Week 9: Follow-Up

Due: March 31

CH 7. East Asia: China; Mongolia

1. Unlike the case with the ethnomusicological study of Indonesian music, why has the
study of Chinese music been relatively delayed and historically stifled (see page 169; be
sure to include the period of the Cultural Revolution)?

- A somewhat complicated outcome due to the following:

a) rather than focusing on “living music” or musical traditions performed within

contemporary contexts in which they lived, both Chinese and Western writers
focused on ancient Chinese traditions, aesthetic philosophies, rituals, and
instruments…earlier European scholars of the early twentieth century impacted
this outlook because “they often viewed living music as unsophisticated and
insignificant remnants of the glorious past” (Miller and Shahriari 2014:169).
b) eventually ethnomusicological research on Chinese music took off, especially in
the last three decades of the twentieth but struggled to do earlier because it was
geographically cut off due to wars in China from the 1920s until 1949
c) the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) in China under the direction of Chairman
Mao Zedong also restricted people’s permission to explore and write freely
d) After the Cultural Revolution, foreign researchers were permitted but usually in
urban areas and not rural areas; at this time when foreign researchers began to
study Chinese music, Chinese scholars were primarily interested in collecting
“folk music” for the main purpose of reconstituting them for
compositions/classical pieces performed by music conservatory-trained
professionals—this kind of aspiration aligned with the Chinese government in a
post-Cultural Revolution era to represent China to the rest of the world

2. Answer the following questions based on the listening example titled “Guqin (‘Ancient
Zither’ CD 1.16), video examples and the reading (mostly on page 171 of your textbook):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=Fo4aoj3SZ9E&list=PLEwFPW4Mtf5MUr4JVehd3G0Lvos9jUsqH&index=1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQZ2UgvuzW8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUQ9rDswHdw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TF7B6TcsmiI (first 6 minutes or so)

a. What is a guqin? What materials are used to make the instrument?

 7-string zither; symbol of Chinese culture as historical and refined; usually lacks a
beat during peformances, variety of timbres, a sort of “contemplative” musical
practice that was particularly appealing to Chinese scholars and philosphers

b. What are the various timbres and sounds when playing guqin and what techniques
do players use to make them?

produces plucked sounds by the nail or flesh of the finger, scraping sounds when
sliding across the string after it has stopped vibrating, tone-bending by sliding
movements with the left hand; harmonics which are “clear, hollow sounds
produced by gently touching the string at a node” (ibid.:171)

c. What were the traditional contexts and social milieu of learning and performing
the guqin in China and what were cultural beliefs about guqin music?

Literati or scholar class from ancient times to at least the 19th century, and from
these community, Chinese government officials were selected; cultivated by a
small elite; still rare to play today, mostly scholar class of bureaucrats

Some cultural beliefs: music is not for mere pleasure, but is a mode or practice
through which teach and expressing Confusion ethnical values, i.e., “restraint,
order, balance, subtlety, and hierarchy” (ibid.: 172) and impacted perceptions that
went into the development of Confusion Chinese literature, poetry, calligraphy,
divination, history, music and philosophies; idea is that listening to something like
the guqin is supposed to help a person undergo self-development that will help
them maintain Chinese ideals, by meditating on the sounds and taking it seriously.
Meanwhile, qugin music is actually quite sensuous—think about all of the
different timbres that can be produced, the way in which a player leans into the
instrument to produce timbral effects and emotions

d. What were your impressions of the example of the guqin with lo-fi hip-hop?

3. Watch the video of a jiangnan sizhu ensemble, listen to “Jiangnan Sizhu (“Silk and
Bamboo”) Ensemble (CD 1.17) and read the textbook to answer the following questions:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGnCqLZ8o0c

(usual performance context at cafes or tea houses in China):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kG3lw0gvPuY

a. What is the phonic structure of this kind of music?

Absence of harmony; heterophonic structure—like most east and southeast Asian
traditions

b. List the instruments in a typical Jiangnan sizhu ensemble. Which of these

instruments do we hear sometimes on NYC subway platforms?
 We mostly here the erhu here on NYC platforms, sometimes accompanied by a
recording of a Chinese folk song or a rendition of a Western pop song

“silk category” of instruments are bowed and plucked stringed instruments,

“bamboo category”: flutes, vertical and horizontal

4 essential instruments in a Jiangnan Sizhu or “Silk and Bamboo” ensemble:

erhu (fiddle)
yangqin (hammered zither)
pipa (pear-shaped lute)
dizi (horizontal bamboo flute)

less frequently but in the musical example: xiao (vertical flute), ruan (round
bodied, long-neck lute), san xian (three-stringed lute), small percussion
instruments, a band (woodblock struck with small beater and gu-ban clapper in
the left hand)

c. How is this kind of music and its context/ social milieu different from guqin
playing?

