more squashed than we generally are today!”), to the mocked-up programmes, even though these were never in shot.
Players who wore glasses were asked to provide prescriptions so they could be given new ones in old-style frames—and they were all asked to let their hair grow. “Most of the guys had been asked to grow beards,” says Duckworth, “and those with very short hair had been asked not to cut it.”
And (WTAF) despite going to such lengths to achieve historical authenticity, the film used the players of today’s LSO, 45% of whom are women—whereas the 1973 LSO had only two women (the harpists) among 102 players. Is this, finally, PC gone mad?!
Despite these cavils, I admire the way Bradley Cooper has brought Bernstein’s personality to a wider audience. Perhaps it’s too much to hope that Maestro might also turn on a new generation to Mahler.
* After his 1960 talk at the televised Young People’s Concerts (wiki; complete list on YouTube here—weekly audiences for his broadcasts estimated at ten million!), more illuminating is “The unanswered question” in his 1973 lectures at Harvard:
DO go back to Humphrey Burton’s wonderful films of Bernstein’s performances of the symphonies… Burton also filmed him rehearsing—and commenting on—the 5th, the 9th (“Four ways to say Farewell”), and Das Lied von Der Erde with the Vienna Phil (1971–72):
If you appreciate our film Li Manshan: portrait of a folk Daoist (*watch here*), then the book is an essential companion—further augmented on this site by a series of vignettes and updates, rounded up here.
Introduction, and reviews from Ian Johnson, Stephan Feuchtwang, and Vincent Goossaert:
In vocal traditions of Chinese expressive culture (as I keep harping, or drumming, on), the neat pigeon-holes of folk-song, narrative-singing, and opera disguise a continuum from solo singing though to fully-staged genres with larger forces, all oscillating between a range of points along the ceremonial–entertainment continuum—see my
“Reading between the lines: reflections on the massive Anthology of folk music of the Chinese peoples”, Ethnomusicology 47.3 (2003), pp.287–337, e.g. §4.4.
Within the Anthology, one often needs to consult all three rubrics: folk-song, narrative-singing, and opera—and indeed dance. Along with my focus on ritual traditions and instrumental ensembles, narrative-singing (aka “story-telling”) is often relevant to my studies. So I’ve recently added a tag in the sidebar for shuoshu说书 (aka shuochang说唱, or in official parlance quyi曲艺)—I’ll try and keep updating this roundup.
Another issue of taxonomy in the Anthology: whereas “religious music” is largely consigned to the instrumental music volumes, some ritual groups accompanying their vocal liturgy only with percussion are found within the narrative-singing volumes, such as the household Daoists of Changwu in Shaanxi. Also classified somewhat uncomfortably under “narrative-singing” is the substantial theme of
“precious scrolls” (baojuan)—surveyed here, with links to Hebei, Gansu, and south Jiangsu.
Of course, rather than being constrained by narrow categories, we need to place the variety of expressive cultures in social context. Studies of “narrative-singing” often highlight the refined urban entertainment of urban stages and teahouses, with a largely sinological, literary approach to late imperial history—itself a worthy topic—tending to reify performances that are in fact animated by a strong element of improvisation. And as with folk-singing, opera, and indeed instrumental music, this may distract us somewhat from the ethnography of changing modern society. In rural China, ritual contexts are strong; much story-telling takes place in the context of temple fairs and domestic blessings. The rural perspective is significant across all genres, but I find it particularly salient in coverage of narrative-singing. It may also remind us of the importance of poverty. Itinerant blind performers are prominent.
Salutary instances include these two posts on Shanxi:
Here I introduce Liu Hongqing’s harrowing exposé of the lives of poor peasant families in the Taihangshan mountains, based on a blindmens’ “propaganda troupe”.
Other regions featured on this site, in more or less depth, include
Glued to the Six Nations rugby, I’m wondering if negotiating the shape of the ball, * with its unpredictable bounce, might be compared to going on stage with a violin whose strings never stay in tune—like playing baroque violin in an overheated concert hall (he said with feeling—see The Mary Celeste).
On the plus side, concerts are less muddy, with fewer injuries, and you don’t get sent off so often. As to referees (Confucius), musos’ attitude to conductors is more like that of footballers than rugby players.
Such a degree of unpredictability is rarely built into the design of the game—as if tennis rackets were crafted from blancmange. Nor did elliptical balls catch on with other sports, like snooker. To cast the net wider, it’s like a steering wheel that offers few clues to the direction of the car, or a novel whose pages the publisher prints in a random order.
* Apart from unseemly anatomical explanations involving the shape of the pig’s bladder, and posh public-school twats, some suggest that it’s harder to dribble with the feet as in football, and that the oval ball is easier to carry with one arm, leaving the other arm free to push adversaries away—reminding me of the shakuhachi flute as potential weapon (komusō monks rebuked for “meddling in earthly affairs and not the emptiness of being”).
Based on a 2019 presentation made for Tibetan artists and bureaucrats in Dharamsala for the 60th anniversary of the Tibetan Institute of Performing Arts (TIPA) there, the article deserves a wide readership: many of Isabelle’s findings are applicable to genres both among the Han Chinese and elsewhere around the world, making a valuable addition to the extensive literature on “Heritage” (for a roundup of posts on this site, click here—with my own first rant on the topic here).
She discusses in detail the evolving debate around the system worldwide, as well as the Tibetan notion of “culture”. As she explains, the ICH terminology has been ubiquitously used in the cultural policies of the PRC since 2006—towards Han Chinese communities, but most critically among the so-called “ethnic minorities” (including the Tibetan regions of TAR, Amdo, and Kham), and it has given rise to “a massive output of lavishly funded state programmes, festivals, museums, academic conferences, books, DVDs and commercial by-products for tourism”—a veritable “heritage fever”.
The article sums up the genealogy, aims, language, and logic of UNESCO’s categorisations of culture, contextualising the UNESCO heritage nominations in a comparative worldwide survey. It then explores the political, linguistic and cultural reasons explaining the relative blind spot for the ICH among Tibetan communities, before moving to the specific challenges faced by ICH-nominated traditions and artists in Tibet. Unpacking the notions of “heritage” versus “cultural heritage”, Isabelle notes:
The very idea of “heritage” in the West came up as a sort of nostalgic look at the past, when it was already “too late”, that is, when the cultures supporting these objects were in a great part defunct. Moreover, this nostalgia is imbued with a nationalistic flavour, in the sense that these traditions on the verge of being lost are deemed essential in the shaping of a national bond and belonging. It may be the case that Tibetans feel that their traditions are lively enough that they do not need an objectifying label such as “heritage”. But the very idea of the creation of (what would later be called) the Tibetan Institute of Performing Arts in 1959 draws exactly from that same double logic of nostalgia and nationalism.
While ICH policies are “aimed at preserving songs, dances, dramas and cultural practices—not unlike what TIPA has been attempting to do for six decades”,
this politicised “catalogue” view of culture is also remote from how anthropologists understand culture: as ever adaptive and organically articulated in the multiple layers of the lives of people.
Thus “the recurrent effect of ICH proclamations is that they, in effect, isolate the practice from its context, and lead to its further endangerment”.
Yet
The phrase ICH remains obscure for nearly all Tibetans in exile—actually, as we will see, for most Tibetans in Tibet as well […] The idiom remains obstinately abstract for the great majority of Tibetans, even for those who are involved in ICH… and sometimes even for the local Chinese administrators in charge of the programmes. *
Isabelle goes on:
Cultural reluctance to the concept of ICH can be seen in two ways. On one hand, despite strong assaults on Tibetan culture that some authors have termed “cultural genocide” or “assimilation”, aspects of Tibetan of culture are still felt by Tibetans as being very strong and alive. Tibetans do not easily identify with a nostalgic contemplation of “culture” in terms of the ways in which it is embedded in ICH and UNESCO objectified conceptions. For most Tibetans, culture is not (yet) something distant, staged, or at least it is not only that. On the other hand, another cultural reluctance may concern the very notion of “culture”. ICH presupposes a democratic, or rather a “people’s view” of culture, where “culture” is that everyday life content which is shared by most people. This differs from an elevated and exclusive conception of “culture” (rig gnas) by Tibetans, that carries connotations of virtuous knowledge transmitted by role models. The idea of honouring “simple” singers, dancers or ache lhamo performers as cultural heroes of the community seems odd to most conservative Tibetans. Prestigious seats at official functions are meant for “cultural heroes” that inspire devotion and respect, such as lamas, politicians, and more recently (in exile) resistance fighters who bravely confronted the enemy. In a deeply religious and perhaps exclusive diasporic society, where the very survival of the community rests upon keeping the culture homogenised and extolling role models, the idea to give money, titles, and public acknowledgement to “simple” TIPA artists (if we consider Tibetan exiles) seems at best out of place, if not outright unacceptable. Finally, the third possible reluctance I see of Tibetans with the ICH concept is political. For those who are informed, they know that UNESCO is a cenacle of recognised independent States, and that Tibetans, not having this legitimacy, do not stand much of a chance to be heard, so why bother?
So I might consider this “blind spot” of the Tibetans not so much “unfortunate” as wise, suggesting a reluctance to play the Chinese game or pander to commodification.
Calling ICH “yet another tool to milk the government”, observers have voiced that ICH boils down to a competition between bureaucrats for their personal benefit, rather than a meaningful way to safeguard traditions for the benefit of the local people.
Still, along with other scholars of ICH, Isabelle recognises that “astute stakeholders” are sometimes able to use the ICH for “manoeuvring and promoting Tibetan culture”—a ploy also adopted among the Han Chinese and communities further afield.
Most rural performers, who are generally not educated (in formal schools), do not understand the underpinnings of the concept of “intangible cultural heritages but retain a rather positive attitude towards ICH, which they construe as bringing them material benefits (money, costumes, equipment, occasions to perform, status and value in the eyes of the State, etc.). They also recognize that ICH garners more visibility of Tibetan traditions that are disappearing fast from rapidly modernising rural areas, after decades of marginalisation and hardships. The ICH program has indeed allowed the revitalisation of derelict traditions in remote parts of the countryside and has brought more awareness about “tradition” among the youth.
On one hand “ICH does enhance visibility, give opportunities to perform (for example at State-run festivals) and sustain, to some degree, the continuous practice of art traditions”. However,
troupes are often limited to performing a short vignette of their style (20 minutes or less). When preparing their troupes for such snippets, troupe directors confess a frustration at not being able to pass down a full tradition to the next generation. A majority of these rarefied translocal art traditions require an immersion into a whole system of knowledge and cultural references to be understood and appreciated, but only a series of “postcard-like” excerpts are allowed to be “displayed” for public consumption and entertainment (and approval).
As she notes, “ICH programmes came about in a situation where performing arts traditions had already been heavily reworked through State-run programmes during the previous six decades.”
Local community traditions versus reified state propaganda: left: Ngagmo female ritual group, Rebkong (Amdo); right: TAR song-and-dance ensemble. Source.
Within the borders of China, for traditions nominated for the ICH, three were promoted simultaneously in 2009: the Gesar epic, Tibetan opera (ache lhamo), and what UNESCO dubs “Regong arts” (a thangka painting tradition in Rebgong, Qinghai). The article goes on to list the later profusion of ICH inscriptions at national, regional, and county levels.
It’s always important to unpack state agendas in promoting culture; I admire much scholarship on ICH, but while the programme has cast an ever larger shadow over local traditions, it seems sad that such authors have to invest so much energy in bureaucratic theory and practice which they might otherwise be able to spend on studying the changing communities themselves.
In her fine Conclusion, Isabelle sums up:
On the global stage, ICH is an exercise in public relations. International identity politics are now done through “spectacle”, and the representation of one’s nation through simplistic reified images. The crucial aspect of UNESCO’s conception of culture is that these cultural expressions are a “property”, an entity that is owned and managed by a State presenting itself as the legitimate custodian of that heritage.
