Here’s a typically tenuous connection with ritual. On the subject of transmission, this piece from Stewart Lee is rewarding as ever:
—as well as his still more thoughtful reflections in How I escaped my certain fate, pp.136–42, 169–76. One of the many delights of this masterpiece is the way that scholarly footnotes often take over, like Flann O’Brien‘s arcane annotations on de Selby in The third policeman.
Further to my introduction to The Hebei plain: village associations, and remarks in Hebei: new discoveries,
the work of Yin Hubin 尹虎彬 is highly relevant, such as
and his 2015 book
This research supplements my outline of the Houtu cult in Part Three of In search of the folk Daoists of north China—illustrated on this blog by pages on the Houshan Daoists and the Houtu scroll.
Another scholar continuing the fine work of Li Shiyu, Pu Wenqi, Ma Xisha and others on sectarian religion is Cao Xinyu 曹新宇.
Under Themes, just added a page on Participant observation, further to Fieldwork there.
From my book (pp.33–4):
We have to learn to latch onto troublesome terms like “in the past” (guoqu) or “originally” (yuanxian). I’m getting better at leaping in and asking, “You mean in the 1980s? Or before the Cultural Revolution?” or even more precisely, “Before the 1964 Four Cleanups, or before Li Qing went to Datong in 1958? Or before Liberation?” Even the seemingly mechanical task of eliciting dates requires imagination. Though not necessarily clear on dates, they may recall how old they were the last time they performed such and such a ritual, or we may ask questions like “Was Li Peisen still alive?” or “Before your first son was born?”
One day, admiring the trendy outfit that Li Manshan’s second daughter Li Min has bought for her young son, I observe, “Funny, in the past one never had to worry about fashion for kids’ clothing, either in China or England!” She has an astute come-back:
“How do you mean, ‘in the past’?!”
Me: “Ha—that’s what I’m always asking your dad!”
Hoist on my own petard.
Like her dad, she is perceptive and humorous—for more, see here.
Daoist ordination certificate, Putian.
Source: Kenneth Dean, Taoist ritual and popular cults of southeast China.
In the spirit of I’m sorry I haven’t a clue…
Further to Speaking from the heart, where I noted the somewhat elaborate definition of the term dundian, here’s another fine definition—ironically, from the Chinese-Chinese dictionary of my Daoist master Li Manshan, no less, which we consulted when I mentioned the term lu 籙, Daoist “registers” (lengthy hereditary titles bestowing the authority to conduct rituals), unfamiliar to him (my translation):
a superstitious thing that Daoists use to trick people
Hmm. Li Manshan shrugs, and we both giggle.
Michele has just uploaded a new version of the film, with only tiny imperceptible changes. Spot the difference…
The main change is removing the out-take at the Temple of the God Palace (8’24” ff.).
We walked over there just after sunrise to go and record, when there wouldn’t be too much background noise. As it turned out, the cooing of birds was deafening—delightful as it was on my headphones, Michele managed to keep it under control when editing later. Li Manshan was going to do a little spoken intro recalling the temple, and since we were joined by a nice villager who also recalled the temple fondly, I thought it’d be nice to get him to stand just out of view of my camcorder so Li Manshan could have an interlocutor. It worked out fine, but their opening exchange made us all burst out laughing:
Li Manshan [confidently explaining the setup to his mate]: So we’re gonna have a natter!
[begins spiel]: In the past this Temple of the God Palace…
[Mate interrupts]: If it hadn’t been demolished, it’d be a tourist spot now!
[Li Manshan has drôle thought]: … What, you mean you demolished it?!
We tried including this exchange in the film, with a suitable pause while we composed ourselves for Take 2, but it doesn’t quite work unless you were there…
The blending of ritual texts reminds me of Woody’s Allen’s Without Feathers:
The Great Roe: a mythological beast with the head of a lion and the body of a lion, though not the same lion.
The work of Frits Staal on Indian ritual contains much from which scholars of Daoist ritual (not least I) might benefit, confronting issues that I encounter in working with Li Manshan. Staal’s ideas about orthopraxy seem to go beyond the discussions following those of James Watson for China. There’s a lot more to Staal’s work than that, but this is a start.
In “The meaninglessness of ritual”, [1] Staal eschewed “the dewy-eyed romanticism that is pernicious to any serious study of cultures and people.”
A widespread but erroneous assumption about ritual is that it consists in symbolic activities which refer to something else. It is characteristic of a ritual performance, however, that it is self-contained and self-absorbed. The performers are totally immersed in the proper execution of their complex tasks. Isolated in their sacred enclosure, they concentrate on correctness of act, recitation and chant. Their primary concern, if not obsession, is with rules. There are no symbolic meanings going through their minds when they are engaged in performing ritual.
Such absorption, by itself, does not show that ritual cannot have a symbolic meaning. However, also when we ask a brahmin explicitly why the rituals are performed, we never receive an answer which refers to symbolic activity. There are numerous different answers, such as: we do it because our ancestors did it; because we are eligible to do it; because it is good for society; because it is good; because it is our duty; because it is said to lead to immortality; because it leads to immortality. A visitor will furthermore observe that a person who has performed a Vedic ritual acquires social and religious status, which involves other benefits, some of them economic. Beyond such generalities one gets involved in individual case histories. Some boys have never been given much of a choice, and have been taught recitations and rites as a matter of fact; by the time they have mastered these, there is little else they are competent or motivated to do. Others are inspired by a spirit of competition. The majority would not be able to come up with an adequate answer to the question why they engage in ritual. But neither would I, if someone were to ask me why I am writing about it.