Amateur music, played by non-professionals, casual settings such as club houses

or cafes and not for formal stage and audience (though originally and perhaps
more so in the past, at weddings and operatic genres, funerals and local singing
traditions of Shanghai); low social status as non-professional musicains; now
students at music conservatories in China can learn this music but only in
“refined, fully written-our arrangements” (ibid.:178)

4. Watch these videos and listen to “Beijing Opera (Jingju)” (CD 1.18) (the first video is
about the same composition as the example in your textbook and provides more
background to the story inspiring the opera (and that continues to be depicted in Chinese
drama, books, movies, popular music):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrDaK70dTdk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQSsL3l_Kac

(this example is not the same story/opera but there are English subtitles for you to follow
and hence why I chose it): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrTdrXK6Jr0

a. What are the stock characters/ four major role types of Beijing Opera? Which
character(s) is/ are depicted in the Beijing Opera track CD 1.18?
Sheng (male roles of young man, old man, military male)
Dan (female roles)
Jing (painted face roles that symbolize person’s character)
Chou (comedians, usually have white patch painted in the middle of their face)
 b. Describe the music that accompanies Beijing Opera and the instrumentation (in which
language is the music sung?)

Beijing Opera, or Peking Opera, also called Jingju (and the ensemble is a jingju
ensemble)

Singers

Combination of melodic and percussion instruments that belong to one of two groups:

Melodic group is divided into “civil” and “military”

Civil group lead instrument: Jinghu (two-stringed bamboo fiddle)
Erhu (fiddle)
Yue qin (moon-shaped lute), other lutes

Military group lead instrument: suona (double-reed horn)

Percussion instruments, lead by conductor who plays the gu-ban (clapper), ban gu
(small drum also played by the conductor, with “dry, hollow” timbre); other large
and small gongs and cymbals
c. Describe the aesthetics of jingju (Beijing Opera) in terms of where it is mostly
performed and visuals.

Aesthetics are symbolic and depict characters are universal character tyes and
therefore to have audience focus on symbolic meanings, props are minimal, a table
and chairs; actors use stage language, comedians in Beijing dialect that indicates low
class status; local theater was performed in ritual context on stage within a temple
facing the main god’s altar but today performed in formal theaters, or Chinese opera
productions; studied in government-supported schools and informal training within a
troupe

5. The authors of your textbook state, “mainland China…has produced very few popular
music stars due primarily to the communist political climate of the last half century,
which largely discouraged popular styles as having a negative influence on society”
(Miller and Shahriari 2014:191). What do you think of this and is this notion of the
relationship between music and morality resonates in other cultural contexts? How so?

6. Leehom Wang is a Chinese American musician who became associated with the Chinese
popular music industry and he sings in Mandarin, is an accomplished violinist, guitarist,
pianist, vocalist (he does not specialize in Chinese traditional folk instruments). Leehom
Wang could be considered a bilingual transnational pop star who made the decision to be
part of China’s popular music industry due to a lack of greater exposure or popularity as
an Asian American performer in the United States where he grew up. How would you
analyze these musical examples in terms of production, timbre, style, visuals, harmonic
and melodic structure, etc.?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3mOnzOG4kU
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4DuqEL0ChQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2plMpZBWKHk

7. What is the historical context of the emergence of “folkloric troupes” in Mongolia? In

other words, when did Mongolians develop their “folkloric troupes” and why? (Answer
in a sentence or two, see page 192).

Capital city of Mongolia reflects ongoing Soviet influence throughout history and as it
gained independence from China in 1921, under Soviet influence Mongolians developed
“folkloric troupes” to represent Mongolian cutlture; Mongolian music had more explicit
links with spiritual and religious realms, music as form of communication with the spirit
world but with communism came the secularization of Mongolian sacred musics

8. What is khöömei? Describe the anatomical aspects of this style of music and how sounds
are produced. And what is this unique style of singing associated with traditionally (and
still in practice today)

“throat-singing” but more accurate is overtone singing because the singer produces
overtones which are any tone or pitch consisting of a fundamental vibration and the
production of harmonics (overtones, also called partials), it’s the timbre of these tones in
the manipulation of the fundamental vibration, whether buzzing lips or a vibrating string
or a double reed and which ones produces weak and strong tones, lower or higher, warm,
light, bright, harsh or hollow are some adjectives to describe the sounds

The singer (traditionally male but female now too), produces the overtones by putting
pressure on the glottis (a part of the vocal cords), a fundamental and shaping the cavity of
the mouth in such a way that it brings our different overtone patterns; a good khöömei
singer can produce both lower melody and overtone melody simultaneously (which is on
the musical example in the chapter).

9. Listen to “Urtïn duu (Long song) with khöömei” (CD 2.1) of Mongolia:

a. What is the name of the stringed instrument in this tradition and what are its
distinctive features in terms of sound? What is the instrument’s signature feature
in terms of its construction and why?

Morin khuur, trapezoid-bodied, long-necked bowed lute that has a carved horse-
head at the top “horse-head fiddle” and two silk strings, separate bow, normally
played by seated male, to accompany the singing of “urtïn duu, or “long songs”)

Horse carving because traditional Mongolian life was rural and lived among
sheep and goats and horses were used to herd their flocks, for travel, nomadic
commnunities
 b. What are your impressions of this style of music and vocals?

10. Watch the following music video by metal band the Hu from Mongolia. What
instruments are in this song? What are your impressions? What symbols are conveyed in
this song that might relate to Mongolian culture and identity today?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jM8dCGIm6yc