At the level of the PRC, ICH is a crucial notion in understanding the current predicament of Tibetan culture. While definitely allowing for more visibility of folk traditions in the public and media spaces, generating more income, and offering some possibilities to safeguard and sustain cultural traditions, its actual implementation is typically fraught with complications. ICH programmes have reinforced both ancient and new hierarchies of knowledge, power and money and fostered an ever-pervasive State interventionism into the management of folk culture. The staggering budget poured into traditional culture brings about radical transformations in the name of preservation, and economic marginalisation in the name of empowering local communities. But many artists and observers in the performing arts try to stake their claim to these choreographed cultural forms and, at the same time, manoeuvre within the system to try and salvage their traditions in between the dotted lines defined by their duties. I will leave the last word to one of these Tibetan cultural custodians, who perceptively remarked:
The government wears the clothes of “culture” to do politics. We Tibetans wear the clothes of “politics” (obedience, loyalty) to do culture.
* Echoing Musapir‘s findings for Uyghur traditions—on which, note also the work of Rachel Harris, exposing the Chinese state’s sinister agenda in co-opting culture as part of its war on the Uyghur heritage—recently, this article.
Raised in Denver, since 2012 she’s been based in Stockholm, fertile soil for her experiments. The extreme austerity of her ouevre, using electronic technology to the full, somehow gains rave reviews far beyond the organ cabal; I find it a weird and wonderful cause for celebration that there are tribes for this kind of thing. As with much minimalism, my need to listen to all her work may be partly because I keep wondering if something is ever going to happen, or if I will notice it happening while still semi-conscious—or perhaps rather it’s that I want to rise to the challenge of internalising her time-frame. This music makes Noh drama (links here) seem positively action-packed.
Organ dirges 2016–2017:
Cast of mind (2018), with wind and brass (as playlist):
On organ, The sacrificial code (2019) (as playlist):
Living torch album (2022), which one might hardly notice is “an organ-free zone”:
On Does spring hide its joy * (2020/2023), Malone plays sine-wave oscillators, with Stephen O’Malley on guitar and Lucy Railton on cello—another album that has achieved remarkable popularity in this age of fragmented attention:
The three variations span over 300 minutes—still more compelling, With All Due Respect, than the interminable ramblings of George Gurdjieff on harmonium.
Her latest album is All life long (2024), again incorporating hieratic vocals and brass (playlist):
In his review, Alex Petridis splendidly describes Malone’s interviews as
very much the place to go if you’re interested in the cultural contexts of 15th-century meantone organ tuning…
Her partner Stephen O’Malley plays guitar in SUNN O))) (listen e.g. here), a band that blends doom metal, drone, black metal, dark ambient, and noise rock (more taxonomy!), their style “characterised by slow tempos, distorted guitars, lack of rhythm and melody, and alternative tunings” (YAY).
In the best possible way, this music “really messiaens with your head”—you might need to take an occasional break… I think we can safely discount rumours (again in my head) of a collaboration with Katherine Jenkins for a Christmas album of catchy hits from the shows.
Through the Maoist decades after the 1949 Communist takeover, while the society of mainland China was constantly beset by a succession of iconoclastic traumas, the Republic of China on the island of Taiwan was considered a bastion for the maintenance of traditional Chinese culture.
What I suspect hasn’t always been clarified is that Taiwan cannot embody that culture as a whole: naturally, its heritage largely reflects the traditions of the particular regions from which they were descended on the southeastern mainland—and it was that, until the 1980s, which was the only peep-hole through which we could view the enormity of Chinese culture. *
But then, as “reform and opening” swept the PRC, ritual and other folk performance activity—that outsiders could only assume to have been extinguished there after the Communist takeover of 1949—began reviving on a vast scale, along with an array of central and regional scholars keen to resume fieldwork and research. And at the forefront of discoveries was the region of south Fujian, just across the strait from Taiwan (see e.g. C.K. Wang, Kristofer Schipper, Ken Dean, John Lagerwey). As fieldwork expanded to other parts of the southeast (see Daoist ritual in south China), it soon became clear that there was a vast repository of local traditions of ritual and expressive culture to document all over China (see The resilience of tradition)—if not eclipsing the reputation of Taiwan’s heritage, then at least putting it into perspective. The research of Taiwanese scholars was now able to inspire fieldwork on the mainland.
Still, the main genres of Taiwan have rather little bearing on the kind of ritual traditions that were coming to light in the north Chinese countryside, or even in east-central China; indeed, they only represent a small selection from the diverse range of genres around Fujian, as becomes clear by consulting the volumes of the monumental Anthology (for now, see here, with a further post to follow).
I also think of the transformation of Tibetan studies. After 1950, exile communities (led by TIPA in Dharamsala—see e.g. Zlos-gar, 1986) had been considered as the sole heirs to the culture of Tibet; but by the 1990s scholars began shifting towards the mature ethnographic assessment of its vicissitudes under the Chinese yoke (under Recent posts on Tibet, see e.g. Labrang 1). In her wise article “Easier in exile?, Isabelle Henrion-Dourcy ponders the different challenges of doing fieldwork among Tibetans in Lhasa and Dharamsala (see The enchanting world of Tibetan opera).
* * *
Taiwan Besides the small minority of aboriginal groups (c2%), the main populations of Taiwan are Hoklo (Holo, c70%), Hokkien speakers originating from the Quanzhou and Zhangzhou regions of south Fujian; and Hakka (c15%), descended from the mainland regions of east Guangdong and west Fujian (click here and here for the expressive cultures of both groups). Refugees from elsewhere in China fleeing to Taiwan in the 1940s also brought some staged vocal genres with them.
With Taiwanese society subject to far fewer traumatic social upheavals than on the mainland, cultural forms were certainly better maintained there. But as in any modern society, there are no “living fossils”: besides the island’s complex colonial legacy, performers and patrons have to negotiate the incursions of modernity and popular media (see Society and soundscape, notably the work of Bruno Nettl).
Since the clampdown in the PRC under Xi Jinping, perspectives regarding the mainland and Taiwan are modifying (see The Queen Mother of the West); having myself been busy studying the maintenance of local ritual cultures in the PRC, it’s high time for me to re-assess my approach. So as sometimes happens on this blog (e.g. Precious scrolls, and even A jazz medley), this basic overview of music–ritual traditions is as much for my benefit as yours…
Surveys In English, starting points include articles in The New Grove Dictionary of music and musicians, TheGarland encyclopedia of world music (Wang Ying-fenpp.423–9, Hsu Tsang-houei pp.523–9), Wang Ying-fen in The Rough Guide to world music, Europe, Asia & Pacific (3rd edition, 2009), and even wiki.
At the forefront of studies of traditional music in Taiwan was Hsu Tsang-houei許常惠 (1929–2001), who gravitated from WAM-style composition to fieldwork on folk traditions. ** Among his surveys are Taiwan yinyue shi chugao台灣音樂史初稿 (1991, I think) and (with Cheng Shui-cheng) Musique de Taiwan (1992). See also Lü Ch’ui-k’uan 呂錘寬, Taiwan chuantong yinyue gailun台灣傳統音樂概論 (2005, 2007), in two volumes on vocal and instrumental music.
Genres Among the most popular topics are nanguan and Daoist ritual—both, since the 1980s, informed by fieldwork on either side of the strait. Amateur nanguan 南管 music societies, performing exquisite chamber ballads for calendrical and life-cycle ceremonies, have long been deeply embedded in community life (see this post). Nanguan is the subject of much research, both in Fujian and Taiwan. Wang Ying-fen has published extensively on the Taiwan scene in both Chinese and English—I particularly admire her articles on the risks inherent in state promotion of nanguan (such as this), worthy contributions to studies of the thorny issue of heritage.
Temple fairs, with vibrant processions, remain a major part of life in Taiwan. Regional traditions of Daoist ritual (for the north, click here) are the focus of generations of Taiwanese and foreign scholars. For the former, alongside many distinguished scholars, Lü Ch’ui-k’uan 呂錘寬 has paid notable attention to ritual soundscape (e.g. Daojiao yishi yu yinyue道教儀式與音樂, 1994). Another major theme in ritual studies is the worship of the female deity Mazu, widespread both in Taiwan and around the southeastern coast of the mainland.
The composite genre of beiguan 北管 (good wiki page here, with links) is again performed mainly for calendrical and life-cycle ceremonies, largely by occupational groups; while closely related to vocal drama, it’s best known for its loud outdoor shawm-and-percussion bands. Here’s a short documentary about the master Qiu Huorong 邱火榮 (b.1937):
Most flexible of popular operatic forms is gua-a-hi (gezai xi歌仔戲). And more popular in Taiwan than shadow puppets and marionettes, glove-puppetry (budai xi 布袋戲) has adapted to changing times; the former tradition was transmitted by masters such as Li Tianlu 李天祿 (1910–98), whose early life is evoked in Hou Hsiao-hsien’s 1993 film The puppetmaster.
Narrative-singing is best known through Chen Da陳達 (1905–81) on the Hengchun peninsula. He was “discovered” in 1967 by Hsu Tsang-houei and Shih Wei-liang 史惟亮 as part of their fieldwork for the Folk-song Collection movement, forerunner of several state-sponsored organs in Taiwan. Here’s Shih Wei-liang’s recording from 1971:
In the north of the island, the blind female singer Yang Xiuqing楊秀卿 (b.1934) is also renowned.
(As in the PRC, please excuse me if I fall into the old Songlines trap of giving undue attention to “star performers”—whereas in-depth ethnography soon uncovers the myriad unsung bearers of tradition, such as Vincent Goossaert’s “ordinary Daoists”, or rank-and-file members of festive groups.)
Like beiguan, the Hakka bayin 八音 ensemble is dominated by shawms and percussion. Here’s the CD Taiwan: mountain songs and bayin instrumental music (Inedit, 2006; as playlist):
As in mainland China, the vocal polyphony of minority peoples (notably Amis, Bunun, Tsou, Paiwan, Rukai—around 2% of Taiwan’s population) has attracted much attention, with many recordings issued of aboriginal singing, such as Polyphonies vocales des Aborigènes de Taiwan (Inedit, 1989):
and Taiwan: music of the Aboriginal tribes (Jecklin, 1991) (playlist):
As in mainland China, while such traditions struggle to remain relevant in a modernising society, national cultural bodies have adopted particular genres as symbols of identity. Expressive culture has made a major component in the rapprochement between the PRC and overseas Chinese communities. Wind Records in Taipei issued a succession of CDs of mainland genres in conjunction with the Music Research Institute in Beijing, notably an important series of archive recordings (folk-song, narrative-singing, opera, and instrumental music, as well as minority polyphony), and of the qin zither. The journal Minsu quyi, with its detailed studies (mostly in Chinese) on ritual, theatre, and folklore, also expanded its scope from Taiwan to the mainland.
* * *
Growing political tensions encourage us to pay renewed attention to Taiwan, and to support beleaguered democracy. While it’s fruitful to study the genres introduced above on both sides of the strait, the island remains a conducive environment for both performance and research. Now I’m keen to see someone with fieldwork experience in both societies, such as C.K. Wang, Wang Ying-fen, Ken Dean, or Adam Yuet Chau, expounding the different trajectories of the diverse traditions there, and the challenges that they face.
* Now, none of these comparisons quite work, but… While it’d be far too parochial to imagine the Isle of Wight as a refuge from a radical government in mainland UK, perhaps we might visualise Cuba becoming a liberal sanctuary from a Gilead-style fundamentalist north America (see The handmaid’s tale)—or even Sicily as the sole isolated outpost for tradition while mainland Europe languishes in the grip of authoritarian regimes.