[…]
Most questions concerning ritual detail involve numerous complex rules, and no participant could provide an answer or elucidation with which he would himself be satisfied. Outsiders and bystanders may volunteer their ideas about religion and philosophy generally—without reference to any specific question. In most cases such people are Hindus who do not know anything about Vedic ritual. There is only one answer which the best and most reliable among the ritualists themselves give consistently and with more than average frequency: we act according to the rules because this is our tradition (parampara). The effective part of the answer seems to be: look and listen, these are our activities! To performing ritualists, rituals are to a large extent like dance, of which Isadora Duncan said: “If I could tell you what it meant there would be no point in dancing it.”
Ritual, then, is primarily activity. It is an activity governed by explicit rules. The important thing is what you do, not what you think, believe or say.
This echoes Catherine Bell’s comment that I cited in my post on Bach and Daoist ritual—for her masterly surveys of ritual studies, click here.
Here’s a trailer for Staal’s 1975 film on the Vedic fire ritual:
Poul Andersen offers caveats to Staal in a review of volumes on Shanghai Daoist ritual (Daniel Overmyer, Ethnography in China today, pp.263–83). He highlights the interpretations of the participants (including the liturgists themselves), which “in many ways influence the actual performance. They are relevant for the way in which performances take shape, develop, and are modified over time.” Such interpretations, while important, rarely offer a detailed critique, so such a view refines rather than refutes Staal’s point.
I pursue the theme under Navajo culture.
[1] Numen 26.1 (1979): 2–22. See also Ritual and mantras: rules without meaning (Motilal Banarsidass, 1996), and (source of my quote here) S.N.Balagangadhara, “Review of Staal’s Rules without meaning”, Cultural dynamics 4.1 (1991), pp.98–106.
In Irish music I already cited some fine quotes from Cieran Carson’s Last night’s fun bearing on the mania for soulless competitions, including the tale of the three fiddlers. The final passage in this section is remarkable (p.98):
I find among these people commendable diligence only on musical instruments, on which they are incomparably more skilled than any nation I have seen. Their style is not, as on the British instruments to which we are accustomed, deliberate and solemn but quick and lively; nevertheless the sound is smooth and pleasant.
It is remarkable that, with such rapid fingerwork, the musical rhythm is maintained and that, by unfailingly disciplined art, the integrity of the tune is fully preserved through the ornate rhythms and the profusely intricate polyphony… They introduce and leave the rhythmic motifs so subtly, they play the tinkling sounds on the thinner strings above the sustained sounds of the thicker strings so freely, they take such secret delight and caress [the strings] so sensuously, that the greatest part of their art seems to lie in veiling it, as if “that which is concealed is bettered— art revealed is art shamed”. Thus it happens that those things which bring private and ineffable delight to people of subtle appreciation and sharp discernment, burden rather than delight the ears of those who, and in spite of looking do not see and in spite of hearing do not understand; to unwilling listeners, fastidious things appear tedious and have a confused and disordered sound.
That passage might seem like a fine description of Irish music today—but it was written in 1185, by Giraldus Cambrensis in Topographia Hiberniae!
Generally (my Daoist priests of the Li family, p.291),
I wage a tireless campaign against the Chinese scholarly trend to make ambitious links between ancient citations and living folk practice, but here is one case where I totally support it. Comparable to the centrality of the keyboard for 18th-century kapellmeisters, the sheng master was the grand director of courtly ritual music right from the Zhou dynasty around the 6th century BCE, with an unmatched understanding of scales and pitches, a custom that has persisted throughout imperial history right down to today. Of all the wise sheng masters we have met in north Chinese villages, Li Qing was among the most outstanding.
Doubtless Irish music has changed in many ways since the 12th century, and that passage is just general enough to allow us to discern parallels that may not add up to so much—but still, it’s impressive.
Further to my Czech mentor Paul Kratochvil:
Along with Flann O’Brien, high on the guest list for my fantasy dinner-party would be Jaroslav Hašek—”humorist, satirist, journalist, anarchist, hoaxer, truant, rebel, vagabond, play-actor, practical joker, bohemian (and Bohemian), alcoholic, traitor to the Czech legion, Bolshevik, and bigamist”.
Hašek’s The Good Soldier Švejk has long been popular in China. Cecil Parrott, its English translator, also wrote a biography of Hašek’s “bottle-strewn life”, The bad Bohemian. Former British Ambassador in Prague, Parrott effortlessly avoids betraying any sympathy with Hašek’s reprobate behaviour (see also Hašek’s adventures in Soviet Tatarstan). As he explans in the introduction to his translation:
His next escapade was to found a new political party called The Party of Moderate and Peaceful Progress within the Limits of the Law […] publicly debunking the monarchy, its institutions and its social and political system. Of course it was only another hoax, designed partly to satisfy Hašek’s innate thirst for exhibitionism and partly to bolster the finances of the pub where the election meetings were held.
Among his many japes, his short-lived editorship of the journal The Animal World was curtailed after he published articles about imaginary animals.
Dangerous herds of wild Scottish collies have recently become the terror of the population in Patagonia
Thoroughbred werewolves for sale
Newly discovered fossil of an antediluvian flea
And his hobbies combined:
Everyone who votes for us will receive as a gift a small pocket aquarium.
Gratifyingly, The Good Soldier Švejk clearly appeals to Chinese sensibilities; it was translated, and the 1956–1957 Czech films were dubbed into Chinese:
Alexei Sayle wonders if the Czech regime knew what they were doing promoting Švejk, since its message hardly supports the ideals of socialist conformity. Though it became popular in many languages, I suspect there’s something about it that appeals in particular to Chinese people—an antidote to compulsory patriotism? The Chinese translator dutifully portrays it as a tirade against imperialism, but it surely spoke to The Common Man (Flann O’Brien’s “The Plain People of Ireland”) oppressed by the destructive irrationalities of a newer system…
The Chinese version of Švejk’s name (Shuaike 帅克) is perfect. It drives me to a little fantasy.
