AsiAmericanDreaMusic: Chapter Three: Roots on the Ground

Chapter Three: Roots on the Ground

ellipses...separate unexplained omitted text, usually notes to myself about what to write there that are still too undigestible to share here

When one learns to play from a tradition, one’s bottom line is already drawn by culture: the system, material, techniques, aesthetics, etc.

When you do free imp/exper, you’re trying to get to the bottom line of the nature under culture that gives rise to it. This chap is about the cultural, chap 2 about the natural bottom line.

write up summary abstracts of each musician’s place in this Chap, and of each of their own Chaps. Beyond that, focus on WM, Min, & Sainkho, for their shared act of covering traditional material at the start of their careers. Give the brief childhood/early bio of them due each artist in this chap, all others in their own. Weave in here and in Mei’s chap the compare-contrast of them with summaries of all bkg reading material on China and Mongolia, as you’ll do w/ Jin & Korea books. PO & Miya a bit off from them, mostly by being Amis.

Fiction Conceit: 2008, in Glendale condo, after Dad’s death, cleaning it out--a scene like in tone and concept to Geneva in Berlin after “my death,” pondering my stuff, from diss--I discover in his materials 3 Chinese classic CDs, 2 Wu Man trad CDs (Time To Listen, Wu Man), & 2 Min trad CDs (Spring Flower, Moon Rising). Weave comparative reviews of them (comp to each other, to the trad Chinese CDs, & to their respective evolutions away from that trad career path) in with their intvu notes and collected sources about Chinese music/history; have the latter be Dad’s books, and my own laptop there that week at his place. Make it all a summary meditation of the state of China in the world’s postwar history, up to 1965 (per fiction) and Dad’s & my personal history thereof (Dad’s in tail end of WW2 in Asia, mine growing up in California, SF Chinatown, beats, influence of Buddhism, mostly Japanese, China thru Mao, etc.)

Have me register surprise about both Min & Wu, as I was already into their modern stuff...but hadn’t yet got to this trad stuff, didn’t know about it yet. (So the intvu weave shd be inserted as done later, retroactively.) Also discover his silk painting, hung in a bedroom stripped of all else--[flash: have me having stayed with him to the end, not put him in a home; develop that]...also his art books on Asia, which I was aware of, but as marginal to his collection/focus; now they took on new resonance

When I return to PDX, that experience led me to look over Sainkho’s roots-on-ground (rog), & Mei’s, Jin’s, Miya’s--or rather to look for such, having theretofore been focused only on their CDs as their original gestures inflected by trad roots...but now some stood out from that as distinctively roots-on-ground, as opposed to that. List what those are for each, PO too, in a graf or 2, previewing them as yet to come in detail in their Chaps, but glanceworthy as rog here; Out of Tuva [mention Peruvian singer] shd be rather counted as in same category as the trad pipa CDs by Min & Wu. Narrate all this as a little rsrch garden path that gave birth to the concept of this Chap

Generally, this conceit falls in the lit device of hero discovering secrets about his family bkg in process of going thru personal effects of newly deceased parent or such, secrets that resonate thru time & generation to the hero’s own life, synchronistically (though diachronically rather than synchronically).

Take 1 of draft: This chapter marks a special <kinda sacred, holy> place in my heart, one which comes alive inside every time I read it. It was born on a particular day, from the significance thereof to me personally--born accidentally, as I pored through my father’s belongings the day after he died.

<graf recounting the situation: spent last 5 mos w/ him; sudden trip to hospital, quick death; public/financial arrs (Candace, other sibs)

<my bit was this, alone in the Glendale condo I’d had such good times in as a boy/younger man...[logistics of that: it was basically the same library as at Tilden place, only gradually transferred here, and reunited w/ me after adolescent rifts with Dad had passed

thought I knew it pretty well; it was one of several parts that I’d never seen that surprised me w/ one of those shocks of recognition that sometimes come btwn gens of rels whose lives echo or mirror each other unbeknownst, in their mutually private parts...

<I come upon the little Chinese music CD section--in order: the 2 classics, the 2 WMs, & the 2 Mins [also wrk in new classic CDs just ordered]

ALSO: have me discover an unpublished story, about a young marine, bad as bad, witnessing & standing up to lowdown shit in fellow soldiers (the story about pulling his pubes out, as initiation; the pedophile story); and his own drunken loss of control and burning of the peasant hut [no murder confessed, but none denied either]; a short story, about his fall & guilt, change of heart/wrldvu/personality

all other CDs will go in separate chaps--but do give a preview of Wu Man’s work that mines the ancient trad, & of Mei’s in Red Chamber piece and Outside, & any others mentioned in intvu; and of Sainkho’s Biosintes, In Trance, Lost Rivers (all but Out of Tuva)--Blue Pipa’s Poem from Tang Dynasty (on website?) see intvu...