In chapter 10 of In search of the folk Daoists of north China I made a similarly rash comparison, seeking to incorporate north China into our overview of Daoist ritual (cf. this post, again):
It is rather as if our knowledge of Christianity in the whole of Europe were based almost entirely on Sicily and Puglia, with the odd footnote on the Vatican and Westminster Abbey. We may like what we find in those places, perhaps considering it more exalted, mystical, and ancient—but that is another issue.
Without at all playing into the greasy hands of PRC propaganda, one might consider Taiwan (culturally, not politically, since it is clearly an independent nation! Cf. China has always been part of…) as just one among over thirty provinces of China, all of whose forms of expressive culture are dominated by long-established local folk traditions while also featuring some “national” genres and styles from other regions.
** If Yang Yinliu wasn’t the Chinese Bartók, then Hsu Tsang-houei wasn’t the Taiwanese Yang Yinliu (whereas Bill Evanswas the Bill Evans of jazz).
I’m always enchanted by the a cappella singing of the Real Group—their rapt intoning of the Swedish psalm Härlig Är Jorden is one of the most exquisite pieces I know (click here, with a bonus of Bill Evans).
Another gorgeous song of theirs is Words, by Anders Edenroth, tenor in the group—here’s a 2005 performance in Stockholm, soon after he composed it:
Words A letter and a letter on a string Will hold forever humanity spellbound Words Possession of the beggar and the king Everybody, everyday You and I, we all can say Words Regarded as a complicated tool Created by man, implicated by mankind Words Obsession of the genius and the fool Everybody, everyday, Everywhere and everyway
Words! Find them, you can use them Say them, you can hear them Write them, you can read them Love them, fear them
Words Transmitted as we’re fitted from the start Received by all and we’re sentenced to a life with Words Impression of the stupid and the smart Everybody, everyday You and I, we all can say Words Inside your head can come alive as they’re said Softly, loudly, modestly or proudly Words Expression by the living and the dead Everybody, everyday Everywhere and everyway
Words! Find them, you can use them Say them, you can hear them Write them, you can read them Love them, fear them
Complementing the, um, words is the finely-crafted music (score matched to audio here, with link to harmonic analysis—and Spanish captions to boot!). The narrow, hieratic pitch range of the verses (with plentiful appogiaturas, gradually venturing beyond a minor third!), adroit rhythmic variation alternating between syncopations and regular quavers, as well as subtle chromaticisms (cf. this post), the melody eventually branching out for the chorus (“Find them…”),
with motifs recombined and elaborated from 1.39…
Here it might be unseemly to note that words aren’t always useful—see e.g. Adam Chau’s caveats about focusing on the discursive/scriptural modality in religious studies, as opposed to “red-hot sociality”. Just saying, like (with words)—cf. Laozi (here and here), as well as “Writing about music is like dancing about architecture“.
Born in 1935 to parents based in Mukden (Shenyang) during the Japanese occupation of Manchuria, he returned with his family to Japan in 1941. His rise to conducting stardom was meteoric. A pupil of Hideo Saito (1902–74), in 1959 he won a conducting competition in Besançon. This led to an invitation to study with Charles Munch and Pierre Monteux in Boston, where he soon won the Koussevitzky Prize; this began his close association with the Tanglewood Festival. Gaining a scholarship to study with Herbert von Karajan in West Berlin, he was spotted by Leonard Bernstein, who made him assistant conductor of the New York Phil in 1961. Here Bernstein introduces Ozawa conducting the overture to The marriage of Figaro in 1962:
Ozawa remained the only conductor to have studied under both Karajan and Bernstein (cf. Unlikely bedfellows).
In 1963, still little-known in the USA, Ozawa appeared on What’s my line (cf. Anna Mahler on You bet your life, 1952!). By the late 60s, in contrast to the staid, ageing Teutonic maestros to whom concert-goers were accustomed, he exuded a rock-star vibe that no-one has since been able to emulate (NYT: “with his mop of black hair, his boyish demeanor and his seemingly boundless energy, he captured the popular imagination early on”; Peter Gelb: “a symbol of male beauty on the podium that I don’t think the world had seen before.”) As Norman Lebrecht commented (The maestro myth, pp.137–41):
Ozawa sported a Beatle fringe, flowery shirts and cowboy boots, and wore a roll-necked sweater instad of a dress-shirt at concerts. His appointment was clearly aimed at rejuvenating the Symphony Hall subscription list. Oriental mysticism was all the rage among the East Coast college kids who escaped conscription to Vietnam; and Ozawa was, they said, something else.
In the early 70s I too basked in his charisma at London concerts, hearing him conduct an exhilarating Symphonie fantastique, as well as November steps—Takemitsu’s music becoming known partly thanks to Ozawa’s advocacy.
Ozawa acted as music director of the Boston Symphony from 1973 to 2002, a tenure that “many thought too long for anyone’s good: his own, the orchestra’s or the subscribers’ “.
According to the NYT, he played a role in easing tensions between China and the USA in 1979, when the Boston Symphony toured China, still emerging from the Cultural Revolution (cf. the 1973 visits of the Philadelphia and London Philharmonic). Peter Gelb, then the orchestra’s publicity director, said that Ozawa had been crucial in making the tour happen, Chinese officials feeling “a connection with him since he had spent part of his childhood in China” (hmm, I wonder how that worked…).
Noting Ozawa’s fine ear for timbre and nuance, some magical selections:
Ozawa’s 1968 recording of Messian’s glorious Turangalîla, with Jeanne and Yvonne Loriod (on 2 LPs, with November steps), is on this playlist—here’s the fifth movement Joie du sang des étoiles (Gramophone: “turbo-thrusted to the point of kinky delirium”):
and the sixth, Jardin du sommeil d’amour (“an early window into Ozawa’s ear for obsessive detail and softer-than-soft textures”):
* As I write, the regular Guardian is strangely devoid of an obituary—a gap filled by the East London and West Essex Guardian, whose readers seem rather less likely to be avid tofu-eaters. Update: Guardian notice here.
*Part of my education in the travails of modern Tibet*
Bendi Tso, Marnyi Gyatso, Naljor Tsering, Mark Turin, and members of the Choné Tibetan community, Shépa: The Tibetan oral tradition in Choné(2023) (free access here).
Shépa (bshad pa) * is an encyclopaedic repertoire of antiphonal songs performed by ritual specialists and prestigious elders of the Choné people (Co ne pa), a Tibetan subgroup in the Luchu river valley of Kenlho (Kan lho; in Chinese, Gannan 甘南) Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture of Gansu province in northwest China. The region straddles both the Tibetan regions of Amdo and Kham and the Chinese provinces of Sichuan and Gansu, bordering territory managed by the great monastery of Labrang (cf. this post, including further readings on Amdo, and sequel).
Shépa “encapsulates the evolution of Tibetan civilisation through time and serves as a repository of the cultural, religious, and historical knowledge of the Choné people”. As the authors explain, Choné history is profoundly shaped both by intricate interactions with close neighbours (Han, Hui, and Monguor) and by distant political and religious centres. From creation myths to Bon and Buddhist cosmologies and wedding songs, shépa engages with and draws on elements of religious traditions, historical legacies, and deep-seated cultural memories.
“A collaboration with and between members of the local community, including narrators, monks, and scholars”, with its trilingual format (in English, Tibetan, and Chinese) the book’s 778 pages become less daunting.
Bendi Tso’s preface opens with a promising vignette, in what has become a classic juxtaposition (for Chinese instances, see e.g. my film Li Manshan, from 30.32 and 1.07.34):
Leaning against the living room window the night before Sangye Men’s wedding, I felt as if I was straddling two worlds, separated by a thin pane of glass. In the yard, Sangye Men’s friends formed a circle and took it in turns to sing and dance, accompanied by a giant stereo speaker and a rotating rainbow globe light. Their playlist ranged from Tibetan ballads to Chinese songs, and from the traditional Tibetan lute (sgra snyan) to nightclub music. When Arabian Night started, a popular dance song appreciated by younger generations, the guests turned up the volume as high as it would go, swaying their bodies to the music and showing their enjoyment.
Right across the window and inside a living room, four elders were sitting on tsatap (tsha thab / rdza rdo), a raised clay platform where people eat and sleep, drinking Tibetan spirits (bod rag). The flickering rays of the rainbow globe danced on their faces. Occasionally looking out of the window, the elders continued intermittent conversations while singing Shépa. I wondered whether they were able to catch each other’s words on account of the loud noise emanating from the speaker next door.
The co-authored Introduction (pp.1–64 in the English version) gives a nuanced definition of shépa, which has been considered as “poetic recitals”, “speeches”, “oral literature” or “oral tradition”—a combination of verse and prose in recitation and song. In their broad understanding, it is “an umbrella category including all local oral performances that have survived to the present”, on a spectrum from religious to secular. They discuss the relation of shépa to other oral traditions both in Choné and in the wider Tibetan and Himalayan cultural spheres.
Almost every Choné village had an anyé bonpo (a myes bon po) household belonging to a lay Bon priest or an anyé gompa (a myes sgom pa) household of a lay Nyingma practitioner, who would be in charge of performing rituals for individuals and community before the 1950s. Nowadays, ever fewer villages have these priests.
As they surely know, this leap in time begs some basic questions. Again:
Leu (le’u / lhe’u), who appear in Shépa, are a type of anyé bonpo. In Choné, Leu are crucial figures who conduct the protection ritual (srung) during the marriage ceremony. Over the past decades, ever fewer households of anyé bonpo have been in a position to transmit their heritage and duties to the next generation. Based on our current research, there remain only a handful of anyé bonpo, and no leu, in Choné.
The emblem of the anyé bonpo’s ritual expertise is the anyé zhidak (a myes gzhi bdag), “a built-in wooden cabinet designed for storing arrows (mda’) that represent lineage, fortune, and fertility, located beside the main pillar in the living room”.
Among the main performance contexts are wedding ceremonies, as well as horse racing and arrow shooting over New Year (cf. Bhutan). Weddings have “changed significantly over recent decades”, but we are not offered details on the process. Other material on change also begs questions:
These days, almost all of the critical moments in the lives of Choné people now involve Geluk monks and lamas, from naming newborn children to blessing newlyweds to performing funeral rituals. Since the 18th century, the majority of Choné people have become Geluk followers. Major festivals, fairs, and pilgrimage dates in the local calendar are arranged according to the religious schedule of Choné Monastery and its branches. In recent years, with village ritual specialists ageing and passing away, villagers offer their non-Buddhist ritual texts to Geluk monks and ask them to perform rituals that were once conducted solely by anyé bonpo and anyé gompa. Monks usually conduct these rituals with some Buddhist modifications.
I applaud the intent of this study. Salvage projects can be valuable to document a kind of maximum repertoire, and the authors’ diligence in recording the community elders is commendable. But after that promising opening vignette, we are never told if shépa has taken on a new life, perhaps modified in new popular forms, beyond the reified stagings of the Intangible Cultural Heritage—whose many problems they recognise:
In recent years, “traditional” ways to learn and perform Shépa have undergone rapid transformation in the Choné Tibetan community. The transmission of Shépa is increasingly privatised and its performance is becoming standardised in response to the inscription of this oral tradition into the Kenlho Prefectural-level register of the Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2016. The performative setting and standards for what constitutes a “good” performer are fast changing, and this process has also been accompanied by a reconceptualisation of what Shépa was, is, and will be.
The remaining seven sections of the Introduction document texts—myths, ** and wedding songs—without any further social-political analysis of changes in wedding customs and New Year’s observances over the previous decades. The book has no index.
