Guqin, DSL (less), and the great dance of the Wa-mar Chicken
Well, delays in getting some things done here are part of the daily fabric here and my DSL connection is no exception. The saga continues with my landlord and her ‘helper’, although he’s turning out to be helpless. So my posts these days depend on getting to an internet café and having the time to write. A long time since my last post. . . .
. . . so I’ll write a bit about my experiences with guqin here so far. . .
Guqin lessons have been going on for about 5 weeks now and Professor Li is happy with how I am progressing. Up until this point, I’ve been working on guqin pieces called
‘qinge’ which are ‘guqin songs’ – pieces that you both sing and play. Expression on the guqin is closely tied to singing and to learn how to phrase, especially with left-hand techniques, is guided by singing the same melodies. But the past lesson he started me on some of the larger ‘core repertoire’ pieces for guqin. I’ll eventually learn to play most of these over the next 10 months. I have started performing the piece ping sha luo yan, or ‘Geese Descending on Flat Sand’. It’s a very stark and beautifully expressive piece – I’ve wanted to learn to play it for some time. There was also a conference on guqin at the Central Conservatory and I was able to listen to some lectures (some of which I understood well, other parts not so much) and hear a very great variety of guqin performance style. It was interesting because some of what we might in the West refer to as a ‘weak’ technique and sound is very much an important expressive performance style on guqin. I feel I am only beginning to understand the variety of performance styles and the influences from different lineages of different guqin ‘schools’ of performance. Most everything was new and positive at the conference, maybe with the exception of a couple of guqin ‘concerti that were performed. Guqin is historically a solo instrument, and not until the 20th century performed in large concert halls or with an ensemble. It’s sound and aesthetics have a special sound-world. Pairing it off with an orchestra has many issues that involve balancing and integrating the large sound of the orchestra with the intimate, personal sound of the guqin. Unfortunately the two works I heard missed this completely. Additionally, the works used a Western music language to frame the guqin solos, and in this context the essence of the guqin sound and meaning was mostly lost. The balancing of music influences from different cultures in the same musical work is a major issue to contend with and one of the great challenges for me in my work, not just with an East-West dynamic but with music from all over the world. It is a very interesting condition of our time.
I have crossed paths a couple times with a former student of Li Xiangting: Wuna. Her work is more interesting partly because it involves collaborations with other musicians outside of Chinese traditional music. Perhaps the most interesting was a video that was shown at the conference of a performance for guqin voice and dance, all of which followed some sort of theme but seemed for the most part improvised. I hope to have more contact with her in the future. . .
. . . as for other music activities here, I’ve heard some decent and not so decent jazz here and have had a couple invites to come and play at a couple different jazz clubs. There seems to be a small but dynamic jazz scene in Beijing, nothing too out or experimental but worth exploring some more. Just bought a guitar near my apt. on a street called xinjiekou, full of instrument shops. By no means a great guitar, I bargained down to 800 kuai ($100USD), but doable for a guitar just to practice on. I’ll try to get out in play in the clubs over the next couple of weeks and get myself into the scene a little bit. . .
. . . Xinjiang music is another type of music I’m getting more interested in here. Xinjiang is a provience in far Western China and has a large Uyguer (Muslim) population. Their music uses the western-style guitar. I have heard a little bit of ‘pure’ Uyguer folk music but mostly, by the time Uyguer musicians make to Beijing with their bands, it adopts more of a folk-pop feel, sometimes sounding not so far from a band like Gypsy Kings. A trip that I plan to take, maybe in the spring, will be to Tibet, and hopefully some time to visit different parts of Xinjiang. . . perhaps interact with some local musicians and learn some of their guitar styles. . .
Well, that’s it for now, so much more to tell about daily life and adventures (like my friends Iris & John’s now famous video of the ‘chicken dance’ outside of Wa-mar (Walmart) and their ‘crazy-pants’ neighbor who likes slamming his door multiple times at 2 am. . . but that’s for another entry, hopefully sooner rather than later, unfortunately dependant on the helpless ‘helper’. . . .
. . . so I’ll write a bit about my experiences with guqin here so far. . .
Guqin lessons have been going on for about 5 weeks now and Professor Li is happy with how I am progressing. Up until this point, I’ve been working on guqin pieces called
‘qinge’ which are ‘guqin songs’ – pieces that you both sing and play. Expression on the guqin is closely tied to singing and to learn how to phrase, especially with left-hand techniques, is guided by singing the same melodies. But the past lesson he started me on some of the larger ‘core repertoire’ pieces for guqin. I’ll eventually learn to play most of these over the next 10 months. I have started performing the piece ping sha luo yan, or ‘Geese Descending on Flat Sand’. It’s a very stark and beautifully expressive piece – I’ve wanted to learn to play it for some time. There was also a conference on guqin at the Central Conservatory and I was able to listen to some lectures (some of which I understood well, other parts not so much) and hear a very great variety of guqin performance style. It was interesting because some of what we might in the West refer to as a ‘weak’ technique and sound is very much an important expressive performance style on guqin. I feel I am only beginning to understand the variety of performance styles and the influences from different lineages of different guqin ‘schools’ of performance. Most everything was new and positive at the conference, maybe with the exception of a couple of guqin ‘concerti that were performed. Guqin is historically a solo instrument, and not until the 20th century performed in large concert halls or with an ensemble. It’s sound and aesthetics have a special sound-world. Pairing it off with an orchestra has many issues that involve balancing and integrating the large sound of the orchestra with the intimate, personal sound of the guqin. Unfortunately the two works I heard missed this completely. Additionally, the works used a Western music language to frame the guqin solos, and in this context the essence of the guqin sound and meaning was mostly lost. The balancing of music influences from different cultures in the same musical work is a major issue to contend with and one of the great challenges for me in my work, not just with an East-West dynamic but with music from all over the world. It is a very interesting condition of our time.
I have crossed paths a couple times with a former student of Li Xiangting: Wuna. Her work is more interesting partly because it involves collaborations with other musicians outside of Chinese traditional music. Perhaps the most interesting was a video that was shown at the conference of a performance for guqin voice and dance, all of which followed some sort of theme but seemed for the most part improvised. I hope to have more contact with her in the future. . .
. . . as for other music activities here, I’ve heard some decent and not so decent jazz here and have had a couple invites to come and play at a couple different jazz clubs. There seems to be a small but dynamic jazz scene in Beijing, nothing too out or experimental but worth exploring some more. Just bought a guitar near my apt. on a street called xinjiekou, full of instrument shops. By no means a great guitar, I bargained down to 800 kuai ($100USD), but doable for a guitar just to practice on. I’ll try to get out in play in the clubs over the next couple of weeks and get myself into the scene a little bit. . .
. . . Xinjiang music is another type of music I’m getting more interested in here. Xinjiang is a provience in far Western China and has a large Uyguer (Muslim) population. Their music uses the western-style guitar. I have heard a little bit of ‘pure’ Uyguer folk music but mostly, by the time Uyguer musicians make to Beijing with their bands, it adopts more of a folk-pop feel, sometimes sounding not so far from a band like Gypsy Kings. A trip that I plan to take, maybe in the spring, will be to Tibet, and hopefully some time to visit different parts of Xinjiang. . . perhaps interact with some local musicians and learn some of their guitar styles. . .
Well, that’s it for now, so much more to tell about daily life and adventures (like my friends Iris & John’s now famous video of the ‘chicken dance’ outside of Wa-mar (Walmart) and their ‘crazy-pants’ neighbor who likes slamming his door multiple times at 2 am. . . but that’s for another entry, hopefully sooner rather than later, unfortunately dependant on the helpless ‘helper’. . . .
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