glance back at VG, AAWM; assume a cursory mention of them in Music Def, and place their details here as proper place for them; as a good way to match the image of aboveground roots, with that new turn back to comp musicology, including the bio & global(geo)/universal(theo)

Starting point, glance back at underground roots: the 4 elements of voice, strings (from bows, animal guts--like vocal cords, & free reeds), winds (soft, overtony, from birdbone flutes and pipes), percussion; Origins of Music book; picture is that they have emerged from VG’s first culture, spread/splintered in variously (roughly) traceable ways; that, roughly, LOUD winds and perc (and strings of bows, single, like also the beribeau) have gone more down the martial/male lines, strings the more esoteric/scientia/mystical/female (& feminized male, older, wiser, literati; Pyth monochord, RRR version; those ancient men in thrall and service to Goddess, per Kingsley, Graves). Strings facilitate multitasking, connectivity, relationships, moment; LOUD winds & perc more about trance of rhythm and tone, hypervent and entrainment, flow; polyphony v. monophony = democracy v. totalitarian hierarchy and/or mob behavior (canetti)

[PO, RRR, Fred, Taylor only ones who play winds]; everything else here is all about strings & woman vox; main perc = shaman’s drum (so even less of that than wind); tie that in to my experience, from bone wind with side of strings (guitar & pno) to fullblown pno w/ side of man vox. Consider pno as “the ladies’ instru in the West” (glance at lit on that, and on my own diss/NSSM stuff about pno historically, both in West & Af-Am)

ponder bow as both weapon & instru...and P/B polyphony/counterpoint as a kind of “sacred harp” (pt = music emerging from the relationships of pitches and rhythms, not totalitarian entrainment thru regimented unities, like language emerges thru the relationships of sounds, signs, and semantics); you want to get at a sense of Goddess that is as awesome as what God has been all this time...as fearsome as well as loving a parent...but do so not as easily caricaturized (tho that will be inevitable);

all this speaks to my (& AB’s) longstanding aversion to a beat, or groove;

from Ami jazz to Euro jazz, perc recedes as groove entrainer; winds splinter from mono to multiphonic, noise, etc.; very little perc in the Asian stuff too, except the shaman’s frame drum, metals, and then Japanese big drums (well, also much in Chinese folk music)

<flash: per M Woods Legacy film on China, the scholars (literati) were a Confucian innovation to improve government by taking it out of the hands of raw power--much like the American rev was to the monarchy later; and that literati’s instru was the one-string qin, like Pyth for science, and piano for Baroque-on composers (post-vocal music)...diff being the self-cultivation of the lit/qin (as opposed to science and social cultivation of Greeks and West); unlike winds, like perc, one can also sing w/ a string

voice and winds organically bodily (vocal fold and breath; free reed similar construction to that, more than single reed); strings and perc less so (struck, plucked, bowed); the thing about that is that strings and perc don’t depend on breath: they escape that wheel of life and death. And perc does it like the lizard brain, strings like the cortex (and lizard brain); that’s why I like strings better than perc, as both listener and player, and, now in my ripeness, better than winds

bottom line = all instrus/contexts do multi-duty now; martial winds play love songs, lala strings can be Cecil Taylor martial...all voices reflect the whole spectrum of human

beyond that general terrain, each artist’s relationship to her/his trad roots is differently manifested (mention the culture’s gender dynamic of the singer/player’s role in the trad), and her/his relationship to the material/trad, extending from the underground root system to the aboveground one

All that is prelude to my own little project here, context setting, for

· analyzing/theorizing the musicians in the context-sensitive ways touched on in the AAWM conf; and

· exploring both the comp-mus big history of it as folk, and my own organism’s depths w/ it (back to the early story 1 memories of Chinese culture/music/people on West Coast, Chinatown, Miss Mah, etc.

segue to fiction here?

Cage is the perfect eg. of West “going to ground” in its art music, as it did in its Af-Am & Euro-free...starting w/ Debussy

in all of this stuff there is roots, & also new music (Cage-influenced Chinese [Wu Man, esp., & her composer friends], for them, imp music for West); try to separate them out: all roots in this section, all news in each artist’s chap

explain “aboveground roots”; generally, I’m approaching the whole Asian/Amer trad--the whole tree--as one moment, not an arrow of time (which is the time that flies from the sprung string of the bow, and like the bow is humanufactured out of the tiniest slivers of the tree): nature time, as well as culture [historical] time link or ref to paper delivered at AB@60 event

boxed part = segue from Chap 2, reviewing it from Chap 3 perch, as transition

segue? [generally, have me be reminiscing in Glendale condo, weaving in and out between the personal and the general history?]