Such research hardly features among the Shépa authors’ references. The book provides useful material on early history (migration, the Choné kings, Bon, Buddhist sects, warfare), but is entirely silent about social and political change since the 1950 Chinese occupation. So this is the last episode in their historical overview:
From the mid-19th century, the Luchu valley suffered several regional wars. The Choné people were at that point the largest Tibetan group ruled by the Choné kings. Time and again, they were either conscripted into the king’s militia to suppress insurgents for the Qing and the Republic of China (1912–49) or slaughtered by insurgents. Throughout this period, the Choné people suffered serious depopulation. Most Tibetan villages on the northern bank of the Luchu River were destroyed in warfare. To collect tax and recruit militiamen, the kings leased destroyed, bankrupted or empty [sic] households to Chinese migrants who had narrowly escaped with their lives from social unrest and natural catastrophes in neighbouring areas. This resulted in a steady inflow of Chinese migrants into Choné. By 1949, the Choné people had already become a minority within an ever-growing Chinese population.
The authors state their goal:
We hope that this book may serve as an entry point for the Choné Tibetan community in support of their goal of Shépa revitalisation and at the same time uplift their linguistic heritage and cultural dignity.
This is laudable, yet while they are well aware of “the socio-cultural dilemma facing all Choné people over the past several decades”, political constraints hamper their analysis. Cultural impoverishment in communities like these is not simply a function of some generalised modernisation; it is also indivisible from political history since the 1950s.
Of course we always have to read between the lines of PRC publications (see e.g. under Cultural Revolutions, and my two recent posts on opera and narrative-singing among Han Chinese communities in Gansu during the famine). The book’s four named authors are all based outside the PRC, and (like Amdo dwellers) doubtless have insights on the radical changes in society following the Chinese invasion in 1950, the devastation of communities as political campaigns escalated from 1956, and the new transformations since the 1980s. Even within the PRC, perspectives on the traumatic history of Tibetans (indeed, particularly Amdowa) under Maoism—and since—have not always been entirely off-limits.
But the period since 2015, when the authors were carrying out their own fieldwork, has been marked by intensified state surveillance amidst a severe deterioration in Tibetan–Chinese relations, with serious conflicts which they also pass over in silence, such as the 2008 unrest (e.g. here, under 15th June) and 2015 self-immolations (cf. Eat the Buddha). Their reluctance to broach such issues doubtless follows in part from their noble decision to involve as co-authors “the members of the Choné Tibetan community”; and the authors themselves, even while based outside the PRC, may not feel secure enough to avoid self-censorship. So my caveats are critical not of them, but of the extent of the climate of fear beyond the PRC.
Given that the book’s whole subject is cultural transmission, for which the era of Maoist extremism was a crucial period, I find it disturbing that discretion has obliged the authors to exclude all but the vaguest of allusions to it. Other topics left unexplored include migration, state education, and the vast influence of pop and mass media. Thus their account of “history” comes to an abrupt halt in 1950. While one must respect their decision, it limits the book’s value. I still wonder if there might be a way of giving some tactful clues to the painful maintenance of shépa; otherwise there’s a glaring lacuna, risking the kind of reified, timeless, rosy portrayals that are de rigueur in the Intangible Cultural Heritage mission.
Since the authors quite rightly esteem the elders of the community such as Grandfathers Meng Tusktor and Zhang Gyatso, * one wants to know more about the vicissitudes of their lives—through the late 1950s’ uprisings, the famine, the Cultural Revolution; did they manage to continue singing shépa in the early 1950s, the late 50s, even the 60s? Were any of them recruited to the new song-and-dance troupes funded by the Chinese state—and what was happening to the traditional contexts for shépa in local communities? Have performers and audiences expressed any opinions about all this?
And of course, apart from silent, immobile texts, we also need accessible audio/video recordings (see e.g. Amdo rituals: early and recent films)—something eminently realisable with online publishing.
Despite such lacunae, there is substantial material here for historians of (pre-1950) Amdo; with its trilingual format, it is designed to serve the Choné community, under the conditions in which they find themselves.
* On the minefield of Tibetan and Amdo transliteration, see Robbie Barnett’s introduction to Conflicting Memories.
** Including the bird-like deity Khyung, and Rübel (Cosmic Tortoise, a name just begging to be taken up by a Choné rock band—cf. the Croatian metal combo Teddy Bear Autopsy).
Rona LIghtfoot (b.1936), inspiration for new generations.
I rarely dip my toes into the folk cultures of these isles (So we’re not good enough for ye, that it? Off cavorting with all them non-nationals—The Plain People of Ireland). I’ve made so bold as to delve a little into Irish music (series here); in an obscure connection with Chinese yangge (Typical!), I learned a little about Morris dancing, and I’ve only recently made a bit of an effort to catch up on English folk-singing. Songlines is good on the changing scene, and I really should listen more to Late junction on BBC Radio 3. I had a passing acquaintance with Irish piping through the sterling work of Séamus Ennis, so now for some Scottish Gaelic piping.
I was reminded to listen up to the Scottish Highland smallpipes by an interview with Brìghde Chaimbeul. While grounded in the Skye tradition, she is pleasantly resistant to the “tartan and shortbread” image—as I am to kilts. From her YouTube channel, here’s her 2019 album The reeling (playlist):
Both the current scene and recordings are dominated by “the great Highland bagpipe” (GHP), but the mellower sound of smallpipes also creates an enchanting timbre. Historical evidence for the smallpipes is just as early: “used for dancing and entertainment in court and castle, later they became popular amongst burgh pipers, and town minstrels [,] until the early 19th century, when the demise of the town pipers led to their disappearing from the record.” But always suited to chamber ensemble playing, the smallpipes have enjoyed a revival since the 1980s.
While I don’t at all propound “the other classical traditions” (cf. What is serious music?!, and Joining the elite musical club), pibroch Is considered as “art music” (ceòl mòr “great music”), as opposed to ceòl beag ”small music” (more popular genres such as dances, reels, marches, and strathspeys). It appears to have been commonly played on the bagpipes since the 16th century. As aristocratic patronage and musical tastes shifted, pibroch migrated over time from the clàrsach harp and the fiddle, which have also taken part in cycles of revival—partly based on early manuscripts notated from canntaireachd oral mnemonics. The pibroch repertoire is common to both the GHP and smallpipes.
Niall Mòr MacMhuirich (c1550–1630), poet to the MacDonalds of Clanranald, didn’t mince his words:
John MacArthur’s screeching bagpipes, is like a diseased heron, full of spittle, long limbed and noisy, with an infected chest like that of a grey curlew. Of the world’s music Donald’s pipe, is a broken down outfit, offensive to a multitude, sending forth its slaver through its rotten bag, it was a most disgusting filthy deluge…
This contrasts aptly with a poem by Alasdair mac Mhaighstir Alasdair (c1695 –1770) in praise of the pipes:
Thy chanter’s shout gives pleasure, Sighing thy bold variations. Through every lively measure; The war note intent on rending, White fingers deft are pounding, To hack both marrow and muscles, You shamed the harp, Like untuned fiddle’s tone, Dull strains for maids, And men grown old and done: Better thy shrill blast, From gamut brave and gay, Rousing up men to the destructive fray…
The simple distinction between large and small pieces, doubtless found in many cultures, reminds me of Chinese instrumental suites—as does the structure of large pieces:
Pibroch is a theme with variations. The theme is usually a very simple melody, though few if any pibroch contain the theme in its simplest form. The theme is first stated in a slow movement called the ground or in Gaelic the ùrlar. This is usually a fairly stylised version of the theme, and usually includes numerous added embellishments and connecting notes.
This passage from the wiki article strikes a chord:
While the conventional accounts of the origins of pibroch are largely characterised by an aggrandising romanticism common to antiquarian appropriations of remnant historical traditions in the late 18th century and early 19th century, there are substantial surviving authentic musical documents that concur with a living tradition of performed repertoire, providing a grounding for any debate over authoritative accounts of the tradition.
While the soundscape of the pipes is beguiling, until we immerse ourselves in the style—monophony with drone, only not recalling Indian raga much at all!—a little goes a long way. Laments, salutes, and gatherings feature prominently in the pibroch repertoire. Among rich documentation for the GHP, a useful starting point is the website of the School of Scottish Studies Archives (introduction, specifically here). On YouTube, here’s a playlist of 209 early recordings:
Among the leading lineages of modern times are Cameron and MacPherson. For the former, here’s an early recording of Robert Reid (1895–1965):
The going was tough for the members of the BBC Symphony Orchestra in the years following the regime of William Glock. A rigorous, ear-scouring diet of avant-garde music was leavened only occasionally by returns to the core symphonic repertoire, as well as dutiful lip service to the “cowpat” school of early-20th-century English composers—although I recall being impressed by Arnold Bax’s Tintagel.
The first cycle of Five songs from the Chinese poets (score) set English texts by Bantock’s friend the euphoniously-named Launcelot Cranmer Byng, after Tang poems by Zhang Zhihe, Du Fu, Li Bai, Tong Hanqing, and Sikong Tu. All but one appear in A lute of jade (1909)—one of the first collections of Chinese poetry that I bought (probably from Watkins) while still at school. The cycle was arranged for string quartet in 1933 as In a Chinese mirror. According to this post, some of the lyrics of Songs of China were written by Bantock’s wife Helen.
From the second set (score), here’s John McCormack singing a version of a text by the Tang poet Cen Shen in 1927:
* * *
Bantock also composed Chinese-inspired works on a larger canvas. Besides Choral suite from the Chinese (1914, again to texts by Cranmer Byng), I note the orchestral Four Chinese landscapes (1936)—the latter mostly directed by Walter Collins in 1946:
To the modern ear, such sketches are no more enticing than the works of Chinese composers trained in the WAM idiom such as Xian Xinghai, Nie Er and He Luting (a focus for much ideological wrangling in China over the following decades). But “it is what it is“: Bantock and others were part of a lasting European fascination with the Mystic East (see e.g. More East–West gurus), as yet largely uninformed by later fieldwork in the folk cultures of a vast region.
For later Eastern-inspired works, see e.g. Messiaen, and the ambivalent reaction of Toru Takemitsu to Japanese tradition. For the great Bruno Nettl‘s taxonomy of responses to the growing hegemony of Western musics in developing societies, click here. For Tang poetry, see under A Tang mélange.
I may seem like a fully-paid-up member of the Guardian-reading, tofu-eating wokerati, but the Guardian‘s end-of-year cultural lists can be mystifying, serving largely to enhance my sense of becoming an Old Fogey (cf. Staving off old age).
As to “new music” (an article with the peak Guardian comment “it’s been an incredible year for Brazilian baile funk”), WTAF?! For me, still catching up on the stile nuovo (n.1 here), even an end-of-year playlist for 1707 (Bach, Handel) would be rather modern—and how about the New Music of the Tang dynasty, eh, with Sogdian dance grooves All the Rage through the reign of Xuanzong. Take THAT, Guardian!
A gripping fictional portrayal of espionage in World War Two Is
William Boyd, Restless (2006)
(well reviewed here, and Q&A session).
Here’s the opening:
When I was a child and was being fractious and contrary and generally behaving badly, my mother used to rebuke me by saying “One day someone will come and kill me and then you’ll be sorry”, or, “They’ll appear out of the blue and whisk me away—how would you like that?”, or, “You’ll wake up one morning and I’ll be gone. Disappeared. You wait and see.”
It’s curious, but you don’t think seriously about these remarks when you’re young. But now—as I look back on the events of that interminable hot summer of 1976, that summer when England reeled, gasped for breath, pole-axed by the unending heat—now I know what my mother was talking about. I understand that bitter dark current of fear that flowed beneath the placid surface of her ordinary life—how it had never left her even after years of peaceful, unexceptional living. I now realise that she was always frightened that someone was going to come and kill her. And she had good reason.
It was only in 1976, in the genteel setting of Oxford, that Sally Gilmartin finally felt compelled to make a series of revelations to her daughter Ruth, confiding her true identity as Eva Delectorskaya, who had worked as a spy for the British during the war.
