Music

You probably have some melody in your head that you associate with Chinese music, likely having to do with the traditional 5 note scale. I've been learning a little bit about it, and playing traditional tunes from different time periods and regions, but I've been learning more about the Lanzhou approach to music these days than anything else. I've got a lot of experiences saved up to talk about here: playing with a Chinese orchestra, a concert given by an orchestra of traditional instruments, a month's worth of Chinese violin lessons, a student singing talent show, and yesterday's harmonica concert. I'm still not sure what this means about music in general here, something about a strong appreciation and pride, a sort of confused mix of influences from different traditions, and a lack of musical experience in the general public (if you play, you're good, with few dabblers). I'll start from the end.

1. Harmonica concert
I usually play tennis on Saturday afternoons, but this week my tennis friend Tian wu xing asked if I'd be interested to come along to a '口琴/kouqin' concert. He'd recently started taking lessons, and his teacher had organized a concert bringing together kouqin experts from all across China or something. So I looked up 'kouqin,' which literaly means 'mouth instrument,' in my dictionary. My faithful dictionary said it meant 'harmonica,' but I didn't believe it and decided it must be some kind of Chinese wind instrument that didn't have a proper English translation. This was eing taken way to seriously to be about harmonicas. To my surprise, which I had to keep my insides from laughing about for a good 15 minutes, it was indeed a harmonica concert. I even got to hear 'eine kleine nachtmusik' performed by five harmonicas. It was even better than the lady who plays baroque melodies on the flutaphone. Unfortunately the concert was preceded by an hour long 'meeting' held by these harmonica experts which I don't think anyone in the audience paid attention to, and whose purpose still evades me.

The empty stage:

The kids warming up noisily behind us:


Wu xing and I discussing the program, learning useful new vocabulary such as 'arranged by' and wondering why the actual composers were not listed for most of the pieces. Plus you can see my hair slowly turning brown again:



Another friend, Wang hai feng, who also came along:


And here's an idea, though dark, of what the long pre-concert meeting was like:

Honestly, though, I enjoyed the concert, because practicing even the harmonica for years has good results. My friend's teacher has been playing the harmonica for over 60 years, and his son and grandsons also performed impressively. It was something else to watch teenage boys playing four harmonicas at once, stacked on top of eachother. It was even wackier to see full-grown men in suits pecking their heads from side to across a tiny instrument, or sliding a really long, deep one like a typewriter. There were groups of little children, too, and at the end they all came together for a finale. Harmonicas played classical works, and various kinds of Chinese or Chinese minority tunes. I've never known anyone to really take this instrument anywhere near this seriously. I don't know if this is a cultural difference, there may well be harmonica players in the US and they're just not very public about it? Or, I may just have happend on the rare case of it in China. I wish I had a recording, but I forgot my camera (pics are not mine). Here we go:


The kids go first:


And a soloist with a table of about 7 harmonicas in front of him, usually playing 2-3 at a time:

A grown trio:

A combined medley across generations to finish:

2. Student Talent Show
A couple weeks ago, I tried to go to the Lanzhou University Graduate student singing talent show. I went because my friend Travis, one of my two American friends, was performing. This was the final round - there were only 15 contestants left. He was quite the talk around campus, apparently, because it's very unusual for a foreigner to participate in this event. Frankly it's no wonder because it's impossible for us to figure out anything that's going on on campus. I still don't know where things are posted or how to sort through the Chinese even if I find something that looks like an activity (and is why I find myself saying over and over, 'a friend helped me find..., a friend told me about.... that's really how I get to know most things here). Anyway, the place was too small and packed, but I was trying to show support for my fellow countryman and fought my way in the back, where I could stand on tiptoes, squeezed in neck to neck with a whole lot of people.

This was definitely the place to be. As the first singers went through their routines, though, I become really unimpressed. The sound system was terrible - sometimes you could hardly hear the singing, and they just weren't very good. I've heard much better at KTV (karaoke)!! Thinking about it later, I think the kids just don't have any experience either performing or watching their peers perform. Also, most have little musical background. Only a small percentage have had the opportunity to study a musical instrument, which is very different from the US where a lot of kids have at least dabbled in a school band or orchestra. Maybe my expectations were too high. Travis, honestly, was decent -- he just started Chinese this past summer but he's a really eager, happy-go-lucky guy...he played the guitar to accompany his song (the only performer who played an instrument), which was half in English and half in Chinese. As he walked on stage I heard murmurs of 'he's so tall!!' as they had to raise the mike as far as it would go for him. He was pretty good, but still, his guitar was all blurry and his words hard to make out. Maybe from the front the sound was a bit better but I doubt it. He got a lot of shouts for singing in Chinese, and I was glad I had suffered through the near suffocating body heat that was surrounding me. After his number, I booked it out of there.