also, my own (story 1) time/influ, from

Dad, who got his interest in theater of war (use the liner notes guy as a model for story 1 him; posit an interest in Asia for him, esp China, mention his silk painting, his books, the CDs, all unnoticed by me till now) <”music is a young man’s game” and “play or die!” War is too; was for Dad, who then grew out of it into lib pac--& for me, dreaming of it during the Peace w B Zee (saw ourselves as virtual warriors, him with his songs, having missed out on West Point, me w/ my Shadowbook>
Miss Mah (make up stuff for her too)
fictional accts of SF Chinatown
Gary Snyder, Beats, etc. for West Coast Asian culture (draw on Sutin book)

wrkg from notes, start with the 2 trad Chinese CDs, making the point that one way or another all so-called trad music is also contemporary, because it’s material received by and being passed on thru the living voices and contexts of any given moment. my comparison btwn older trad CD & Wu Man’s, same material, shows how that is

That said, some of the material here is presented as a cover--an attempted interp/rendition of music handed down to be performed more intact than “flowered”--while other material is overtly altered, extended, rearranged in this or that way, to the point of qualifying as a new gesture/stmt/comp/imp, and/or new hybrid w/ another trad, and/or new context for the trad instrus.

In this section we’ll compare and contrast those various presentations of the traditional; those roots shared variously so by all the artists will function as prelude and base for the separate looks ahead at each artist’s more radically personal and originally contemporary work.

first, a look at the traditional, apart from those artists

work up a fict scenario of me in Glendale, going thru Dad’s stuff; coming across the 2 Chnese trad CDs; reminded of anything to do w/ Miss Mah? let it have the feel of me in Berlin for the first time, taking a bath...and of Geva, coming upon my stuff after I’m gone...

as you did w/ childhood memories of racism, recall those of War in Pacific; first song learned = Marine song; dad & uncle stories about then (uncle stayed in army), abt Dad losing it on opium, wrecking a hut, killing in combat, getting the plate in his head, becoming teetotaler; the early war movies, both Dad’s <draw on Father is Screened piece about him; recall the Japanese girl he made cry in the ‘60s, as I wd do w/ Susan Lee in the late ‘70s/early ‘80s> and the one about “blacken your skies w/ our planes”; Viet Nam, my draft exper; the little Chinese wise men figurines we used to have; all this is coming back to me as I sift thru his things.

Have me put this CD on while I do so--read “his” books abt China, etc.; write dreamily about the music I’m hearing, the history I’m reading,weave in my Asian hist books here; call them his the memories it’s all bringing up. Weave in the trad parts of my artists as being those I’m working on in the real world, real time...with those trad CDs of dad’s

Artist	Roots	Shoots & Fruits
Sainkho	Out Of Tuva, Not Dad’s, I get it @ home Biosintes, Stepmother City (4 Buddhist text), In Trance, Lost Rivers	Shoots = direct draws on trad, fruits = radical break
Wu Man	Time to Listen, China disc 1, those 2 are Dad’s, the next I dig upCarnegie Hall fest, Immeasurable Light, Borderlands	Shoots = direct draws on trad, fruits = radical break
Min	Flowing Stream, Spring River Flower Moon; Moon Rising; Poem from Tang Dyn	Shoots = direct draws on trad, fruits = radical break
Mei	Instrus w/ RR [no, move 2 RRR’s chap, Outside the Wall [see intvu on that] Kasbgar, Red Chambr; also her radio shows	Shoots = direct draws on trad, fruits = radical break
Jin	Living Tones systm itself, instru, book wrk in glances at “Dad’s” Korean books; he was unaware of her, but she looks so like Ilene; Korean war was a big part of his life	Shoots = direct draws on trad, fruits = radical break (& mention new gen at ISIM)
RRR	Instrus themselves, his book	Shoots = direct draws on trad, fruits = radical break
PO	Her words about sheng, doublreed; hstory w/ Asian relig; Zorn book 4?	Shoots = direct draws on trad, fruits = radical break
Miya	From Zorn bk, her koto training; check website
	NONE OF THE MEN AT DAD’S; LEAVE THAT CONCEIT TO SUM THEM UP BRIEFLY, AND AS A GROUP OF AMIS; SHORT, SUMMARY ABSTRACTS OF THEIR CHAPS TO COME
AIR note recent news about Asian immigrants surpassing latinos as fastest growing	All Asian influs: Miyumi for Tatsu
Jason	All Asian influs: The Red Box opera, duo w/ Park
Fred	All Asian influs
Taylor	All Asian influs

key in new CD notes on these 2 CDs from notebook

Phases of the Moon CD:

Moon Mirrored in Pool - Imagine hearing this as a boy, when it was so completely other. What does it mean? listen to it again, describe from that & liner notes <I was struck by how differently this “traditional” Chinese music struck my ears, from how it sounded back then, how it sounds in my current musicians; consider how China’s been Westified (diff from Westernized; more like mystified) since mid-19^th century, thus producing a music born under the Western gaze (only way they got out of it was to fight it with its own weapon--Marxism--but that proved a bad fit (much like mannish, humorless, anti-man/anti-sex feminism), & was shed when victory and peace gained); it’s like Af-Am music before it got away from Western paradigm in ‘60s, or the folk music troupes under Commie regimes: the ethnic minorities, like the drums in Congo Square, or minstrelsy: over-orchestrated, in a sappy movie-music style of old...like Wayne liked. Cheesy, like American composers for high school bands. but also touched by the classical-romantic aesthetic of fluctuations of mood over flexible/modular forms (as opposed to single-minded baroque; the latter more like Wu Man, later) ref essay about ethnic minorities in Chinese Music book; mention Sainkho/Tuva as part of Russia, but subject to the same Han attitude toward minorities described there (nature-loving joy, childlike, etc.)

like the World of Love books--the CD is dated...you can almost see the martinet conductor--comment critically on the liner notes too, but pick out the good points: composers ca. 1950, before Mao famine, produced by China Record Co., for CBS; like Euro jazz postwar, playing for an Ami world; see liner notes p. 12, about blind erhu player --so soul-expressiveness of bowed strings lies in its fretless ability to slide the pitch, like voice; Af-Ams do it 1 way, Asians another; popular for its melancholy [this is all tone poetry informed by Western orch aesthetic as much as China]

The Moon on High - the suite-like array of loud & soft, swift & still, suggs a similar scenescape: “from p. 12” notes

<flash: construct story 1 Glendale narr from trax: like this one can reflect the condo courtyard & street, track 1 the sadness of Wayne’s decline & tragedy & death> pipa here (mention T’ang Yin ptg in booklet--moon/pipa, both contemplative); trax 1 & 2 reminiscent of JR Europe’s desire to represent Af aesthetic in Western orch context]

what was their thing with the moon? shades of ancient connection to woman; cut to Eugene, some kind of Asian fest where poems get pinned to board; floated in paper boats w/ candles (full moon festival); look up moon stuff in all sources (also see liner notes), make it a woman/yin trope <and why, with all this yin in the history/culture, is it so historically & currently sexist, per Kristofs? because the moon is so much lesser than the sun? hearken back to that trope in NSSM>; JG Ballard movie; Asian girls at McDonalds, pressing for their Ami identity even as we wanted to press on their Asian one; the Chinese woman who gave rice milk to Geva; Geva’s own attraction to Asian kids over the years;

Chinatown in SF, childhood memories of Chinese New Years parades; TV shows w/ Asian domestics (My 3 Sons, Bonanza Hop Sing, Charlie Chan; review all that); on woman side, Flower Drum Song, peg to Guelph paper, & NW/SEM PPt;

When I started guitar lessons I tried to do a Chinese tremolo with a pick; later Wu Man showed me & explained how it was really done, at Reed College, as also online for the world; still hard to believe...except it’s not unlike my own right-hand flights on the piano: automatic, totally embodied, hidden even from me once so, for it to even function, after working so hard and intentionally and intently to make it be so

As with fundie religion, the racism merged with my experience of the musics (both Af-Am & Asian) to morph beyond the cartoon/child understanding (also like kachina doll, or santaclaus), like a glacier of illusion calving off to melt into the sea of reality, its source (all untruth is a subset of all truth, not reverse; recall PKingsley on Parmenides)

Days of Emancipation - peasant rise of new China, 1950, featuring banhu, folk instru No. China--p. 13 see liner notes; happy exuberant; the Jubilee thing, as in Af-Am/Judeo history/culture/soul
Dance of the Yao People - also 1950, also folk, ethnic minority -- SW China, mntns; stately longing--air reminiscent of Prokofiev sweet-sad; both stemming from peasant/folk/ethnic min; some similar to Russian music
Flowing Water - Peking Opera melody; penny whistle, deft, crafty melody; musical theater
Tashwayi - the Uygur piece - Islamic tinge, compare to Wu Man’s Borderlands; instrus mostly Uygur (& strings)
spring on the Pamir Plateau (Xinjiang people), Russo-Islamo/klezmerish feel, w/ transverse flute dizi virtuoso composer; p. 13; spring, herder song
Purple Bamboo Melody (Shanghai opera) compare to Min, & cotton mill vid guy, for Irish & noise/free aspect; banjo & flute sound
Dancing in the Moonlight (Axi minority) p. 14, modernish (Coplandish, Bernsteinish)
Song of the Herdsmen (Mongolian folksong) modern artsongish, precursing/sugg minimalist aesthetic
Spring on a Moonlit River -- a pipa solo, into duo w/ flute; rubato; grp in; pipa in & out as soloist, & in unison duo w/ flute

all this is jaunty, stage-showy, like the way Chinese people (anyone) try to be “just like” the Amis--that melting pot strategy that always gets employed when there really is a self/other thing going on that it has to manage; it goes away when we all just really do melt, intermarry, and forget about it

compare this CD to Time to Listen, also the liner notes/writer, & whole presentation (hip Western music guy, 2 diff generations 50s/90s); this guy is much more like me (the other like Dad); the role is the same: a trustworthy Western music scholar/jrnlst

