Folk Music of China: Living Instrumental Traditions by Stephen Jones Review by: Su Zheng Asian Music, Vol.

30, No. 2 (Spring - Summer, 1999), pp. 135-139 Published by: University of Texas Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/834316 . Accessed: 14/05/2013 07:48
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Volume XXX, number 2

ASIAN MUSIC

Spring/Summer 1999

Book

Reviews

Folk Music of China: Living Instrumental Traditions. Stephen Jones. 1995. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-8162006. 422 pp, photos, figures, maps, music, bibliography,index. Describedby the authoras "a handbook, outlining the main topics for study, and also introducingmodem Chinese scholarship"(vi), Stephen Jones' book presents an ambitious project derived from several years of collaborationwith indigenousChinese scholarsand culturalinstitutionsby a committed cultural outsider. The importance of the book lies in its pioneering subject matter, its encyclopedic scope, and its comprehensive coverage of the modem indigenous literatureon Chinese instrumental music. Moreover,it also providesa site to examine a set of methodological issues involving the intriguing relationships between "Western ethnomusicology"and the indigenous study of Chinese music based on its "establishedscholarlyconventions"(Witzleben 1997). Folk Music of China, togetherwith the separatelydistributed2-CD set (China: Folk InstrumentalTraditions, Archives internationalesde musique populaire, Mus6e d'Ethnographie, Geneve, VDE-GALLO, CD 822-823), reveals a vast, unfamiliar,and fascinatingsubjectto the Englishspeaking world. Until recently, as Jones notes, studies of Chinese instrumental music in the West have mostly concentrated on urban, official, professional, or southern traditions, leaving rural, amateur, folk, or northern traditions largely the domains of indigenous Chinese scholars. Thanksto this book and CD, some of these "hidden" traditions,as well as rich Chinese scholarshipsabout them, have become availablefor the first time to readersoutside of China. Clearly,the major thrustof the book is Part III (Chapters10 - 15), which provides a panoramicsurvey of nearly twenty importantgenres from twelve provinces and cities in Northern and Southern China, including various wind/percussion bands, string/wind-percussion bands, and string ensembles. Each genre is furtherdescribed, with some variations, under the subtitles of instruments, instrumentation, keys, styles, structure, repertoires, variationtechniques, scores, and notation. Jones states that these chosen styles, whose selection relied on Chinese scholars' decades of research, "are ensembles with long heritages, strict transmission, notated scores, and substantial theory; mostly derived from temple or courtly

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1999 Asian Music: Spring/Summer

music" (154). To prepare readers for the survey, Part I of the book (Chapters1 - 5) offers an encompassinghistoricaland social backgroundof Chinese instrumental music, followed by Part II (Chapters 6 - 9) of the music. At the end of each introducingsome generalcharacteristics the lists some unanswered questions for or author often chapter section, furtherinvestigation. Although an in-depthanalysis is not its goal, Folk Music of China raises a numberof issues which invite commentary. First, throughoutthe book, the authorpersistentlyemphasizesthe ceremonialcontexts of Chinese traditionalmusic, as opposed to the imposed secular official ideology in after 1949. These ceremonial place since the nineteenthcentury,particularly contexts are divided by Jones into three kinds: life-cycle, calendrical, and occasional, involving both Buddhism and Daoism music practices in and the "vernacularized" outside temples and, more importantly, lay ritualmusic practicesperformedby laymen, part-timespecialists in the ruralareas. For political reasons, contemporaryChinese scholars have not been able to address the subject of religion without restrictions. Jones' book certainly fills a significantgap in this respect. Second, the author firmly underlines his subject of study as "living," "folk," and "rural"musical traditions. However, upon close reading, each of these terms ("living," "folk," and "rural")becomes contestable. For example, the authoradmitsthat his data on some genres, such as Xi'an guyue and shifan, are based on studies of the old scores or researchcarriedout in the 1950s and 60s by Chinese scholars. Tellingly, the only two highlighted biographies in the book are of two deceased masters: Yang Yuanheng(1894-1959) and Zhu Qinfu (1902-1981). One also notices that eleven of the seventeen musical examples on the 2-CD set were recordedbetween the 1930s and the 1960s. Moreover, many genres surveyed in the book (e.g., Cantonese music, Nan guan, Jiangnansizhu) nor exclusively folk traditions. are neitherexclusively ruraltraditions As one of the major points of the book, the author contrasts the genetic connectionsbetween the living folk traditionsand the ancientor lost literati, temple, and courtly traditions with the resistance of the folk traditionsto the contemporaryurban, official, and professional traditions. He is, nevertheless, not unaware of the penetrating power of the contemporaryurban, official, and professional styles. Here and there, he and mass offers a few valuableexamplesof the impactof commercialization media since the 1980s. But clearly, and maybe regrettably, this set of relationshipsis not at the centerof his concern. Third,studentsof Chinese music will appreciateboth Jones' sincere indebtedness to his Chinese teachers and colleagues expressed so heartfeltedlythroughoutthe book, and his sharp and insightful observations