In my book (p.261) I glibly compared the Li band’s hymns to the arias in the Bach Passions, “where action and drama are suspended while we contemplate the deep meaning of a scene.” In most elite Daoist and Buddhist temples, liturgy is accompanied only by percussion, not melodic instrumental music. Many of the Li band’s hymns are sung thus, a cappella—including those used to Open Scriptures in the morning and afternoon.
Whereas Chinese studies of northern Daoist and Buddhist “music” often focus almost entirely on shengguan melodic instrumental music, in my book (ch.16) I try to put it within the ritual context. But does the shengguan accompaniment (notably the constant variations of the guanzi) express what the vocal text is unable to embody?
As usual, this is not a close parallel, but one thinks of Erbarme Dich:
“Language is not essential to this moment, or even adequate to it. A verbal penitence is expressed by the alto voice, but the violin expresses a more universal distress.” (Gardiner p. 422, citing Naomi Cumming).
But remember, I find nothing akin to word-painting in the Li band’s vocal repertoire (my book p.277):
I can find no matching of melody to textual content. There is nothing akin to word-painting, no illumination of the meaning of the text through music. Vocal liturgy is capable of arousing emotion, as for instance it should do in the Song of the Skeleton (see Yesterday…), but this is achieved through the general style of delivery rather than the specific text-setting. In musical style the Song of the Skeleton is no different from other hymns, and even its desolate text is not comprehensible when sung.
So expression is conveyed mainly through timbre. The more I listen to Li Manshan and Golden Noble, the more impressive I find the mournful nasal quality of their voices; I can sing some hymns, but can’t emulate this. They have utterly absorbed the meaning of the texts into their voices. And when the shengguan accompanies, Wu Mei complements them perfectly on guanzi, managing to combine a deeply mournful tone with an almost playful way of weaving in and out of the melodic line, ducking and diving, sometimes soaring. The singers recognize that a good guanzi player is a great help to them in rendering the text.
Anyway, both the decorations of a Daoist on guanzi and Bach’s oboe lines are spellbinding—an intrinsic part of the realization of the text. So I both demote and stress the shengguan accompaniment.
Beyond the transition of the Passions from liturgical to concert performances, the staged versions of recent years can also be compelling (for us):
And we’re already in tears (along with Peter) from the recitative of the Evangelist that introduces it. The shuowen introits of the Daoist also introduce arias…
Those of a sensitive disposition may wish to avoid reading my Textual scholarship, OMG.
“Knock-kneed and long-braided Lolitas”, 1913.
“When they cocked their heads against their hands, someone yelled, ‘Get a dentist!’
and someone else yelled back, ‘Get two dentists!’ ” (cited here).
Though The Rite of Spring has become standard, a classic, since the 1970s, it remains overwhelming today, whether or not you’re familiar with it. Playing it in 1970 with the National Youth Orchestra, conducted by Boulez, was one of the great experiences of my life (see also here). For a 2022 Rite at the Proms, click here.
Never mind that it’s the kind of imagining of “pagan rites” that academically I would dispute—it’s a world away from the cultural pundits’ romanticised view of folk culture! (For a “pagan” ritual performer among the Cheremis, click here; and for the New Year rituals of Gaoluo in China, here; cf. the Hutsul people of west Ukraine).
Among endless discussions, Tom Service gives a succinct introduction. Alex Ross (The rest is noise, p.57) nicely (sic) compares the “riot” at the 1913 première with the release of the Sex Pistols’ Anarchy in the UK. Gertrude Stein’s detailed account of the event is curious:
We could hear nothing. One literally could not, throughout the whole performance, hear the sound of music.
Curious, as she wasn’t actually at the premiere (supposing that she had lived long enough not to actually attend the premiere of The sound of music either, she might have said, “One literally could not hear the rite of spring.”)
I’ve cited Richard Taruskin’s fine expression “lite Rite”—“Is nothing Sacred?”, as Keats and Chapman might say. In his stimulating article on Bartok and Stravinsky (The danger of music, pp.133–7; see also pp.421–4), he observes Bartok’s identification of The Rite’s “folk” elements that Stravinsky later disowned:
Even the origin of the rough-grained, brittle and jerky musical structure backed by ostinatos, which is so completely different from any structural proceeding of the past, may be sought in the short-breathed Russian peasant motives.
Alex Ross is also very much on The Rite’s case. In a crowded field, his comments in The rest is noise are very fine, with vivid context in his chapter “Dance of the earth” (pp.80–129), citing Taruskin’s definitive 1996 book Stravinsky and the Russian traditions.
I take Taruskin’s point that the darker energies of The Rite have been “resisted, rejected, repressed”, but even in the most polished performance it’s both exhilarating and disturbing.
Swan Lake it ain’t. Remember, at the 1913 Paris premiere the ballet was just as shocking as the music. You can see a reconstruction of Nijinsky’s own choreography here, and the recreation (from 25.40) following this documentary gives an impression:
Pina Bausch’s version is amazing:
For an intense series of posts on the ballet, see here. Note also Israel Galván’s flamenco-tinged solo version.
And here’s an attractive quandary:
Stravinsky once joked that the dauntingly high-register bassoon solo which opens the piece should be transposed up every year to stop players getting complacent about it. He wanted the effort to register.
But “it’s complicated”—see also here (and note the ritual wind instrument connection). I’m not sure about the dudka, but if it’s really related to the Armenian duduk, then there’s a link to the guanzi of north Chinese ritual bands! There’s a wealth of discussion of that opening solo in bassoon blogs.
Not only do concert-goers “share intimate and personal cultural moments with strangers”, but they have to keep still; the Rite is one of many pieces where this should be an impossible demand. And another where conducting without a score yields fruit:
If Stravinsky really said that Karajan’s version
sounded like someone driving through the jungle in a Mercedes with the windows up,
then good for him.