3. Orchestra of Chinese instruments
Back in October, the school took us to see a performance of Chinese traditional music and dance, especially featuring various ethnic groups from here and nearby regions of northwestern China. I absolutely loved the first half, which was a concert by an orchestra of traditional instruments -- I'd heard of the erhu, which has two strings and is held on the lap (see instruments on left, video below), but didn't know much about what others were like (you can see lute-like pipas and hear some great Chinese drumming). Then there were cymbols and a bass drum and a couple out of place looking cellos. If you look carefully in the back you can see a string bass or two, as well. I have no idea if this is some modern arrangement, if there once were Chinese instruments in this range, or what. Below are a couple photos of the orchestra and later a smaller ensemble that played, and some from the second half which was dance, filled with elaborate costumes and visual effects. The Chinese also have this thing about putting you in couches -- most of the seats were couches rather than chairs or auditorium seating. I find this a little too comfortable and a little too low, and makes me feel like I'm watching TV. A lot of western restaurants also have this idea, and sit you in a couch at your table. Here are some pictures. You'll notice the red banner above the stage stating what the performance is and why it's being held. The Chinese love their red banners. Which appear for various events and to convey various messages, both inside and outside.

The orchestra:

The Chinese Flinstones:


Dance acts:




4. Playing with a Chinese orchestra
When I was looking around for a violin teacher, my friend He wen juan went to the effort of finding out that there was no orchestra at the university, but there was one at the best high school in town. Her painting teacher's daughter played the cello in it, and with their help she'd arranged for me to try it out. If I liked it, I could probably join. So, I went along on a Saturday afternoon last month. I should have found out a little more about it before. Or maybe I should have just figured it out for myself. The musicians were all high school students, about 16-17 years old. I really enjoyed experiencing the rehearsal, if only to find out that it was much like many rehearsals I've been to before. We played one piece, by a Korean composer, which I didn't care much for d'ailleurs, for 2.5 hours. It was, in short, a high school orchestra. The kids didn't pay much attention, they chatted and passed messages on their cell phones, some trying to find out who I was. The cymbal player kept giggling when she was called out several times for coming in at the wrong place. Though I felt bad because my friend had put such effort into finding this orchestra for me, ultimately it was an easy decision not to join. My strongest feeling was how familiar this felt - I've been in this kind of orchestra before - and that's not what I was looking for. Instead, I have found something else...

5. Violin lessons

Another friend, who's father teaches dance, connected me with a violin teacher or works and lives in the same place. So for the past month, on Sunday evening, I go for my hour long violin lesson and have dinner with my friend and his family. This friend has recently left town, but I've become a weekly regular, and enjoy both eating meals in a home (though it isn't by any means home-cooked with any warm cozy connotation), and studying Chinese/English with my friend's 13 year old half brother, who's actually a pretty good teacher :). But anyway, about the lessons -- I was initially impressed by the way my teacher picked up on everything I knew I do wrong from the very start. He recommended books for me to buy and gives me a variety of things to practice from them each week. I've got a book of Chinese pieces, and one of western classical pieces. As you might imagine, the vocabulary can be pretty tough. They're on the do-re-mi system, like France was, so instead of referring to the notes by letter names, they get a name on the do-re-mi scale with do set as C. The classical pieces are still marked with Italian, just as I'm used to, and there's a handy glassary in the back of one of my books defining them in Chinese.

Chinese is extremely logical, but sometimes that logic doesn't fit with my idea of what is logical. I am ever confused by two directional terms: 上 and 下. These are opposites - in front of words like 'month' or 'time' using the first then means 'last month' or 'last time' and using the second means 'next.' But these terms also mean above and below, respectively (can't you tell from the characters?). For whatever reason, I have trouble though with the association of 'above' and 'last,' because to me these just don't seem like the same idea. And now I've got another, which is that a downbow is '下 bow' and upbow is '上 bow.' Another example is that the strings are numbered from top to bottom, with the highest being 1 and lowest 4. I can't remember if this is how I would have done it before, but in any case I got it wrong at first. Mostly though, I like learning this vocabulary - spiccato (jumping bow), staccato, vibrato, harmonics, quarter note, etc. And I like playing Mongolian shepherd's songs, and songs for Spring Festival, or celebrating a return from service in the Chinese army.

I also enjoy the metaphors my teacher comes up with to explain techniques or feeling in the music. Sometimes they take a really long time to understand because I'm missing vocabulary, like when he tried to explain that this bowing motion should resemble the way lotus root has all these gooey fibers that gracefully but resistantly stretch out when you cut it into slices. Or when he explained that I shouldn't bend my right wrist because it would prevent the flow from my shoulder through my arm and into the violin like a kink in a hose, and instead should be like the spout on a tea kettle. Figuring out who the pieces are by in my book of western music and exercise books is also not easy - as I said before, the Chinese adapt names from any other language into their syllabic system, making them often unrecognizable until you already know who they're supposed to be. For instance, Vivaldi, since Chinese has no 'v' sound, is 'wei er di,' and Kreutzer is Ke lai cai er. I remember loving the sound of 'mesopotamia' in chinese, and it cracks me up at times to hear famous people's names - you can imagine brad pitt and arnold schwarzenegger, perhaps, chinese-icized.