Eva’s family had fled Russia upon the 1917 revolution, from St Petersburg and Vladivostok on to Tientsin, Shanghai, Tokyo, Berlin, and Paris. In 1939, while living in Paris, Eva was recruited for the British Secret Service, and trained at a secret mansion in Scotland, “an eccentric boarding school” for spies where she learned about codes, how to drive, shoot a gun, forge documents, tail suspects and evade those on her trail, and to speak like a young, middle-class, privately-educated English woman.
Warned by her suave mentor and boss Lucas Romer never to trust anybody, nonetheless, in wiki’s mot juste, Eva does indeed fall for him. After a mission in Belgium goes badly wrong, the plot thickens further in London. On the eve of Pearl Harbor, amidst the shifting, labyrinthine agendas of the German and Soviet secret services, Eva is part of a British mission concocting propaganda to persuade the USA to join the war—under cover of innocuous institutional fronts in New York and Washington, leading her to a gory betrayal in New Mexico.
Returning bereft to New York, finally trusting no-one, Eva makes an assignation in a cartoon theatre:
She waited two hours for Morris at the theatre, sitting in the back row of the near-empty cinema, watching a succession of Mickey Mouse, Daffy Duck, and Tom and Jerry cartoons interspersed with newsreels that occasionally contained news of the war in Europe. “Germany’s war machine falters at the gates of Moscow”, the announcer intoned with massive, hectoring insistence, “General Winter takes command of. The battlefield”. She saw horses floundering up to their withers in mud as fluid and gluey as melted chocolate; she saw exhausted, gaunt German soldiers with sheets tied around them as camouflage, numbly running from house to house; frozen bodies in the snow taking on the properties of shattered trees or outcrops of rock: iron-hard, wind-lashed, unmovable; burning villages lighting the thousands of Russian soldiers scurrying forward across the icy fields in counter-attack. She tried to imagine what was happening there in the countryside around Moscow—Moscow, where she had been born, and which she couldn’t remember at all—and found that her brain refused to supply her with any answers. Donald Duck took over, to her relief. People began to laugh.
Moving on to Canada, after Pearl Harbor she makes her way back to England. Shocked by further sinister betrayals, she carefully constructs a new identity:
It took her a day or two to calculate how it might just be done. In bombed-out London, she logically supposed, people must be constantly losing everything they owned. What did you do if your block of flats collapsed and burned while you were cowering in your basement shelter in your underclothes? You stumble out, dressed in pyjamas and dressing-gown, into the dawn after the “all-clear”, to find that everything you possessed had been incinerated. People had to start again, almost as if they had been reborn: all your documentation, clothing, housing, proofs of identification had to be re-acquired. The Blitz and now these night raids had been going on since September 1940, over a year, now, with thousands and thousands of dead and missing. She knew black marketeers exploited the dead, kept them alive for a while to claim their rations and petrol coupons. Perhaps there was an opening for her, here. So she began to scan the newspapers looking for accounts of the worst attacks with the biggest number of casualties—forty, fifty, sixty people killed or missing. A day or two later names would be printed in the papers and sometimes photographs. She began looking for missing women about her age.
Sally/Eva’s new domestic mask seems to have ensured her safety, but in a tense dénouement she enlists her daughter to confront the threat.
As the novel alternates the voices of the two women, the period detail is evocative, both for the war years and for 1976 Oxford (hire-purchase, malls, buskers, Hare Krishna, glue-sniffing punks). Ruth, a single mum, teaches English to foreigners—including Hamid, whom she later spots at a demo against the Shah. A sub-plot involves Ruth’s own relationship with Germany, with a vignette on the Red Army Faction.
Here’s a trailer for the all-star BBC TV adaptation of Restless (2012):
For those of us who grew up churlishly dismissive of our parents’ drab lives, neither knowing nor caring much about their personal stories, with our mutual “don’t talk about the war” pact, it makes an intriguing fantasy. I still have to assume my mother’s backstory wasn’t as colourful as that of Eva.
Precious scrolls of village ritual associations near Houshan, Hebei: left, “Demon-queller scroll”, Lijiafen; right, “Ten Kings scroll”, Jijiagou.
My sideline in “precious scrolls” (baojuan寶卷) [1] goes back to our 1990s’ field project on the central Hebei plain, when we were impressed to find a substantial treasure-trove of early editions in villages of Yixian and Laishui counties—and particularly to witness them still being performed by the liturgists of amateur ritual associations there (see under The Houshan Daoists and The Houtu precious scroll).
While the central Hebei plain, and the living performance of its early sectarian scriptures, remain my main focus in baojuan studies, after this recent note on the traditions of Gansu my wider interest has been further piqued by the latest in a succession of anthologies:
whose 50 volumes contain 150 precious scrolls, each with an introductory synopsis. They belong mainly to sectarian groups such as Wuwei 無為, Huangtian dao 黄天道, Xi Dacheng jiao 西大乘教, and Hongyang jiao 弘阳教 / Hunyuan jiao 混元教, many of which feature in our fieldnotes on Local ritual in Hebei (see e.g. Ritual groups of Jinghai).
As instances of texts that we found in rural Hebei, vols. 24 and 25 comprise six editions of the “Demon-queller scroll” Huguo youmin Fumo baojuan護國佑民伏魔寶卷, performed until recently for mortuary rituals in villages around Houshan. Of early printed scrolls that we found in Gaoluo village, the “White Clothes scroll” Xiaoshi Baiyi Guanyin pusa song ying’er xiasheng baojuan銷釋白衣觀音菩薩送嬰兒下生寶卷 is in vol.29, and the Fuguo zhenzhai lingying Zaowang baojuan 富國鎮宅靈應竈王寶卷 in vol.38 (cf. the Gaoluo editions, from 1745 and 1720 respectively). The compendium also includes the “Dizang scroll” 地藏王菩薩執掌幽冥寶卷 (vol.29) and “Ten Kings scroll” 泰山東嶽十王寶卷 (vol.30), preserved by nearby village ritual associations in early editions. In this region at least, the most commonly performed scrolls address the major preoccupations of Chinese villagers: birth (to Guanyin and Houtu), and death (to Demon-queller, Dizang, and the Ten Kings).
* * *
I can’t keep up with the “baojuan fever” that has grown since the 1990s. These notes serve as much for my benefit than yours—rather, perhaps, we constantly seek to refine and clarify our earlier studies.
Baojuan is an umbrella term for a range of texts. Many scholars have considered baojuan more as “folk literature”, or as a textual window onto early sectarian religion, than as a living performance tradition. Pu Wenqi’s own long-term research set forth from studying sectarian (if not always “secret”) folk religion in north China—under the aegis of the great Li Shiyu 李世瑜 (1922–2010); and it was Li Shiyu who blazed a trail in unpacking structural elements of baojuan in ritual performance, which are among the many themes discussed by later specialists.
The research paths of scholars have depended largely on which among the diverse types of baojuan were prevalent in their own region and to which they had access (cf. “blind people groping at the elephant“). As a broad outline, the early “religious” style has mainly been found near Beijing, while later “folk” texts are common in east-central China and the northwest.
Actually, in my earlier posts (based on Plucking the winds, and Appendix 3 of In search of the folk Daoists of north China) I appear to have had a basic grasp of the place of the Hebei scrolls in baojuan studies. As I noted, “while scholarship on the precious scrolls has tended to be more historical and sinological than contemporary and ethnographic”, “the whole point of these precious scrolls is that they are performed for rituals—they’re not musty tomes to be read silently in libraries.” What struck me about the Hebei scrolls was that they belonged very much to the early “religious” type of baojuan, but were still part of a living tradition—most performers we met were liturgists within ascriptive village-wide ritual associations, which had sectarian connections within living memory. And we found the classic structure of early religious baojuan to which Li Shiyu drew attention in 1957: 24 chapters (pin品 or fen分), each incorporating ten-word form, qupai labeled melodies, and so on (see under The Houtu precious scroll).
Of course, just as baojuan only constitute only one small sub-head among the vast mass of Daoist and Buddhist scriptures, they were just one component of the manuals performed by the liturgists whom we visited (see A tribute to two vocal liturgists, Gaoluo: vocal liturgists, Funerals in Hebei). (And zooming out still further, as Adam Yuet Chau reminds us, we need to overcome the hegemony of discursive/scriptural texts, when so much of the meaning of religious activity in society is relational and non-literate!)
Background Early advocates for the study of baojuan were Gu Jiegang from 1924, and Zheng Zhenduo 郑振铎, inspiring a succession of articles in the 1930s and 40s. In the first catalogue, published in 1951, Fu Xihua 傅惜华 listed 246 scrolls in Baojuan zonglu宝卷总录—the same title that Li Shiyu used for his 1960 catalogue, listing 618 scrolls in 1,487 editions.
Since the 1980s, as baojuan came out into the open both in performance and research, scholars have reflected further on origins and classification. Two authoritative figures in baojuan studies are Pu Wenqi濮文起and Che Xilun 车锡伦. Following Che Xilun’s useful 2001 retrospective, his major book Zhongguo baojuan yanjiu中国宝卷研究 (2009) contains both an overview and case studies. Similarly, alongside chapters on specific themes, Pu Wenqi and Li Yongping 李永平 eds., Baojuan yanjiu 宝卷研究 (2019), includes surveys by Pu Wenqi himself and by Wang Mingbo 王明博 and Li Guisheng 李贵生. In English, the detailed studies of Rostislav Berezkin on traditions of baojuan performance in south Jiangsu include useful introductions to the wider topic (cf. my Appendix under Ningxia).
Che Xilun has distinguished “religious baojuan” before the Kangxi reign (1662–1722) from later “folk baojuan”—with subdivisions: [2]
A) Before the Kangxi reign: “religious baojuan” 明正德 (1505–21) 以前“佛教世俗化宝卷”: “演释佛经” “讲唱因缘” 正德后“民间宗教宝卷”: “宣讲教义” “讲唱故事”
B) After the Kangxi reign: “folk baojuan” “劝世文” “祝祷仪式” “讲唱故事”: “神道故事” “妇女修行故事” “民间传说故事<” “俗文学传统故事” “时事故事” “小卷”
Catalogues and anthologies By the 1990s, catalogues were expanding significantly, such as
Che Xilun, Zhongguo baojuan zongmu中国宝卷总目 (2000, after a 1998 Taiwan edition), listing 1,585 scrolls in over 5,000 editions.
Wide-ranging anthologies of the texts themselves were also published, such as
Wang Jianchuan 王见川 and Lin Wanchuan 林万传 (eds), Ming-Qing minjian zongjiao jingjuan wenxian 明清民间宗教经卷文献 (1991) (12 vols, 207 texts) and the 2006 sequel edited by Wang Jianchuan, Che Xilun, et al. (12 vols, 204 texts), mostly consisting of baojuan.
Ma Xisha 马西沙, another long-term scholar of folk sectarian religion, has also addressed baojuan, including the major anthology
Zhonghua zhenben baojuan中华珍本宝卷 (2013) contains 30 vols, with 138 texts,
before Pu Wenqi’s recent collection with which I opened this survey.
Regional fieldwork and research Much of the collection work has long consisted in editing baojuan held in libraries and private collections, but fieldwork became an increasingly important source of texts—often bringing further insights from observing living performance (in another useful overview, see §3 and §5 here).
There had been a few such projects under Maoism, in a period when both performance and research were becoming increasingly risky (cf. the work of Yang Yinliu and his colleagues at the Music Research Institute in Beijing). [3] But fieldwork could only begin in earnest with the liberal reform era since the 1980s. Around Tianjin and further afield, Li Shiyu resumed his work with alacrity—now with a keen disciple in Pu Wenqi.