Story 1: the CD above from Dad’s stuff sent me to follow it up with this one, from my Wu Man research;1 track on Time to Listen; all its other trax are interesting for their instru & ethnic range, like 6-10 on Phases of the Moon , only w/ the more post-colonial/postmodern feel; [talk about the cover photo too, on both these CDs, tie into Guelph paper theme]

like the CD above, this one is very much the showcase of ethnic minorities, like Borderlands; it’s like an English folk CD in its feel for story, poetry, told in sound as much as words--Lord Randall, Silkie, etc.--Dylan link, Lomax/Grauer--strings are really the folk thing

this music is Westernized too, like the Moon CD, but in a better way: it has the connection of the postcolonial/imperialist/ColdWar spirit... where young people meet in Universities like Wesleyan, Cazadero--not the connection of people forced to communicate their piecemeal peaces in the boxes of those former pre-Peace contexts

see that as the Chinese version of America expanding to its own multicultural inclusion, once it got past its Maoist straitjacket; rather, the egalitarian impulse in the latter was more the totalitarian melting pot than the multi-ethnic salad bowl; Wu Man’s evolution is fulfilling the deepest good of bad Maoism reflected in her young pic, just as we Amis are doing beyond our crazy chauvinisms and fundamentalisms; same music, different soul sound

Track 12 is Wu Man’s: Pu’An (see her intvu abt that); recall my perf of Ryoanji (re: the wood block she simulates here, for the Buddhist monk theme)

I took notes on tracks after that, but not before; go back and hear 1-11, just to summarize the rest of the CD pithily, generally

ALSO--add new CDs of trad Chinese music acquired after these notes were written

===

Eleven Centuries of Traditional Music of China

sounds really rough, like a Mississippi Delta Blues field recording of a guitar player, or a Derek Bailey solo--made me forget trying to take notes and just start reading (both “my” [Dad’s] books and online bookmarks about China) on Chinese music history. It has no liner notes, just says time window (600-1600) & Dynasties (T’ang, Sung, Yuan, Ming); sum all that up from those sources; yes! have me keep listening to this over & over as I read Chinese history (summarize pithily here), as if reading American history over Delta blues recording

then segue into Wu Man & Min; then back to Sainkho, then Jin; then Mei/RRR, to Americans...well, not segue so much as weave all those into the story 1 fiction of me cleaning things up alone in Glendale, 2008, reflecting, savoring the synchronicity of discovering the Asian side of Dad’s life while I’m exploring that myself for the first time in my work then of researching thru these CDs. (Mention my other wrk then on the Arista liner notes; not too much original writing there, an easy gig.) Make a weave of the historical and the trad trax from these contemporary artists.

Wu Man-- her other (than Time to Listen) trad covers are of interest because they came after her more “modern” hybrids with jazz, pop, new art music: from “trad” to “new” to “folk,” showing, the trad to be living, not museum stuff. Almost as if she had to establish her creds in two conventions/trads: Chinese first (her childhood home), Western (new music, jazz, pop, folk) second (her adult home, as expat), before going back to the pipa’s ground in the Chinese ethnic stuff (“back to beginning, for the first time”) wrk up first trad covers from new & old notes; do the later ones (w/ Kronos, Borderlands) for the first time, preview here, for her own Chap

first: CD 1 (1993) whole CD1 on China (same Maoist pic on it & Time 2 Listen); again, rvu the liner notes as much as the music, as on previous 2 CDs; try to figure out a literary way of processing/presenting all this ethno-type info, like in the book about the haggadah that survived down thru the centuries...maybe by drawing on the history texts read during Eleven Centuries CD?