And then there’s the “original instrument” debate—the “lite Rite”, as Richard Taruskin called it:
This version for organ, far from silly, is just awe-inspiring:
A harpsichord rendition has also appeared on YouTube. Jazz tributes include the Bad Plus arrangement:
In her recent exploration of The Rite, Gillian Moore also observes:
My feelings of creeping feminist unease in writing a book on a ballet about the sacrifice of a young woman created by three men were at least partly relieved when I came across the Russian folk metal band Arkona and their frontwoman Masha Scream.
On a lighter note, here I imagine the Danse sacrale as a suitable riposte to the haka.
BTW, Ravel’s Daphnis and Chloe, less revolutionary but no less captivating, must have suffered by its proximity.
As part of my extensive coverage of Bach (roundup here), two feature films from the 1960s, despite their extreme contrast, are linked both by their intensity and by the way they don’t just accept but probe our own modern values:
and
I also found a version enriched by Japanese subtitles (like the Greek subtitles of Johnny the shoeshine guy), and here’s a colourised version of the opening sequence (more on which here):
I have outlined the importance of the Song of the Skeleton in the rituals of both north and south China (In Search of the folk Daoists pp.233–4). It’s a common theme throughout the north—mainly as part of the yankou, both Daoist and Buddhist.
In Yanggao Daoist ritual (Daoist Priests of the Li family, pp.274–5), several hymns are related. The Mantra of the Skeleton (Kulou zhenyan 骷髏真言, more commonly known here by the melodic label Wailing to Sovereign Heaven, Ku huangtian 哭皇天) is prescribed, a cappella, for Opening Scriptures on the first afternoon of a funeral.
It’s a kind of catalogue aria, with seven long verses for the visits to the stations of purgatory over seven days. Its melodic material overlaps substantially with that of other hymns, beginning with the opening of the Diverse and Nameless melody (Daoist priests pp.267–8). The melismatic “Ah, Skeleton” (Kulou) refrain, and the coda in pseudo-Sanskrit (also in common with Diverse and Nameless), are not written here in the manual. My film (from 56’08”) shows the sixth verse:
Ah Skeleton! Skeleton!
On the sixth day he reaches Netherworld Souls Village
His sons not to be seen
Starving and parched, at his wits’ end,
Desperate to sup broth.
From Li Qing’s hymn volume, 1980. The final folio on the left has the opening of Mantra to the Wailing Ghosts—my book p.266, also featured in the film, from 1.03.56).
* * *
For most such hymns one hardly expects an “emotional” response from audiences—in Yanggao, after all, it shares both melodic material and style with many others in the repertoire. But in his brilliant ethnographic studies of ritual practice in old Beijing, Chang Renchun notes how the renditions of two celebrated Buddhist monks moved their audiences to tears. Performative tears feature in many posts on this blog—links here.
Some common versions open:
昨日去荒郊玩游 Yesterday, seeking diversion roaming in the barren outskirts…
So talking of “Yesterday”, Paul McCartney heard his own version in a dream, like Aboriginal singers.
Though secular, it’s deeply moving. Here’s an early solo rendition, live (and Paul’s unaffected style is a major element of the song’s impact—no cover versions come close):
Here’s the remastered version from 2009:
As I observe in the introduction to my series on the great Beatles albums, analysis, while optional, can supplement our response; again it’s instructive to read Wilfred Mellers and Alan W. Pollack. Dating from the same period as A hard day’s night, Mellers considers Yesterday a “small miracle”:
Although the opening words tell us that yesterday his troubles seemed far away, the music in the second bar immediately enacts these troubles with a disquieting modulation from tonic, by way of the sharpened sixth, to the relative. The first bar, with its gentle sigh, seems separated, stranded, by the abrupt modulation; and although the troubles “return to stay” with a descent to the tonic, the anticipated modulation sharpwards is counteracted when the B♮is flattened to make an irresolute plagal cadence. […]
The immediate nostalgia of the song is without suspicion of sentimentality, and the corny accompaniment of string quartet can be employed, with validity, to reinforce the music’s frail bewilderment.
George Martin’s manuscript for Yesterday, on display at Abbey road studios.
Pollack’s analysis is also insightful. And as he notes (also in my roundup), the opening uses a device here that Paul was to use regularly in some of his great songs: a declarative word, followed by a pause, and then rhythmically active ascent.
I can be quite confident about our own emotional responses to this song; less so about the responses of various types of Chinese mourners to the Skeleton, over time.
Alan Bennett (him again) recalls his early music education attending concerts at Leeds Town Hall—making an ethnographic point that is as valid for Daoist ritual as for WAM (Untold Stories p.412):
So it is not just music that I learn, sitting on those harsh benches, Saturday by Saturday. Music in the concert hall is also a moral education, and watching the musicians at close quarters, I realize that it is not just ecstasy and inspiration but that there is drudge to it too. Sometimes, the players would be on the same tram coming home, and I see that they are just like everybody else—shabby, in dirty raincoats and sometimes with tab ends in their mouths, ordinary people who, half an hour ago, were artists and agents of the sublime.
See also Mozart in the jungle, The Commitments, and cf. The purgatory of the tennis circuit.
In 1980, when Li Qing began recopying the family ritual manuals as Daoist activity gradually revived, the very first manual that he copied was the hymn volume of funerary texts.
Within this volume, Li Manshan loves, and identifies with, the beautiful long meditation on impermanence titled Kangxi yun—actually attributed to Kangxi’s father the Shunzhi emperor (1638–61), and Buddhist in language. The standard version is known by names such as as Poem on returning to the mountains (Guishan shi 歸山詩), Poem on entering the clergy (Chujia shi 出家詩), or Gātha in praise of the sangha (Zanseng jie 贊僧偈).