South Jiangsu and Zhejiang became popular sites for fieldwork, with a particular focus on ritual groups around the Suzhou region, notably Jingjiang (see here, and n.1 here). Again, many texts were published, [4] and fieldwork encouraged scholars to observe actual performance practice—often in the context of zuohui 做会 religious gatherings. In English, after a 2001 article by Mark Bender on the Jingjiang tradition, Rostislav Berezkin has expanded the field in a series of detailed articles.
Another lively site for baojuan studies was the Hexi corridor of Gansu (here I cited this recent survey by Cheng Guojun 程国君). Local cultural workers such as Duan Ping 段平 and Fang Buhe 方步和 were early collectors. [5] The numinous ancient site of Dunhuang tempted some researchers to embroider a connection with early bianwen religious narratives there—a tendency (akin to the persistent “living fossil” shtick, and further mired in romantic fantasies of the Tang and Silk Road) that Che Xilun disputed in his 1999 article “Ming-Qing minjian zongjiao yu Gansude nianjuan he baojuan” 明清民间宗教与甘肃的念卷和宝卷. Nearby, baojuan traditions were also discovered in the Mani assemblies 嘛呢会 of largely Tibetan areas of eastern Qinghai (see e.g. Liu Yonghong 刘永红, Qinghai baojuan yanjiu 青海宝卷研究, 2013); see also under Ningxia.
The baojuan of south Jiangsu and Gansu, while numerous (and again based in ritual performance), are mostly in the later “folk” style, not so early as the early 24-chapter sectarian scrolls that we found on the Hebei plain. For north China, besides Pu Wenqi, other scholars paying attention to the latter kind of baojuan include Cao Xinyu, Yin Hubin尹虎彬, and Liang Jingzhi 梁景之.
In the great Anthology of folk music of the Chinesepeoples, baojuan falls within the scope of the relevant provincial volumes for narrative-singing: Zhongguo quyi yinyue jicheng 中国曲艺音乐集成, and particularly the historical material of Zhongguo quyi zhi 中国曲艺志 (see e.g. under Famine and expressive culture). Foreign scholars of baojuan include Daniel Overmyer (for north China), Rostislav Berezkin (south Jiangsu), Victor Mair and Wilt Idema (Gansu).
As always, silent library study cries out (sic) to be enriched by documenting the soundscape and bustle of ritual in social life (cf. More films). To complement the vast corpus of published texts, and textual studies of their ritual context, even a modest collection of audio/video recordings of baojuan in folk performance is most desirable (my usual caveat: I refer to field recordings, rather than the reified, sanitised staged versions of the Intangible Cultural Heritage project!). The CD with my 2004 book Plucking the winds has a paltry two audio tracks from the Houtu scroll (one of which features on the playlist on this blog, with commentary here—and I look forward to making a new documentary on the 1995 New Year’s rituals in Gaoluo!!!). And click here for a video clip from a ritual performance by a group in Shaoxing.
[1] Though I use the term “precious scrolls”, which has attained a certain niche currency, allow me to repeat Dan Overmyer’s observation (n.3 here) that baojuan is more properly rendered as “precious volumes”.
[2] I’m not sure how useful is Che Xilun’s further distinction between “literary” and “non-literary” baojuan (按照宝卷的内容和题材，又可将宝卷分为“文学宝卷”（包括各个时期讲唱故事的宝卷及民间宝卷中的“小卷”和部分“祝祷仪式”宝卷）、“非文学宝卷”（包括宗教宝卷中“演释佛经”“宣讲教义”的宝卷和民间宝卷中的“劝世文”及部分“祝祷仪式”宝卷）两大类。)
[3] In south Jiangsu, Jiangsu nanbu minjian xiqu shuochang yinyue ji江苏南部民间戏曲说唱音乐集 (1955) was part of a project collecting material on opera and narrative-singing. And for Jiexiu in Shanxi, Zhang Han 张颔,Shanxi minjian liuchuande baojuan chaoben山西民间流传的宝卷抄本 (1957) used material collected in 1946—see also Li Yu 李豫, Shanxi Jiexiu Zhanglan diqu baojuan wenxue diaocha baogao 山西介休张兰地区宝卷文学调查报告 (2010), and the chapter by Sun Hongliang 孙鸿亮 in Baojuan yanjiu.
[4] E.g. Zhongguo Heyang baojuan ji 中国河阳宝卷集 (2007); You Hong 尤红 et al. eds, ZhongguoJingjiang baojuan 中国靖江宝卷 (2007); Lu Yongfeng 陆永峰 and Che Xilun 车锡伦 eds, Jingjiang baojuan yanjiu 靖江宝卷研究, 2008; Che Xilun ed., Zhongguo minjian baojuan wenxian jicheng, Jiangsu Wuxi juan 中国民间宝卷文献集成·江苏无锡卷 (2014, 15 vols).
[5] As in all walks of life, both performers and scholars bore the scars of Maoist campaigns. Following her tribulations around 1960 as one of the Spark protesters blowing the whistle on the famine, Tan Chanxue 谭禅雪 was based from 1982 to 1998 at the Dunhuang Research Institute, where as part of her studies of Dunhuang folklore she published articles on, and editions of, baojuan.
In her memoir she evokes her journey with Lomax around Virginia, Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, and Arkansas, recording mountain ballad singers, pentecostal choirs, blind fiddlers, and inmates of a state penitentiary. Lomax had already visited some of the venues and musicians with his father John in the 1930s and 40s. It’s most rewarding to read Collins’s book for the texture it provides on the excitement and challenges of fieldwork—all the more to do so while dipping into some of the audio material available online, as I do below. Some of her accounts are taken from letters she sent home to her mother and sister Dolly.
All these vignettes alternate with her account of her early life in drab post-war England. Her disappointing experiences working at Cecil Sharp House, the gradual blossoming of the folk music scene (rippling out from the Troubadour in Earls Court), singing trips to Warsaw and Moscow. And after she got to know Ewan MacColl, in 1954 he invited her to a party where she met Alan Lomax—just back from three years collecting songs in Spain and Italy—and they soon moved in together, Shirley working as his editorial assistant. At their home in Highgate they often hosted visiting American bluesmen. Shirley recorded her first two solo LPs.
After Lomax returned to the States in 1958, he invited her to join her on a fieldtrip around the south. So in April 1959 Shirley embarked on the five-day voyage by liner to New York. After the cloistered austerity of the British diet, food looms large in her account—starting on board:
French exotic fruit for breakfast, fruit that I’d never seen outside a tin, eggs cooked in ways I’d never heard of. […] thick beef steaks, turkey […] seafood… delicious dressings and sauces….
And once In New York, pizza, avocado, ice-cream…
I was unworldly and twenty years his junior. What I had in my favour was youth, energy, intelligence, a capacity for hard work, and an innately sound instinct and understanding of the music we both loved.
Driving to Chicago they stayed with Studs Terkel and his wife, before taking the train to California—Shirley still constantly amazed by the opulence of the food.
Shirley Collins with Alan Lomax at the Berkeley Folk Festival, June 1959. Source.
Appearing at the Berkeley Folk Festival, she met some fine singers. But she had reservations about the Cali lifestyle:
Nothing seemed quite real, nothing had bite or zest. There seemed little that was robust about urban Californians, they were just too bland—extremely and instantly friendly, but insubstantial, and I couldn’t help but wonder what the pioneers would have made of it all.
Returning to Chicago (Shirley’s first flight), they set off by car for more folk festivals. She delighted in local radio stations (jaunty ads for family bibles, and country music, with songs like Let’s have a lot more Jesus and a lot less rock and roll—recorded by Wayne Raney that very year.
* * *
They now set off on their epic journey south, funded enterprisingly by Atlantic Records. Among their tribulations, they were often confronted by both severe poverty and racism. In the Blue Ridge mountain villages of Virginia
we drive up and down rough old tracks to tumble-down wooden shacks, decaying wood and furniture, and there’s always a couple of mangy hound dogs who race and bark at the car.
Arriving at the port of Norfolk, Alan drove off to the black quarter, telling Shirley to stay in the car (cf. David McAllester among the Navajo). In Suffolk and Belleville they visited churches:
Nobody was welcoming us; I could understand why people would be wary of white strangers, even though we were accompanied by a black man, but it was dispiriting.
In Salem they visited the ballad singer Texas Gladden, whom Lomax and his father John had already recorded in 1946, and they drove over to see her brothers Hobart Smith and Preston, also fine musicians. With the apologetic disclaimer “We ain’t got much to offer ye”, Hobe’s family presented a table
laden with yellow corn-bread, country ham, scrambled chicken, fried potatoes, apple sauce, cinnamon apple jelly, home-preserved beans, macaroni cheese, sweet country butter, salad, peaches, grape jelly…
Shirley was much taken by banjo-player Uncle Wade Ward of Galax (first recorded by the Lomaxes in 1939), 81-year-old Charlie Higgins, claiming to play on a 200-year-old fiddle, and Dale Poe on guitar. Here’s a taste of their sessions:
I loved watching Alan at work, building affection and trust. Recording in the field is a difficult task, but Alan brought to it his years of experience, wide-ranging knowledge, unfailing patience, humour, enthusiasm, judgement, and integrity. He could calm a nervous performer with his informal approach or give confidence to an anxious one.He had an infectious chuckle and a down-to-earth friendliness and warmth that charmed people. It was obvious that he loved them and their music, and they responded to him by giving their best. Strangers became friends.
Shirley’s own voice can be heard only in a few of the recordings on the archive.
They came across a gang of black railroad workers:
By now Alan had shaved off his beard so as not to draw more attention to his “foreignness”. Moving on to Kentucky, as they glimpsed hardship, deprivation, and feuds, Shirley started to feel afraid. At Mount Olivet the Old Regular Baptists were not exactly hostile—she just felt unnerved by their watchfulness and silence. Their voices were “harsh, strangled, and fervent” (audio e.g. here)—”people in torment”. They also track down old-timers of the Memphis Jug Band.
In Alabama Shirley found it thrilling and enthralling to hear the Sacred Harp Singers—a tradition that uses ”shape-note” notation. Here’s a diachronic compilation:
One of the older ladies expressed surprise that I spoke their language so well, evidence, not of ignorance, but of the isolation of their lives.
There, for once, they received a warm welcome—but they were soon jolted back to the racist reality, with KKK signs in evidence.
It pointed up the paradoxes of the South: cruel and kind, mean and hospitable, illiterate and witty.
They recorded a gospel competition and a baptism at a black church. And so on to Mississippi, and three days at the Parchman Farm state penitentiary, where the Lomaxes had recorded work-songs, blues, and field hollers since the 1930s—though Shirley wasn’t allowed out into the fields, having to stay inside. This programme discusses recordings at Parchman from 1933 to 1969—here’s a song later made famous by the Coen brothers’ film O Brother where art thou? (2000):
They drove to Senatobia to find the blind fiddle player Sid Hemphill (1876–1963), whom again Lomax had recorded in 1942 (click here for both sessions). He was also an exponent of a most remarkable genre, the ecstatic fife and drum music of the region, for which he directed them to Lonnie and Ed Young in Como (cf. later film clips in The land where the blues began [below], from 8.00; and e.g. this footage from 1966).
And then… Lonnie invited his neighbour Fred McDowell over, perhaps the most legendary of Lomax’s “discoveries” (wiki; YouTube channel, e.g. this playlist). Shirley recalls:
I am ashamed to say that at first I resented the intrusion by a younger man into the atmosphere made by the old musicians with their ancient and fascinating sounds. I didn’t want that spell broken. Fred started to play bottleneck guitar, a shimmering and metallic sound. HIs singing was quiet but strong and with a heart-stopping intensity. By the time he’d finished his first blues we knew we were in the presence of a great and extraordinary musician. [….] I shall never forget the first sight I had of Fred in his dungarees, carrying his guitar and walking out of the trees towards us in a Mississippi night.