Track 1&2: weave her intvu in w/ this: Wu Lin, Hangzhou, her home (like she left for Beijing as a kid: a preparation for leaving the whole Chinese trad in the way she did?

from earlier notes (I seem to have done them on both Track 1 & 2, w/o distinguishing them): liner notes explain trax, general history <from intvu & other intvus online, etc.: anything on how her training & spirit & techs of trad/ancient music informed/shaped her incursions into Western improv & avant-garde>; sound is similar to blues & folk throughout the world...the blues, the modal...sounds of string scrapes--clicks?--from hard to curlicew soft whispery...arcing/arching tremolo picking up an down--if modern new & improv palette has evolved from a base of ornaments & attack effects, bringing them from margins to center of musical meaning/expression, trad/classical Chinese music has a redolent such base (as opposed to post-equal temp Western music)--in notes for this track, Wu Man’s nostalgia for homeland mentioned--extend that from local to her global Now? ie, a sad farewell part of this career arc of hers?--or:[what is her current, post-global rel. w/ her roots? see intvu for answer, and explore it more in later trad-cvr CDs

Track 3: also weave in intvu; compare w/ Shanghai Blues film, & Min’s version of this (is there one?) etc. from earlier notes: Tyrant Removes Armor - the 11-part story, of only martial piece on CD; the great war establishing Han dynasty [ask her, or find out in intvu or elsewhere, how narrative generally is musicalized in her trad training, and how that shaped her subsequent sense of new & imp music as conveyor of story, poetic image (ie folklore)--really avant-gardish smeary chording

4: again, a musicalization of a story/image (lonely empty life of birds in gilded cage)

5: more recent...rubato, meandering, more musically rangy; also programmatic

6: the cumulative effect of this CD is that Chin (qin) music embodies the idea that musical sound tells poetic stories/visions [flash: tonal language, pictographic writing, and semantics converge sight, sound, and mind in Chinese linguistics]

Wu Man...yr story of most interest is the arc of yr roots to yr fruits

Track 6: The Moon on High - compare it to same piece on Phases CD; there it’s “classical,” arr. for an orchestra; the orig Chinese notes sketch out the suite concepts; a pipa does play on old one part of the melody--“world” on Wu’s version--mostly it’s just more extravadramatic; Celtic sound really does come thru old arr.--(I shd milk that for my Irish roots) (my father’s side was Germanic/Celtic; mother’s Scots-Irish; both are a mix of the yin (Irish) and yang (German, Scots)...it feels natural to put the yin on the Irish part of both) - Moon is Yin too

the Phases version doesn’t sound too/as schmaltzy as some of its other trax, because of the pipa taking lead, and the suite-like form <tho it does get cheesy with the dramatics, both compositionally & performatively>

I’m taking the classical/world music divide at face value; the solo pipa has more gristle & root than the ensemble laying it on too thick (I love those bent notes thrown in with the baseline/default tremolo: rhythmic & sustained, in one technique)--chimey, overtony

Phases version has nice moments, but then too overdone ones

7: The Points jangly, dissonant, harsh... “civil” & “martial” are styles reflects that historical forking btwn the civil & martial brought by Confucius...resonates w/ splits such as church & state, science & religion, military & government still in play; this has both; Chinese new music in CD 2, and this track (talk about its trad influs, if any); Min did this piece too; compare

listen & take notes on CD2, 1996; go thru her folder for any reviews of this double CD set [these notes were done before intvu; adjust for that]

CD2: info about Chinese new music in 1980s in notes; see intvu about what dynamics of internal society & larger wrld contrib. to this in music;

1. 1^st track 10 sections, each (per trad., which it is) evoking poetic image, scene from nature; in intvu, how does this affect music? does she apply it to new & improv music

2. Run (1993) [see notes] new music piece; subjective personal accts of this wd be best; I want to get into both her technical challenges & delights & her musical creative imagination...and how it relates to tradition...; it’s reminiscent of hard flamenco chording, & Italian mandolin...and Derek Bailey...and all such...ends on open tuning, & rippy hi bridge harmonics

3. as notes say, this Cantonese (pre-Comm modern, then decadent) is much like Irish music; a piece based on impressions of WM’s home city Hangzhou; “like pipa music, this is programmatic” (birds); why is pipa music programmatic? what trad role, why is it well suited as an instru to be prog? what other music is, by contrast, not so?

4. much trad pipa solo; ask her about her mix of trad & modern; what stmt is that? what continuum is it?

5. Tan Dun, stu of Cage, C-A-G-E IV--improv on those notes, long toning them, playing them w/ diff timbres, attack, rhythms...any combination--limits, bldg to freedom, full catharsis jam--that suona (shawm) is what’s on the Distant CD

6. same tune as on Listen track 12; compare

7. 1994, new music-duet pipa & zheng--dramatic flourish of 9^th chord on zheng--into sweeter slower parts...much bending & sliding
pipa in, zheng then more harp like; nice story about ancient (2d mill BC) poem of yearning for love in notes. See notes about Zhou bio...spacey contemp piece

8. Ambush on all Sides compare to Min’s version; sim theme to CD1, track 3; 5 sections--oscillate btwn heavy lo dirty chords & nimble recitative--out scratchy, thrashy, bendy-pitching--sudden chompy-loud end