The Li family’s ritual manuals are largely superfluous to their ritual practice today: those rituals that are still required they perform from memory. The Kangxi yun is one of many texts in the manuals that are no longer performed; and the Daoists never read the manuals as silent literature. But as I began to go through them with Li Manshan, I found that he was most taken by the poem. It shows how drawn he is to the retreat from worldly cares; household Daoists don’t necessarily evince this, and you might not notice this contemplative aspect of his character.
Li Manshan says parts of it were formerly performed as a shuowen 說文 solo introit within particular ritual segments. He has a distant memory of hearing the Daoists reciting it for a temple ritual when he was 8 or 9 sui, around 1953–54, but he only began taking note of it when he came across it in his father’s hymn volume in the 1980s.
Indeed, it is among several rather long texts grouped together in the hymn volume that could be used thus; but there are no longer any suitable ritual segments in which to recite them. The shorter solo introits still used, like those for Presenting Offerings, are now mostly recited by Golden Noble.
From my film: a shuowen introit from the shanggong ritual.
I’ve long wondered how, and when, this long poem found its way into the ritual manuals and ritual practice of the Yanggao Daoists. We discussed this further during my stay with Li Manshan in 2018 (under “Pacing the Void”).
* * *
For readers less than fluent in classical Chinese (of whom I hope there are many!), below I offer a very rough translation (for the challenges of translating the Li family texts, see here). I can’t find an English rendition of Shunzhi’s standard text (anyone?), but here I use the variant in the Li family manuals, only resorting to the original where sense requires. But often Li Qing’s variants seem no less elegant than the original, and sometimes I even find them preferable.
When we have a more widely-distributed “classical” source with which to compare the ritual texts of household Daoists (as is often the case), one often finds minor discrepancies. Many manuals (including most of those of the Li family) were recopied from memory in the 1980s, so a certain amount of variation was likely. However, while sometimes the Daoists might remember how to recite or sing a phrase or character but not how to write it, in general Li Qing’s manuals are remarkably accurate. Moreover, it’s also likely that variants had entered into the ritual manuals of household Daoists long before that. So it’s hard to tell when and how the variant of this poem arose.
The poem is not just about the emptiness of worldy cares, but refers to Shunzhi’s own struggle between his responsibilities as emperor and his personal inclination to Buddhist transcendence:
The forest of temples throughout the empire offers sustenance like a mountain
Everywhere the monastic bowl depends on the lord to provide.
There is no value in yellow gold and white jade
Only to don [1] the monastic cassock is difficult.
I, as great lord of the land of mountains and rivers
Am concerned for the nation and the people, serving to deflect their troubles.
One hundred years, thirty-six thousand days [2]
For a monk, don’t amount to [3] half a day’s rest.
Confusion on arrival, bewilderment on departure [4]
Travelling in vain for a while among men.
Better not to arrive and not to depart
With neither pleasure nor pain.
Before I was born, who was I?
Who was I at the hour of birth?
I only became an adult after I grew up
And once eyes are closed in the void, then who am I?
In this world the only good is to enter the clergy
With pure heart and peaceful mind, who is to know?
The mouth having taken its fill of eating harmonious flavours
One can always wear restitched robes from cast-offs.
The five lakes and four seas make a superior guest
Roaming free in the God Palace, lodging at will.
Do not call it easy to attain the dharma by becoming a monk
Let us talk only of the various bodhi of bygone ages.
I, as great lord of the land of mountains and rivers [5]
Seek the body of Crop Founder descended to earth.
Bright as is the cassock of the Western Quarter
Why has it descended upon the imperial family?
Just because at first my recitation was deficient
I had to exchange my purple cassock for a humble new robe.
For eighteen years I have been dreaming—
When can I rest from the great task of mountains and rivers?
Today, clapping my hands, I return to the mountains
How can I be expected to control the thousand, myriad autumns?
I’ve largely refrained from adding the Teutonic scholarly footnotes that the text suggests, but:
[1] Using the original 披肩.
[2] Chinese poetry has a lot of lines like this, and they read better in Chinese!
[3] Using the original不及.
[4] Referring to life and death, of course—but please feel free to provide your own joke about the airline of your choice.
[5] Here Li Qing repeats the earlier phrase, whereas the original couplet has “Even without being a true luohan, one also dons the triple vestments of Sakyamuni.” The following couplets of Li Qing’s version depart further from the original, and my translation is even more approximate.
In my book Daoist priests of the Li family I coyly decided against
The Hoisting the Pennant and Judgment and Alms rituals go together like Brian and Stewie.
BTW, the Family Guy musical numbers are brilliant, rich in production values.
And for anyone trying to learn stave notation, here’s a handy aid:
For the excellent theme tune (cf. The art of the miniature), here’s a comparison between 1999 and 2017 versions—not entirely akin to Glenn Gould’s different recordings of the Goldberg variations, but perhaps calling to mind the variants of Asteroid:
And a bonus number to complement the role of Family guy in my post Jesus jokes:
For a comprehensive playlist, click here; and for Alan Bennett’s cameo role, here. See also Oh Noh!
Fieldwork reports on local Daoist ritual continue to amass. Note the growing series Daojiao yishi congshu 道教儀式叢書.
In my book I described the main instigators of this impressive movement—C.K. Wang, John Lagerwey, and Lü Pengzhi—as a “holy trinity”. Then I thought maybe that should be the Three Pure Ones (Sanqing 三清)—but actually (since they are not so much objects of veneration as witnesses to marvels), a better metaphor might be the Three Wise Men:
“…Creeping around a cow shed at two o’clock in the morning? Doesn’t sound very wise to me…”
“We were led by a star!”
“Led by a bottle, more like!”
(Sorry, can’t help it…)
Now I’m wondering if they had a list, perhaps from Fortnum and Mason—how embarrassing if they’d all brought myrrh. “Sorry, your choice is already taken, please choose gold”.