In Arkansas they arrived in Hughes, Alan again leaving Shirley in the car while he got a lead to a gambling den with good blues singers—another place it seemed better for him to visit without her. Meeting up again in Memphis a couple of days later, they visited more black churches, whose music Shirley found “wild and terrifying”. They drove up into the Ozarks to meet Jimmy Driftwood, whose home “was full of fiddles, banjos, and mouthbows, most of them home-made, the finest of which he’d made from a bed-head, and the roughest from a fence-post!”. They also recorded 84-year-old Charlie Everidge accompanying his songs with a mouthbow:
They ended their field trip with a visit to St Simons in the Georgia Sea Islands, finding singers like Bessie Jones (audio here), with songs and folklore from the days of slavery—while witnessing further racism. The long trip back up north was eventful too.
Atlantic Records issued the LP “Sounds of the South” in 1960 (playlist):
* * *
After Shirley returned to England in January that year, she and Alan went their separate ways. As outlined in my first post, in the 2022 edition she updates the progression of her life thereafter—teaming up with Davy Graham and her sister Dolly, with the folkies entering an alliance with the Early Music movement and David Munrow, her time with the Albion band; divorces, disphonia, and being rediscovered in her later years. The 2017 film The ballad of Shirley Collins is punctuated by reflections on the 1959 trip with Lomax, which remains a remarkable instalment in the history of song collection.
* * *
Chapter 10 of Michael Church’s book Musics lost and found makes a good introduction to the work of Alan Lomax and his father John.
John brought celebrated singers including Lead Belly into the limelight; the classic songs he collected and anthologised helped redefine American culture. Alan Lomax’s effect on that culture was seismic, as he made his own discoveries, and as a singer-collector-impresario led folk-blues revivals in both America and Britain. His books, plays, and radio programmes championed the music of the dispossessed; he played a leading part in the musical revolution which threw up Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, and the Beatles. Meanwhile with his researches in Haiti, Spain, and Italy he opened up new fields in musicology. And drawing on his archive of films, videotapes, and sound recordings he promoted “Cantometrics”, a system of song-classification which he himself had created, and which he messianically believed could unify—musically at least—the world.
The Lomax Archive (1959–60 recordings here) has enough material to last us a lifetime (further material on YouTube, also here). While they could only make audio recordings for the 1959 trip, later projects were much enhanced by video. Among five films made from footage shot by Alan Lomax between 1979 and 1985, he makes an engaging host in Appalachian journey (1991):
And do watch the 1979 documentary The land where the blues began (which he adapted into a book of the same title in 1993)—e.g. here, as playlist.
The definitive biography of Alan Lomax is John Szwed, The man who recorded the world (2011). Beyond the States, having already recorded in the Bahamas and Haiti (1935–6, the latter trip with Zara Neale Hurston), Lomax went on to make celebrated trips collecting song in Spain (1952, coming into conflict with the fascist authorities) and Italy (1954–5).
I’ll end on a lighter note. As Michael Church relates in Musics lost and found,
a 1957 issue of the London magazine Punch carried a cartoon of a ragged farmer sitting outside his shack and disconsolately singing “I’ve got those Alan-Lomax-ain’t-been-round-to-record-me blues”.
As an Early Music performer manqué, I (along with most of my colleagues) never delved deeply into theoretical issues. Akin to factory workers, we were more concerned with turning up for the gig, getting the notes right, and keeping together. Only quite recently have I begun to admire the work of scholars like Richard Taruskin and John Butt.
Andrew Parrott’s book The Pursuit of Musick (2022) is astutely reviewed for the LRB (“Hickup over the Litany“) by Peter Phillips, based on his own experience in the Early Music world as director of the Tallis Scholars over half a century. Phillips opens by observing:
One of the abiding mysteries in presenting music from the past is what the singers sounded like. There is no evidence for it, apart from written descriptions, all of which fall far short of telling us anything precise.
Citing a description of the singing in the Chapel Royal in 1515, written by the Venetian ambassador to Henry VIII’s court: “More divine than human; they were not singing but jubilating [giubilavano]”, Phillips comments: “the exact meaning of ‘giubilavano’ has been long debated, to no avail”. He goes on to ask
And what does this résumé of national styles, written in 1517, tell us? “The French sing; the Spaniards weepe; the Italians, which dwell about the Coasts of Genoa, caper with their Voyces; the others bark; but the Germanes … doe howle like wolves.”
Thus in recreating the sounds of early music, instrumentalists had more to build on than singers:
Performing on copies of old instruments produced cleaner textures. Research indicated lighter and quicker tempi, and suddenly the colours inherent in the orchestration became apparent, like the colours concealed under centuries of varnish on Old Master paintings. Singing followed suit. Romantic slush became almost morally unacceptable, when it was realised that vibrato in singing, as in playing, had gone too far by the 1960s. The only difference was that the instrumentalists were building on solid foundations, and the singers on what was sometimes no more than guesswork.
He refers to Parrott:
In 1707, Thomas Brown wrote that some of the singing men at St Paul’s Cathedral and Westminster Abbey “dayly come wreeking hot out of a Bawdy-House into the Church; and others Stagger out of a Tavern to Afternoon-Prayers, and Hickup over a little of the Littany, and so back again”.
—observing that “at times one wonders whether Parrott, after all, isn’t out to persuade us that standards in the past weren’t as high as they are now”.
Whereas Parrott was always more radical, sometimes even contrary, Phillips is among those choral directors who concluded that
the cake isn’t worth the candle, and one might as well go back to basics, look at the music carefully and create a sound which seems to suit what the composer may have wanted, as seen through his scores, and which pleases a modern public.
He notes the common accusation that
the reinvention of the past was doing no more than anaesthetising and colonising it, to give modern people a comfortable sense of nostalgia and possession. And in fussing about minutiae of detail, which might have been misleadingly reported and interpreted, it could distract performers from giving themselves wholeheartedly to a convincing, living interpretation.
Indeed, the Early Music revolution gave way to box-office pragmatism (see e.g. here, and here).
Among those criticising the Early Music movement was Pierre Boulez—here he offered a more recent example:
It is not clear that one would really be pleasing the composer […] by re-establishing performance circumstances that could never have been entirely satisfactory. Stravinsky asserted the unique documentary value of his own recordings and maintained that future interpreters should study them and be obliged to refer to them. Unfortunately, though, his precarious gifts as a performer, the circumstances and time pressures under which the recordings were made and the quality of the forces at his disposal do not let us regard this evidence as any sort of absolute model. In any case, can there be such a thing? Every interpretation conveys an essentially transitory truth.
Along with notes on falsetto, and pronunciation, Phillips cites Richard Sherr on the Sistine Chapel Choir in Palestrina’s time,
when it was the premier choir in Christendom. What indeed would Palestrina say, given the standards of the choir that habitually sang his works at the time, if he could hear modern performances? His music, so perfectly formed, so gleaming, cries out for the kind of choral discipline which is rare today, but must then have been non-existent. [Sherr:] “What is surprising, perhaps, is the number of papal singers throughout the 16th century who were thought by their contemporaries not to have been competent.” […]
The adjectives used to describe them include “harsh” (aspra), “hoarse” (rauca), “dissonant” (disona: “untuned”) … and they are occasionally associated with the noun imbecillitas (“weakness”). Many of them were routinely ill, or absent, some were very old but couldn’t be sacked, and some had been admitted without taking an audition. “In short,” Sherr concludes, “we may really not want to hear the music the Sistine Choir sang in the age of Palestrina in the way that they sang it.”
Phillips too reflects,
I have no doubt that if we were really to recreate an evening with an 18th-century orchestra, or a service with a 16th-century choir, we would be horrified by the standard of performance, and disgusted by the smells.
Phillips adduces Parrott’s 1987 recording of Allegri’s Miserere, shorn of its famous high C:
He moves on to the earliest surviving recordings of (WAM) singers—Caruso, and (also eschewing vibrato) this remarkable 1904 version of Ave Maria by Alessandro Moreschi, then 45 “and reportedly past his prime”:
(Moreschi was part of the Sistine Chapel Choir when they recorded Mozart’s Ave verum corpus in 1902, but not so you’d hear..).
If trends can change that much in a century, how much more must they have changed in five hundred years?
His review ends gloomily:
You are left with the impression that old music, when presented narrowly, is for old people.
* * *
Of course, the sound of early singing is still with us, perhaps not so much in the world of Western Art Music as in folk and popular musics (cf. Peter Burke on Popular culture in early modern Europe), in “world” traditions (e.g. Peter Jeffery for liturgy) —and, one might say, in daily life (on a lighter note, click here for a London taxi-driver’s interpretation of the term “early music”). I’m also keen to learn what Phillips has to say about the way that vocal and instrumental sounds of North Africa and the Middle East have been incorporated by interpreters of medieval music, such as Jantina Noorman with Musica Reservata, or in the work of Jordi Savall and Hespèrion XX. And in European regional folk genres we might find clues in living traditions to the way “Spaniards weepe” in the cante jondo of Andalucian flamenco, or how “the Italians, which dwell about the Coasts of Genoa, caper with their Voyces” in trallalero (under Italy: folk musicking). However imprecise, such oral/aural material may supplement early textual sources, adding further pieces to the jigsaw.
It’s a delightful parade of “idioms, proverbs, and general nonsense” * from around the world, engagingly grouped in the form of lists. As a taster, just a few idioms that float my boat:
An Irish proverb:
Never bolt your door with a boiled carrot.
A charming German alternative for OMG:
I think my hamster is waxing the floor!
A Polish expression for something that makes no sense:
Bell Yung has already issued a fine series of CDs, recorded in 1975–6, that make an impressive anthology of the repertoire of the blind bard Dou Wun杜焕 (1910–79) in Hong Kong (click here). Now he has published a detailed book, in Chinese, on the topic:
Rong Hongzeng 榮鸿曾 [Bell Yung] with Wu Ruiqing 吴瑞卿 [Sonia Ng], Xiangjiang chuanqi: yidai gushi Du Huan 香江傳奇：一代瞽師杜焕 [Tales from Fragrant River: the blind master Dou Wun] (2023, with CD).
“A humble blind singer’s autobiographical song: oral creation facing a Hong Kong teahouse audience”, Ethnomusicology 67.2 (2023).
As to the book, the nine chapters of Part One introduce successive social, economic, and political changes of Hong Kong; the genre of naamyam南音 as part of a rich tradition of performed oral literature, with constant improvisation; musical and textual analysis of naamyam, as well as baan’ngaan板眼 and lungzau 龍舟. In chapters 7 and 8 Sonia Ng gives useful roundups of Dou Wun’s comments on his fluctuating experiences amidst changing Hong Kong society, illustrating another subaltern milieu.
The Fulong teahouse, 1975.
With Hong Kong constantly modernising, the tradition was virtually defunct by the 1970s, so this was already very much a salvage project. Even finding a suitably conducive ambience, venue, and audience to record Dou Wun’s performances was a challenge. After a poor childhood in Guangzhou, he had arrived in Hong Kong in 1926; from the teahouses and brothels of his early years there (despite the 1935 prohibition of the latter, he managed to sing at illegal venues until 1952), and beset by family tragedies, he had mainly “sold his singing” on the streets, besides a regular radio slot from 1955 to 1970. So by 1975, Dou had hardly performed in teahouses for over twenty years; Bell did well to arrange thrice-weekly sessions at the Fu Long teahouse in Sheung Wan district, the stories punctuated by the chirping of caged songbirds brought by its clientele (pp.34–43) (contrast the sterile, empty venues where PRC fieldworkers have mostly recorded).
Part Two (pp.184–237) provides the complete text of Du Huan’s precious six-hour sung autobiographical tale, heard on the 6-disc CD set Blind Dou Wun remembers his past: 50 years of singing naamyam in Hong Kong, and Part Three (pp.239–355) the texts of other items in his repertoire—also featured on the CDs.