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and criticism on Chinese indigenousscholarship. Jones points out in many places the problems of rejectingor omitting social and temporalcontexts in Chinese music studies; of under-documented, often unreliable, and in Chinese publications;and of the impact inaccurate musical transcriptions of the urbanand musicologicalcircles on the folk traditions. As a graduateof the CentralConservatoryof Music in Beijing, I have had the privilege of studying with a number of highly respected teachers, including Professor Yuan Jingfang, whose works have defined the modem Chinese scholarship on instrumental Chinese music, and contributedto the fundamentalframeworks of Jones' book. For me, readingFolk Music of Chinawas at once a nostalgicjourney and a reflexive moment from a distance, both geographically and intellectually. It is interesting to compare the similarities and differences between Jones' approach, that of his Chinese teachers, as well as that of Western ethnomusicology. Clearly, Folk Music of China is influenced by several established conventions in indigenous Chinese scholarship. The most ones are the genre of the book, the organizationof the materials, important the focus of study, and the approachto fieldwork. The general survey approach, usually attempting to cover the instrumental traditionsof a whole Han Chinese area, has been favored by Chinese scholars writing monographs. Folk Music of China follows this model closely. It includes all the ensemble genres introduced in Yuan Jingfang's book (1987) and Ye Dong's book (1983), which include the best-known and most-studied ensemble traditions. Jones' book also follows Chinese convention in its structure,mostly organizedaccording to each individualgenre. Indigenous Chinese scholars have concentratedon musical analysis of the ensemble traditions,particularly forms, keys, and patternsof melodic development. These concerns are strongly reflected in Part III of the book, which are quite unrelated to classic Western ethnomusicological inquiries of meaning, cosmological view, sentiment, sensibility, and lately, power and identity,in and/orof music. The mode of Jones' fieldwork also seems to follow indigenous Chinese practices. From his brief indications scattered throughout the book, one obtains the impression thatJones made quite a number of field trips to many places (thoughhe does not offer details aboutthese trips, such as how long they were, where he went, and how many people accompanied him). Jones was received by the local culturalcadres,and would proceed to observe and record performances(again, no details on the processes and procedures). Unlike a typical music ethnographyin the Western tradition, few informants' voices are heard in Folk Music of China, and equally scarce are any descriptionsof a specific village, event, band, musician, or personal experience (e.g., many photos in the book, as wonderful as they are, contain no performers' names). This practice, called cai feng

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Asian Music: Spring/Summer 1999

("collectingballads")by Chinese scholars, differs greatly from "fieldwork" as understoodand practicedin the West by ethnomusicologists. Of course, it would be inaccurateto describeFolk Music of China as merely a compilation and synthesis of indigenous Chinese scholarship. Many musical issues briefly mentionedby Chinese scholars are amplified and detailedby Jones, such as the questions of instrumentation, keys, and scales. Many topics that have not been systematicallystudied in China, including religion and music, ritual and music, social context of music, politics and music, historicalcontext and music, rural traditionvs. urban tradition, folk traditionvs. elite tradition, are touched upon by Jones, Jones' discussions of temple especially in Part I of the book. Particularly, music traditionsand the ceremonialnatureof many Chinese instrumental contributions to our knowledge on these littlemusic traditionsare important areas. explored remarkable It is rather thatthere are almost no typos or misspellings of the thousandsof Chinese names and termsused in the book. The author and the press must be credited for their meticulous and thorough editing. On the otherhand,perhapsas a consequenceof the extremelybroad subject and extensive materials, the organizationof the book at times is quite confusing. There are too many subheadingsin each chapter, some of them overlapping, which prevents a smooth flow and the developmentof ideas. Some chapters are overlappingas well, and a few chapters' titles do not match their contents (e.g., Chapters 10 and 13). The map of Northern Chinaat the outset of Chapter10 does not include Jilin Province, which is discussed in the chapter. Also, quite a numberof musical examples are not given sources. There are also a few inaccuraciesin the book. Yang Yinliu, the preeminentChinese musicologist, was not a student of Abing as Jones Cantonese music, described by Jones as a "new" claims (252). instrumentalgenre of this century due to its lack of record in the earlier period (40, also Chapter15), was actually alreadya popularensemble form in the second half of the nineteenthcenturyamong the rural population of Taishan (south of Canton/Guangzhou). Sources from the United States documented the existence of such ensembles, typified by their wujia tou (five instruments) form of instrumentation,among the early Chinese migrants, the majorityof whom came from Taishan (Zheng forthcoming). In Chapter 13, Jones characterizes p'i-p'a as an instrumentlinked to literati pastime, folk tradition,and narrativesinging. But he ignores the important for courtesansat least since the fact thatp'i-p'a had been a majorinstrument T'ang Dynasty (618-907 AD). Of course, these problems do not affect the
overall high achievement of the book.

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Jones' Folk Music of Chinapresents a thought-provokingexample of how a student of Western ethnomusicology has negotiated with indigenous scholarshipin his researchand writing. There is no doubt that it has opened a window to a kaleidoscopicmusical world, while a myriadof questionsremainto be asked and answered. And certainly,many students and teachers of Chinese music in the West will benefit from the rich materialscontainedin both the book and the CD. Su Zheng Wesleyan University References Cited Witzleben, J. Lawrence 1997 "Whose Ethnomusicology? Western Ethnomusicology and the Study of Asian Music." Ethnomusicology 41/2:220242. Yuan Jingfang 1987 Minzu qiyue [Chinese Instrumental Music]. Beijing: Renminyinyue chubanshe [People's Music Press]. Ye Dong 1983 Minzuqiyue de ticaiyu xingshi [The Form and Structureof Chinese Instrumental Music]. Shanghai: Shanghai wenyi chuban she [Arts Press]. Zheng, Su Forthcoming Claiming Diaspora: Music, Transnationalism,and CulturalPolitics in Chinese(Asian)America.

Imaging Sound: An Ethnomusicological Study of Music, Art, and Culture in Mughal India. Bonnie C. Wade. 1998. Chicago Studies in Ethnomusicology. Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press. 276 pp.166 black & white full-page figures. 20 color plates, index, bibliography,maps. ISBN: 0-226-86840-0 (cloth) 0-226-86841-9 (paper). The Mughal period in North India from the 16th to the early 19th centuries, and especially the reign of Akbar (1556-1605), was a time in which a new North Indian urban culture was shaped out of the Indian, Persian, Turkish, and Central Asian components of the court complex.

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