For related irreverence, see Jesus jokes.
Taking the Li family Daoists on tour in Italy (Turin, Milan, Venice, Rome) in March 2012 was delightful (my book pp.334–8).
From “our” island towards San Marco. Cheer up, lads.
Li Manshan before the Duomo in Milan.
The band at the Gallerie, Milan.
In Venice (a well-kept secret—Yeah, Right. Good to get here before it gets “discovered”—see here, and here), every other gondola seemed to be full of Chinese tourists. I was delighted to introduce the band to Mirella Licci, whom I hadn’t seen since she was studying the guqin at the Shanghai Conservatoire in 1987!
Venice: lunch at Il Giardinetto with Mirella Licci, our favourite groupie.
One evening we took aperitivos in Campo Santa Maria Formosa with our Confucius Institute hosts (see also here) and two splendid ethnomusicological Giovannis, Giuriati and de Zorzi. Li Manshan felt a particular affinity with the gargoyle on the campanile of the church.
I also note the fine tome by Horatio E. Brown, Some Venetian knockers.
Before I could work on my film on the ritual life of the Li family Daoists at home, we issued a DVD of their concert performance at the Cini Foundation in Venice. Here are some highlights (sic):
For evocative notes on our French tour in 2017, see here.
An aspiring singer on a TV talent show decided to perform Doh a deer, and rashly decided to go out, too literally, on a high note:
Which reminds me—the traditional gongche notation for the melodic skeleton of ritual shengguan ensemble translates nicely into solfeggio (and indeed into modern Chinese cipher notation)…
Da Zouma score, written for me by Li Qing, 1992 (playlist #4, commentary here).
“But that’s not important right now”. I allude, of course, to Airplane:
The Chinese gongche system, like those of Europe and India, is heptatonic:
cipher notation: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
solfeggio: do re mi fa so la si
Indian sargam: Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Dha Ni
gongche: he si yi shang che gong fan,
with liu and wu as upper octave notes for he/do and si/re respectively (taking the older system with he, rather than shang, as do! Call Me Old-fashioned).
For those who can’t fathom the British propensity for punning, the only line of Doh a Deer that makes any sense is La, a note to follow so—precisely the only line where the author reveals a touching fallibility. Such literal audiences would be happier if it were all like that:
…
Re, a note to follow do
Mi, a note to follow re
Fa, a note to follow mi
and so on…
It only remains to overhaul the opening line. The original version “La, a note to follow so—if you’re moving upwards in conjunct motion that is” was overruled as too pedantic, of course.
Another fun exercise is to sing the phrases in reverse order, descending instead of ascending from Doh:
Doh, a deer…
Ti, a drink with jam and bread
La, a note to follow ti!
So, a needle pulling thread
etc.
Given how well we know the song, it seems a bit weird how crap we Brits are at solfeggio. Another fun game would be to try singing the whole thing only in solfeggio:
Do, re mi, do mi do mi,
Re, mi fafa mire fa
and so on.
Then we can use the tune to familiarise ourselves with Indian and Chinese solfeggio:
Sa, Re Ga, Sa Ga Sa Ga,
Re, Ga MaMa GaRe Ma…
he, si yi, he yi he yi,
si, yi shangshang yisi shang…
We can also sing the song to the many scales of Indian raga in turn, with their varying flat or sharp pitches (note my series, introduced here)—a simple example: in rāg Yaman, try singing a sharp fourth for fa, a long long way to run…
Alas, a fascinating medley of versions in French, German, Italian, Spanish (x3), Japanese, and Persian has just disappeared from YouTube. Let me know if you find it!
For a brilliant pun on the Mary Poppins song, see here. And for “do, a note to follow mi“, click here.
Some critical plaudits that my latest book has not yet received, along the lines of Groucho:
“This book does for Daoism”—Nelson Mandela
“The best Christmas gift since Dame Kiri Sings the Sex Pistols’ Greatest Hits by Candlelight” *—Noam Chomsky
“Of all the books about Daoism I have ever read, this is one of them”—the Dalai Lama
“Beneath this book’s jocular surface there lies an even more superficial message”—Paris Hilton
“A rip-roaring bawdy swaggering outrageous romp, cutting a picaresque swathe through… Oh just buy it OK?”—Brian Sewell
[can we get “smorgasbord” in there somewhere?—Ed.]
“A potent, nay heady, brew of the arcane and the inane”—David Blunkett
“A glowing paean to the indomitability of the terylene trouser”—George W. Bush
“If you only read one book about Daoism, then you must have a life”—Peter Stringfellow
“Right up there with G. Jarring’s classic Matters of ethnological interest in Swedish missionary reports from Southern Sinkiang, published in Lund by the no less wacky Kungl. Humanistiska Vetenskapssamfundet, Scripta Minora, Regiae Societatis Humaniorum Litterarum Ludensis, 1979–80: IV”—Andy Kershaw
For more clichés of blurb-writing, see here. At a tangent, I’m also fond of this real comment:
Excuse me, but we are very lucky that your violin was broken
—a statement with which many of my orchestral colleagues would concur.
* Here I’ve embellished an old Private eye headline:
Household Daoists tend to know about performance, not doctrine. I focus on practical knowledge—right down to which cymbal patterns to use as interludes for which hymns, and when to use them, or not. What the Li family don’t know, or do, is things like secret cosmic visualizations.
They don’t necessarily know how to write the texts, or if they do so (for me) they may write some characters a bit approximately because they already know how to recite them.