Biography is an important component of anthropology and ethnomusicology (for China, see e.g. Helen Rees ed., Lives in Chinese music; cf. my own work on Gaoluo and the Li family Daoists). Yet it’s an unattainable goal to “become as one” with the people on whom we impose (see e.g. here). In personal reflections, Bell has expressed a certain regret that he couldn’t take the project further, entering more fully into Dou Wun’s life; their interaction, and Bell’s material, was largely based on the recording sessions and brief chats at the teahouse. The reader might also like more detail on Dou Wun’s use of the zheng plucked zither (cf. its use to accompany narrative-singing in Shandong).
While it works well as a self-contained project about one artist, one is curious to learn more about the whole performing culture of which Dou Wun was part, not only in Hong Kong but over in the PRC, in Guangzhou and around the Pearl River Delta. There, a starting point might be the narrative-singing volumes of the great Anthology for Guangdong province—for instance, on naamyam, see Zhongguo quyi yinyue jicheng, Guangdong juan中国曲艺音乐集成, 广东卷, pp.422–66, with brief biographies (including Dou Wun!) on pp.467–9; and under a variety of rubrics, Zhongguo quyi zhi, Guangdong juan中国曲艺志, 广东卷 (at a mere 470 pages, surely among the Anthology‘s shortest volumes!).
Plucking the winds, my ethnography of Gaoluo village and its ritual association, chronicles vicissitudes in the peasants’ lives. At the end of chapter 6 (“Turmoil and tedium”, on the Cultural Revolution) I reflected on how our paths coincided:
Over the other side of the world, in total contrast to their experiences, I took my first steps on my own Long March (more like a Leisurely Stroll) to Chinese musicians and Gaoluo, absorbing enough hippy influence to become “hooked” (shangyin, as the Gaoluo musicians say) on Zen, and thence also on Daoism, Tang poetry, and all the rest. In 1972 Nixon went to see Mao in China, visiting the Great Wall, where he sagely observed, “It’s a great wall”. That same year I started studying Chinese at university; the following year the London Philharmonic Orchestra performed in China. None of this buttered any parsnips in Gaoluo.
I suppose some international, and younger, readers may wonder WTF parsnips are, and why ever anyone might want to butter them. I must have heard the expression in my youth, but I don’t know how I later became so partial to it.
“Faire words butter noe parsnips” is attested from 1639, in the days when the potato was only just becoming a staple (and when spelyng was a Free Countrie—another liberation promised by Brexit?). This site also adduces John Taylor’s Epigrammes (1651):
Words are but wind that do from men proceed; None but Chamelions on bare Air can feed; Great men [sic] large hopeful promises may utter; But words did never Fish or Parsnips butter.
On whose syntax I might comment:
Poets of Yore o’er verb–object inversion may splutter— An order consigned by Latter Epochs to ye gutter He who reverses them is clearly a Nutter— Yet grammarians ne’er a Cavylle do mutter.
As to my own culinary habits, I tend to roast parboiled parsnips and potatoes, with shallots, all basted in oil (not butter) and lashings * of spicy Turkish orta. For more cuisine, with links, click here—including the late great Ciaran Carson’s paean to the fry-up and the music of time.
* Here I was boldly seeking another role for “lashings” beyond what I supposed was its traditional duty as measure-word for ginger beer; but in fact, as posts like this explain, it wasn’t Enid Blyton who bound the two together—it seems to have taken hold in our imaginations only since the Comic Strip’s Five go mad in Dorset. This kind of thing happens a lot: see e.g. What’s the craic?.
My violinist friend Miles, bridge wizard, quite rightly reminds me to explore the oeuvre of Django Bates (website; wiki; his every move is faithfully heralded in—you guessed it—the Guardian).
Versatile both on keyboards and then as bandleader (like Bach), Django grew up with bands like the long-lived, influential Loose Tubes, and Bill Bruford’s Earthworks, also training grounds for the great sax player Iain Ballamy—here’s Dancing on Frith street:
Live in Frankfurt, 1988 (with Django also accomplished on tenor horn):
And I do gravitate to the more intimate soundscape, like his trio Belovèd, with Petter Eldh on bass and Peter Bruun on drums—here with a fabulous live gig in Oslo (note the gamelanesque piano, “prepared” via synth, e.g. from 14.05—cf. John Cage):
Pursuing the theme opened up by Hannibal Taubes’ guest post on the Chinese temple in Chico, I’ve been admiring the hefty tome
Chuimei Ho and Bennet Bronson, Chinese traditional religion and temples in North America, 1849–1920: California (2022; 523 pages, large paperback format).
An impressive work of scholarship, published under the auspices of the Chinese in Northwest America Research Committee (CINARC), the book is an elegy to the remains of popular Daoism that nearly died a century ago but was central to Chinese people’s lives in North America from the mid-19th century. Hannibal is far more able than I to identify salient themes, so below I consult his thoughtful review.
Among the wealth of illustrations on almost every page, many are reproductions of original black-and-white images, assembled from substantial local archives—perhaps a future edition might include a section of colour plates showing more recent photos. The CINARC website is a rich resource for many such images.
The topic is geographically distinctive, addressing migrants from the Pearl River Delta in the far south of China to the far west of America. As Hannibal notes,
Some counties in the Gold Rush hills had Chinese temples years before any Christian church was built, while yearly Chinese camp-meeting festivals in the mountains attracted thousands of worshippers, with Zhengyi-sect Daoist priests, great sacral processions, and deity-figures ten feet tall. By 1930 almost all of this had vanished.
Pondering reasons for the neglect of the subject, Ho and Bronson suggest:
Perhaps the main reason for a lack of scholarly interest has been an almost exclusive focus on immigration, anti-Chinese violence, economics, and racism. This has meant adopting a victims’ perspective, reciting long lists of grievances and instances of White hostility. However, we feel that a different perspective is needed, one that focuses on the sources of the courage and mental balance shown by Chinese immigrants.
They posit various provisional elements that may partially account for the rapid, severe decline in religious observances, including conversion to Christianity, white prejudice, progressivist politics, (interestingly) a lack of Chinese women—and the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Anyway, the USA proved a less viable site for Chinese religion than southeast Asia.
By the late 19th century the early mining communities * servicing the gold rush gave way to agricultural centres. Both in San Francisco and the hinterland, the secret societies were major patrons.
Apart from newspaper reports (often negative in their portrayal), the study is based largely on the material evidence of the temples themselves—inscriptions, ritual objects, ledgers, and so on, “that we feel brings us closest to what interests us most: to hear, if only faintly, the voices of the pioneers who withstood astonishing hardships to build Chinese America”.
Section 1, “Spiritual and social aspects of temples”, clearly addresses the salient issues, discussing
Why temples mattered
Where they existed and who built them
Functions
Worship
Temples and communities.
Temples served as refuges, hostels, clinics, and meeting places. They were sources of ethnic pride, and centers of community life. And most importantly, the deities they housed stood at the very center of a Chinese-American identity and psychological survival. The early immigrants withstood enormous pressures from physical hardship, cultural prejudice, threatened violence, and concern for loved ones back in China. They needed those temples. For many, the temples were the central institutions of an exile’s life.
Unpacking the ambiguity of the common term joss-house (“joss” deriving from Portuguese deus), the authors identify types of affiliated temples and their parent associations: shrines associated with districts of origin associations (huiguan), charitable halls (shantang), clan associations (zongci), tradesmen’s guilds (hanghui), and secret societies (“tongs”), as well as some independent temples.
Ho and Bronson go on to discuss individual and communal worship, ritual roles (mortuary services, divination, spirit mediums), cultural reinforcement (including education, and opera), secular functions, and investment. They detail the gods invoked (temples with single and multiple deities), life-cycle and calendrical rituals, “bomb festivals” (paohui), and (of special interest to scholars of Taoist ritual) communal festivals for the jiao Offering ritual, known as tachiu (dajiao 打醮, pp.66–73). They discuss the founding, ownership, control/management, and financing of temples.
Section 2 looks at “The physical side of temples”:
Exteriors and siting
Entrances and interiors
Furnishings with fixed and variable locations
Suspended furnishings
Inscription boards
Equipment for processions
Other furnishings.
Overall, “very few Chinese religious buildings were close copies of homeland prototypes”.
Sections 3 and 4 are a detailed inventory of individual temples. Section 3 discusses San Francisco, “by far the most important Chinese religious centre outside Asia” in the late 19th century. Section 4 documents centres outside the Bay Area—mining, agricultural (farm labour), coastal, and urban (despite the great importance of railroad workers in building the West, they were too transient to sponsor temples). This section really opens our minds to the wealth of history in the hinterland, in communities such as Auburn, Marysville, Oroville, and Weaverville.
Ho and Bronson’s concluding remarks survey the spatial and temporal distribution of temples; White views (often disparaging) on the phenomenon; and Chinese American religion in Chinese eyes, making astute distinctions between the perspectives of Chinese businessmen, officials, secret societies, religious professionals, and sojourners.
As Hannibal observes,
Ho and Bronson’s tome will now be the standard reference work on this subject and should be on the shelf of everyone interested in Chinese art and religion, Asian-American studies, immigrant visual cultures in the Americas, and California generally. The authors note that they are considering a follow-up volume that will treat Chinese temples in North America outside of California. Let us hope that this work is completed and that the two volumes can be published together under the imprint of a major press, with color photographs and a few editorial tweaks, as befits this important scholarship.
* * *
My only little contribution to the study of the Chinese diaspora is this tribute to Ray Man, Cantonese music pioneer in London. For the decline of Catholic worship among south Italian migrants in New York, see The Madonna of 115th street.
One point that Hannibal makes in his fine review seems to go rather against the grain of recent scholarship on religious life in post-Mao China. This isn’t the place to assess the vast religious revival that took place there after the demise of the Maoist commune system, but, making a somewhat ambitious comparison between the decline of temples in China and America, Hannibal opens with the statement “Sometime between 1850 and the present, almost all the temples in China vanished.” On the revival since the 1980s, he comments (n.9): “Even areas that appear to have rebuilt their temples en masse still experienced massive losses compared to pre-Communist numbers.” And
Those temples that still physically stood were bulldozed to build apartment complexes, or left to moulder and collapse in half-abandoned villages. Other areas have rebuilt their temples, sometimes in massive numbers, but from the preservationist standpoint this only compounds the destruction, since little care is taken to retain or record the original structures.
These are points worth making, but they downplay the significance of the vast revival. Though much fieldwork on recent Daoist activity (in volumes such as Daojiao yishi congshu) has a retrospective agenda, religious life has resurfaced widely, on a large scale (see e.g. Ken Dean, Adam Yuet Chau, Ian Johnson, and regions such as Fujian, Jiangxi, Hunan, Shaanbei). Moreover, temples are not the only yardstick to assess Chinese ritual life; material artefacts can only tell us so much (cf. China’s hidden century).
While the particular religious ethos that Ho and Bronson’s study reveals will be more familiar to specialists in the ritual history of the Pearl River Delta than to those focusing on other regions of south (and certainly north) China, the whole history of religious life in local communities in the PRC, with their diverse social and economic factors, is utterly different from that in the American West—and from that of the Chinese diaspora in southeast Asia, where ties with the mainland were much stronger and enduring.
* Cf. religious processions of mining communities near Beijing, n. here.
From The hundred thousand fools of God.
For both folk and art music in the time of Vermeer, click 
Biographies of Pingtan paizhi master Wang Shanglong and Chen Renzhen.
The Qinghe guan society in Changtai.
Household Daoist rituals, Putian.
Segments of mortuary rituals, Nan’an (again, cf.
We get to hear some of the 
The first cycle of Five songs from the Chinese poets (
Stephen Jones: a blog 