9. Trad w/ erhu--poem from Tang (when Buddhism came to China, introducing more intellectual sophistication, less magic & folklore); most often done on qin zither; arr. here for pipa & erhu’s “more modern sound”; sad-sweet old melody

Min--very little in her intvus about roots; go thru her trad CD liner notes

her trad CDs: starkest contrast to her future wrk, w/ Brooklyn & downtown scenes, & Derek Bailey;...is her career spare & difficult? like Jin’s and Sainkho felt theirs to be at times? <explore the Gold Mountain syndrome--how people flock to America because it’s rich and free, only to find out the “way out of no way” that got it there is no easy path, as it wasn’t for Af-Ams to make the same; listen/note CDs just ordered. Check her website for updates. She’s closer to my academic-cum-improv music scene than Wu Man; riff on both, tho, from int & notes for the trad part>

listen & take notes on The Moon Rising, 1996; look at her website for reviews, esp. of these 2 trad CDs

1. Meandering Stream from High Mountains -- (see notes about story; resonates with me & FB friendship)--pipa solo--jaunty, catchy...chromatic nuance, bent-note nuance...rhythmic panache, in flourishes away from a strong beat--beat pitches too

2. Ambush from All Sides--compare directly to WM--recall the age-old dialectic btwn power & its civil restraint, in history of Confucius in Axial Age, after so much raw violent power--<see notes on WM’s version below; compare on the terms of my own blues/jazz perspective, because this piece resonate w/ that, both in “blue notes” & intensity/rhythm>--
Min is intense in her painting too; like AB Falling River, expressionistic...also like calligraphy at its brushiest: this spirit moves well to Black Power (the warrior, whether victorious or nobly defeated while doing best)
<o! from music to noise--makes me wonder about the relationship of diff musical trad/schools (Pudong, Min’s, others; see liner notes on Wu Man CDs, search for Min equivalent, in intvu, her site) w/in China, in terms of social hierarchy--is Min more raw/intense than WM because more in touch w/ lower social status?--also, where does the Cotton Mill perf fit in w/ this?
in any case, it is a tour de force perf for one coming into the Af-Am/West fray

WM version of same piece: not as gutsy/intense/raw--yes as energetic & virtuosic, but thinner in overall tone. Question: as it progresses, as wild?

it’s 9+ mins, Min’s only 2+; what’s that about?

So far WM okay on level of presenting melody/story--still less funky--so far I think I understand Min more, at least for improvised music; must say that if Pudong is supposed to be high, seems more effete to me <how do their 2 style/family/regional lineages compare, in Chinese cultural context?> fewer bent notes in WM...but still the same radical shift to noise in spots...same simulated stylized chaos--it goes out--how to compare those parts? both are equally out, and equally scripted to be so--clearly a Chin-hist-cult script of one part of the dialectic btwn chaos/bruteforce & Confucian civility/order--like the Western dialectic of same [overall, Min’s 2+ mins beat WM’s 9+]

3. Stone Forest Nocturne--sweet minor slow rubato--pentatonic minor--RUAN--<see notes about 3 sections>--intro; rubato next...all minor ruminative...so like Ami folk guitar trad--like pipa is like banjo same--(this is my hardheart thrust: poor Chinese = poor Ami--and STRINGS are where that discourse happens, not perc or winds--as a counterpart to PIANO as high-culture instru of composers (Chinese hi & folk culture all of a piece). Strings are polyphonic, not dependent on breath (circle of life & death), not rock-bottom pitchless or single-pitched (perc)

4. Flying Flowers Touching the Green--rubato--much tremolo technique...stmt of trad mel; she has an earthier style than WM--more chromatic nuance added to the pentatonic frame--pent nuance & also more bent pitches--the whole rapid tremolo thing is just common to all--but varies w/ degrees of ind. intensity/genius...so rubato sweet...melodic, calm & measured, ends well

5. Dance of the Yi People -- sounds kind of like passionate Jewish or Roma opening--minor, rubato--into slow-stately...simulated drone in repeated bass note--not a raucous jolly dance, more a bluesy kind of thing to halfway pt
then into double time--catharsis then reprise back to melody
<Dance of the Yao People similar in tempo, modality; contrast btwn mournful, light, & frenzied>

6. Spring on Mt. Tian--Xinjiang people--slow, dramatic...to fast, contrast--flamenco-like in melody, feel; interesting, modern-sounding (now Mariachi, in major key)-- google the composers

