Chinese Folk Music

Background and History

The traditional music of China can sound strange, even daunting, to Western ears. In our multicultural society, where we can pick up the music of all five continents in any good record store, Chinese folk music and song remain mysterious to most of us. Modern technology, as Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980) observed, is turning Earth into a global village. In a world where international communication is instant, where international travel is a matter of minor inconvenience, and where communities migrate and settle in countries thousands of miles from their native lands, we have had to rethink the meaning of words like "foreign" and "exotic." Chinese food has become as American as apple pie, so why not Chinese music?

Most people are not aware that many different ethnic minorities are found in China, in addition to the majority Han Chinese, who make up 92 percent of the population. The rich diversity of these minority cultures' music is staggering, so this article will focus exclusively on the music of the Han Chinese.

One difficulty for many Westerners to grasp is the language. Chinese vowels can curve, elongate, and rise and fall with tonalities that western languages simply do not have. Chinese consonants can also be difficult for western ears to recognize, and even more difficult to reproduce. The rhythms of spoken Chinese are hard for Westerners to understand, and the rhythms of Chinese song, which sets spoken Chinese to music, have a subtlety that to many can be elusive. Chinese songs are traditionally sung either in a thin, nonresonant voice, or in falsetto, and are usually sung solo rather than in harmonized chorus-most traditional Chinese music is melodic rather than harmonic.

Tonality

Chinese music does not have the concept of an octave per se, and each of the five notes (roughly equivalent to C D E G and A) has its own particular value. In Chinese music, folk and classical notes do not move "up" and "down" within a scale: four notes surround the tonic. In addition, each note has a philosophical resonance as well as a musical value. According to ancient Chinese philosophy, all the matter and energy in the universe is based on sound. That sound, which contains the Celestial Energies of Perfect Harmony, is so pure that it is inaudible to human ears, much the way that white light is invisible to the human eye. But just as white light can be separated into its constituent colors by passing it through a prism, so the Perfect Harmony of the universe can be best expressed as music. The musical prism of Perfect Harmony is five notes, known as gong, shang, jue, zhi, and yu. Chinese philosophers believed that peace, well-being and happiness depended on musical values. In the Yo Ki (Memorial of Music) written in the time of Wu Ti (140-87 B.C.), we learn that "Under the effect of music, the five social duties are pursued without distraction, the eyes and ears are clear, the blood and the vital energies are balanced, bad habits are reformed, customs are improved, and the empire is at complete peace." The pentatonic scale represents the five elements of the visible world-or rather, the four elements (earth, air, fire, and water) and the central, unembodied element, which organizes the others: In music, the tonic, gong, is the organizing principle of shang, jue, zhi, and yu.

The importance that the ancient Chinese attached to folk music may be seen in the establishment of The Imperial Music Bureau, during the Qin Dynasty (221-207 B.C.). This office was responsible for supervising court and military music, and for determining what folk music would be officially recognized. Its dictates were followed for hundreds of years-in fact, most of the folk music of China, both instrumental and vocal, obeys rules that were established more than 2,000 years ago.

Instruments

Many Chinese instruments may be unfamiliar to Western audiences, and the sounds they make can upon first hearing might seem unusual, or jarring. Chinese musical instruments are traditionally classified according to the materials used in their construction, namely metal, silk, bamboo, gourd, clay and skin. They comprise woodwinds, bowed strings, plucked strings and percussion. The older instruments include long zithers, flutes, panpipes, the sheng (or mouth organ), and percussion instruments such as clappers, drums, and gongs. Of later origin are various lutes and fiddles, introduced to China from Central Asia.

The most popular and universal instruments in Chinese folk music are the dizi and the erhu. The dizi is a simple bamboo flute, with one hole for blowing, six holes for fingering, and an additional hole covered by a membrane that vibrates when the instrument is played. The tone color of the dizi is crisp and clear. The erhu is a fiddle with two strings, which is held upright in the lap and sounded with a bow. The sound box of the erhu is a drum-like case usually made of ebony or sandalwood, and covered with snake skin. Originally a courtly instrument, the erhu has been used in many Chinese music styles for hundreds of years. Its portability, adaptability, and expressive range make it the Chinese equivalent to the Western violin.

The seven-string Chinese zither, or qin, may be regarded as the national instrument of China. It was exclusively a courtly instrument until the first century B.C., when the Imperial Music Bureau issued an order that villages must provide their folk musicians with a qin to improve the quality and purity of Chinese folk music. A famous qin scholar once said, "Though the qin player's body be in a gallery or in a hall, his mind should dwell with the forests and streams." The zheng, a zither with a number of strings arched over a movable bridge (for changes in tuning) is more dynamic and versatile, easier to play, and therefore in some ways considered less noble, than the qin. The ancient zheng had 12 or 13 silk strings, while modern versions have 16, 20, or 25 strings.

The pipa is a four-stringed lute with 30 frets and a pear-shaped body. The instrumentalist holds the pipa upright and plays with five small plectra, one attached to each finger and the thumb of the right hand. It has an extremely wide dynamic range, often enhanced by rolls, slaps, pizzicato effects, and induced harmonics. The pipa is one of the leading folk instruments of the Shanghai region.

The sheng, or Chinese mouth organ, looks like a set of panpipes, with 12 to 36 bamboo pipes. Each pipe is a different length with a brass reed at the bottom and a hole that must be blocked in order for the note to sound. This makes it possible to sound several notes simultaneously, so chords and melody can be performed at the same time. The sheng is the ancestor of all free-reed instruments, and its place in Chinese folk music is similar to that of the accordion in Western traditions.

The paigu is a small, barrel-shaped drum, which can be played singly or in sets of five or six. Gongs, cymbals, and bells of all shapes and sizes accompany folk dance music and play a leading role in traditional Chinese theater.

1900s and Beyond

Although China is vast, there is a surprising homogeneity in its folk culture. China is an ancient country, and the development of its music has been, like every other aspect of its social life, governed for several millennia by a central authority. China's dynastic history goes back 4,000 years, and the Communist regime, which assumed power in the mid-twentieth century, is as stern as its dynastic ancestors. Mao Zedong (1893-1976), like his forebears, understood the importance of folk music, and adapted many of the old folk songs into anthems for the Cultural Revolution. "The East Is Red," perhaps the best known of all Maoist national anthems, was originally a folk song from northwestern China called "Ride a White Horse."

Folk songs lie deeply embedded in the consciousness of a nation. They are hard to dislodge, and impossible to replace. The people of northwestern China may still be singing "Ride a White Horse" long after "The East Is Red" has gone through all the colors of the rainbow.