They know nothing of Laozi’s Daode jing, so central to Western images of Daoism. When I quote the pithy, nay gnomic, opening two lines to Li Manshan and his son Li Bin:
道可道非常道 The way you can follow is not the eternal way;
名可名非常名 The name you can name is not the eternal name.
they don’t quite get it, and I have to translate it into colloquial Chinese for them! Hmm…
We have a bit of fun playing with feichang, which in modern Chinese is “very”, rather than the classical “not eternal”. Actually, in their local dialect they don’t use feichang at all, though of course they know it. In Yanggao the usual way of saying “very” is just ke 可, pronounced ka—thus “dao kedao feichang dao” might seem to be “The way is soooo waylike, I mean it’s just amazingly waylike”…
Still, Daoists like Li Manshan will have picked up a broad understanding of the texts they sing every day, even if they have never been taught their “meaning”. They know Laozi not as the author of the Daode jing but as a god.
As I wrestled with translating the Hymn to the Three Treasures (Sanbao zan), used for Opening Scriptures in the morning (Daoist priests of the Li family, pp.262–3, and film from 22.01), Li Manshan explained it to me.
Hymn to the Three Treasures, from Li Qing’s hymn volume, 1980.
The subject of the first verse to the dao, “We bow in homage to the worthy of the dao treasure, Perfected One without Superior” (Jishou guiyi daobaozun, Wushang zhenren) is Laozi himself, so it is he who is the subject of the remainder of the verse: “He descended from the heavenly palace” (xialiao tiangong) refers to Laozi descending from the heavenly palace after beholding the sufferings of the deceased spirit (guanjian wangling shou kuqing)—it’s all about Laozi! So you see, Li Manshan does get the texts…
As for any ritual tradition, where does the “meaning” reside, when texts are unintelligible to their audience? When we translate and explain ritual texts, we are radically altering them as experienced by their audience. True, the performers, the priests, certainly “understand” them, to various degrees, if not in the same way as scholars translating them. I don’t suggest limiting ourselves to the consideration of how people experience rituals, but that should surely be a major part of our studies. Experience lies beyond textual exegesis, consisting largely in sound and vision.
I am reminded of Byron Rogers on an American version of the New Testament (Me: the authorized biography, p.268):
Pilate: “You the King of the Jews?”
“You said it.” said Christ.
There’s another one for the Matthew Passion (cf. Textual scholarship, OMG). “What is truth?”, indeed…
Mercifully, there is no movement to translate the ancient texts of Daoist ritual into colloquial modern Chinese. Of course, for northern Daoist ritual a modern translation wouldn’t make the texts any more intelligible anyway, given the slow tempo and melisma.
Laozi does appear in one of our favourite couplets for the scripture hall (see Recopying ritual manuals, under “The couplet volume”; cf. my book pp.194–5—not easily translated!):
穩如太山盤腿座 Seated in lotus posture firm as Mount Tai,
貫定乾坤李老君 Old Lord Li thoroughly resolves male and female aspects.
For a basic roundup of posts on the Li family Daoists, see here.
In ch.18 of my book (p.342) I reflect on the Li band’s recent concert tours and Intangible Cultural Heritage status:
All this may sound like a typical story of adaptation to modern secular contexts. But it’s not. Let’s face it, the Li family is never going to become the next Buena Vista Social Club. Year in, year out, their livelihood remains performing for local rituals. Li Manshan’s recent nomination as Transmitter of the ICH brings him a modest extra income for now, but the Daoists continue to rely on doing funerals around their home base; their ICH status and foreign tours are only a minor element in their reputation, which is an accumulation of local charisma over many generations. They still lack disciples, either from their own or other families; and crucially, local patrons no longer pay much attention to the niceties of ritual practice.
It all reminds me of the elderly fiddle player in the Romanian village band Taraf de Haidouks, reflecting on his meteoric rise to global success on the world music scene:
A little fairy granted me my wish to be happy in old age. Now I have suits in terylene.
For more on adapting Daoist ritual for the concert stage, click here. For a populist fantasy, see Strictly north Chinese Daoist ritual. See also World music abolished!!! For Paris as pedagogical Mecca, see Nadia Boulanger, and Kristofer Schipper.
One of the big themes of my work is what a raw deal folk Daoism in north China gets.
In my book (p.280) I observed a subtlety of Yanggao Daoist ritual that may elude us:
Novices soon pick up the short pattern in rhythmic unison on drum, small cymbals and yunluo that opens and closes every item of liturgy, an accelerando followed by three beats ending with a damped sound. This is known as luopu (“cadential pattern”) and it turns out that the number of beats is fixed, 7 plus 4—unless the guanzi player needs a bit more time to prepare his reed!
See also Tambourin chinois, and Drum patterns of Yanggao ritual .
Much less impressive is Beethoven’s take on this, the four soft quarter-note beats that open his violin concerto (less creative than the EastEnders Doof Doof). The quote from my book is itself just a prelude to the popular story of a famous conductor rehearsing his orchestra in the concerto. Though he was notorious for nit-picking, one might suppose that at least here the band would get up a bit of a head of steam before he started correcting them. But no, sure enough he brings them to a halt even before the oboe can come in.
Turning to the bemused timpanist, he says,
“Can you play that with a little more… magic?”
The timpanist looks back at him sullenly, beats out the four notes again, and goes,
“Abra-ca-fucking-dabra”.
* * *
In Daoist ritual there’s nothing quite akin to “rehearsal”, but during a ritual Li Manshan maintains standards by the subtlest of facial gestures, with a little glare if the ensemble is less than perfect. As I learn, I benefit from such hints.
And the roar of Moses’ Triumph is heard in the hills
Without even knowing how I feel about the White Cloud Temple in Beijing, my adorable cat Kali (R.I.P.) threw up over my copy of the Jade Pivot Scripture, which I had bought in an edition printed at the temple.
One ritual title that features only fleetingly in the ritual manuals of the Li family Daoists in north Shanxi is Thunder Lord of Three-Five Chariot of Fire (Sanwu huoche leigong). This is among the attributes of the deity Wang Lingguan, and a trace of the thunder rituals of Divine Empyrean Daoism. [1] In the Li family manuals it appears only in the Mantra to Lingguan and in the Xijing zayi manual, no longer performed and thus no longer familiar to them: [2]
From Xijing zayi manual (Sanwu huoche Lingguan on line 3), copied by Li Qing
So my excuse to discuss it here is flimsy as ever, but we all need a bit of light relief every so often. This also relates tenuously to my comments on hearing Bach with modern ears.
Huoche “chariot of fire” (glossed as “fireball”) may prompt titters at the back, since in common modern parlance it means “train”. Whereas “And the roar of Moses’ Triumph is heard in the hills” is a translation that has been inadvertently amusing only since the spread of the automobile [mental note: must get that exhaust fixed], [3] huoche is an ancient original which could have been affording chuckles to Daoist scholars since the term became common usage for “train” in the late 19th century. When you’re immersing yourself in the abstruse mysteries of the Daoist Canon, you have to take such diversion where you can find it.
What’s more, we may giggle impertinently at another of Lingguan’s attributes, Sanwu (Three-Five)—erstwhile a brand of cigarette that Chinese people associate with Englishness (much to my perplexity, since I’ve never heard of them outside China) just as much as London fog. (For “the smoking substances of non-nationals”, see More from Myles).
So here we appear to find Lingguan smoking a posh foreign cigarette on a train journey through his spiritual domain—being a high-ranking Daoist cadre, he would get to travel soft-sleeper (cf. Fieldwork and textual exegesis).
[1] The appellation may commonly be found in the Daoist Canon, but, more relevant to “texts in general circulation” (my book pp.218–24) and the practices of the Li family may be its appearances in Xuanmen risong: Xuanmen risong zaowan gongke jingzhu 玄門日誦早晚功課經注, chief editor Min Zhiting (Beijing: Zongjiao wenhua chubanshe, 2000), pp. 166–7, 244–5. See also Rethinking Zhengyi and Quanzhen.
[2] My Daoist priests of the Li family, p.376, cf. p.381; for the Divine Empyrean, see also pp.219–20.
[3] A substantial irreverent online industry in such Biblical quotes has arisen.
The Pardon ritual led by Li Qing (2nd from left), Yanggao 1991 (my film, from 48.34).
As a change from my literary party game, here’s an arcane spinoff from the game of picking a fantasy world football team, or chamber orchestra.
Let’s choose our all-time most amazing group of Daoist ritual specialists, including both liturgists and instrumentalists. Of course, the list of candidates is endless, so I’d seek to refine the search by selecting those known mainly for their ritual performance, rather than for compiling vast compendia of manuals.
Thus the list could include early luminaries like Kou Qianzhi 寇謙之 (365–448) (who might speak a dialect similar to that of Li Qing, except that they lived over 1500 years apart), Tao Hongjing 陶弘景 (456–536), and Du Guangting 杜光庭 (850–933) (see their entries under Fabrizio Pregadio ed., Encyclopaedia of Taoism).
Churlishly fast-forwarding a millenium, among modern Daoists we could include Chen Rongsheng 陳榮盛 (1927–2014) from Tainan, [1] Zhang Minggui 張明貴 (1931–2016) of the White Cloud Temple in Shaanbei, and our very own Li Qing 李清 (1926–99); among a host of great drum masters one might recruit An Laixu 安来緖 (1895–1977) from Xi’an and Zhou Zufu 周祖馥 (1915–97) from Suzhou.
Above: left, Kou Qianzhi; right, Tao Hongjing;
below: left, Zhang Minggui; right, An Laixu.
For once, we can leave historical change to one side: it remains to be seen how effective Pelé and Messi would be together as a forward line-up, or Saint Cecilia and Bach (in the orchestra, or indeed in the football team; cf. the Monty Python Philosophers’ football). A more basic difference is that—more than football or the WAM canon—the performance of Daoist ritual is always specific to a small locality. Even if their ritual manuals may have a lot in common, household Daoists from different places can hardly work together. Never mind Daoists from Shanghai, Fujian, and Hunan; even within north Shanxi, the whole ritual performance of the Li family in Yanggao is significantly different from that of groups in Hunyuan or Shuozhou counties very nearby.
Fun game, though. See also Strictly north Shanxi Daoist ritual.
Chen Rongsheng.
[1] Until quite recently, much of our knowledge of modern Daoist ritual (despite its great diversity) was based on the tradition of Chen Rongsheng, meticulously documented by Kristofer Schipper and John Lagerwey. Here’s a tribute, with precious clips of Master Chen’s ritual practice:
Links to lengthier ritual sequences here. Alas, Michael Saso’s early clips of his Master Chuang no longer seem to be in the public domain.
In this photo, the woman on the far left is often claimed to be Mozart’s widow Constanze (1762–1842), just imagine (see here)… Or is it? For doubts, see wiki.
Many would like to believe it. If it is her, then it will be one of the most surprising things you will ever see. OK, it was taken in 1840, when Wolfgang was long gone. Few wives outlived their husbands. Given the harshness of the times, she hardly looks 78.
As Sean Munger comments, Constanze became the Yoko Ono of the 19th century. Wiki also cites the Grove dictionary:
Early 20th-century scholarship severely criticized her as unintelligent, unmusical and even unfaithful, and as a neglectful and unworthy wife to Mozart. Such assessments (still current) were based on no good evidence, were tainted with anti-feminism and were probably wrong on all counts.
* * *
If only we had photos of the Li family Daoists (and their wives) from the late imperial era… Even the photo of Li Peisen and his wife from the 1940s is rare enough. Indeed, in a world where female members of a family are taken for granted at best, people remembered her as exceptionally able and intelligent too.
Stephen Jones: a blog 