7.    Torch Festival Night (ruan)--another ethnic min from SW region--“[close to nature, uninhibited, enthusiastic people”...like happy darkies]--these various turns to the ethnic mins by my 3 women are noteworthy; mine that
           it opens slow & minor sad, like other such; the solo ruan, & pipa, so much more like the best of folk trad than the ensemble orchs arranged on the classical Chinese CDs
           goes into a faster recit.--some passion from the melancholy meditation--much like a down funky blues--or folk paean--like Winston Hill guitar--a 3-agst-2/4 charge....
           ending on a reprise of the haunting beginning...reminiscent of Poor Wayfaring Stranger; sure don’t get the imagery of the title, tho, or the notes

8.    Points --I claim a Story 1 link/affinity to Chen Yi for her SF connection--b. 1953--Columbia educ (like hubby Zhou)
           martial style opening: pipa percussive, brash, dissonant, dirty-noisy--very much so--but the conceit of the piece (see notes) is a good eg. of the integration of the arts [aural/lit/vis] I’m exploring here
           from brash opening into more down ruminative rubato; quirky mel/harm, very modernistic--that pipa is such a crazy-brashy-percy instru in the hands of a shredder-thrasher like Min. what is that? where does her fierce dragon spirit come from (definitely goes to its match in West, Derek, etc.)
           this piece is a noteworthy eg of the new-music spirit of cutting edge, as opposed to folk or jazz/improv edge; improv/comp, like hi/lo, not so polarized in Chin trad as in West
           she is burning this field up as a perf-virtuoso here; anything comparable from WM, Mei? If not, give this particular praise up for Min (others for other 2) pt: Min’s father & sister musicians, but WM’s not, tho artistic
           typical ploy = one note plucked...pause...another, then 2, then 3...cascading from slow to fast in a barrage of the 10,000 beats of a hummingbird’s wings
           this piece is edgy throughout; hard to know how much Min’s, how much Chen’s spirit (again, compare it with WM’s version)
           very slow spacey last part, afte much energy-intense--then total energy-intense end tremolo

9.    Big Waves Surge Toward the Shore --liner notes tell much about spirit of pieces throughout CD: blind, noble in face of adversity [a trope for me & my book]
           STRUM! rubato...melodic line then--rubato ruminance/tremolo [the very act of good pipa technique is a heroic feat ignited in childhood by tiger mother China--CLICK (like the ryoanji device)--Min has the grittier/edgier/pluckier spirit
           it’s all happening on a guitar-like instru--so sim to Ami folk trad--even this overlaps w/ bowed erhu, like Ami fiddle (think of Jason Hwang)

10. The Moon Rising [ruan]...rubato, minor ruminative
simple naturalistic description of moon rising--trad, no composer byline, just pentatonic Chinese--she respects & loves it, briefly

11. Longing for the Wei River--pipa--see notes, about qin, & the people of NW China (Shannxi province)--opera-based, good showcase for Min’s emotional expressiveness--dramatic dynamics & tempo fluxes--such a passionate pipa! up & down the instru’s pitch range
into more of a charging romp thru the tune; good choice for an ending track. A flourish!

Min Xiao-Fen

Spring, River, Flower, Moon, Night (1997)

Jackdaws Playing in the Water—Pipa solo...slow, melody...bent, quick-triple-plucked notes...minor mode....repeated phrases....hi phrases referring back to lo anchor notes...improv (sounds like) signifying on the descending melody (tumbling strain?)—more energetic by end...like jazz—
King Chu Sheds His Armor—bold, aggressive, clangy, insistent, persistent, declaring---then shifting to another tone...heavy on tremolo as a way of turning repeated action into sustained stmt—taking command, being loud & controlled—furious—that string instru pattern of strong asserted bass underpinning hi flurries of flights of the bottom’s fancy (overtones, made concrete & manipulable)—hard, dialectic of hi (neocortex, language) & lo (limbic, reptile, automatic)—also like jazz (piano) in that way—the double bill—question: do you have a sense as players of this dialectic when yr playing (also of its moments of convergence, such as in climaxes of this piece)?

halfway thru it relaxes into a recitation of only hi (rubato), still tremolo—like klangfarb, only in time (ie., many little daubs of repetitions that simulate sustained tones—like Cecil, playing fast to construct slow--?: that dialectic between constant intense action, to express a slower stmt.

? for all trax: relationship of music to titles? also: relationship of traditional training to yr own critical thinking as a new interpreter of ancient material?

?also all: rel. of this trad material/technique to new & improvd?

?scores of this? oral-aural? how transmitted? what is the experience for Chinese audiences, both specialist & general? same as classical/early music for Westerners?
Sounds from the Chen & Sui Dynasties—strangely music-specific kind of title. Meaning? what are these sounds? Rubato opening....development...starts lo, moves to hi, both relaxed...noise parts: muffled strings, w/ tones too—significance? more generally: any significance in modes & patterns? (as w/ ragas—anything that conveys specific essences?). How do you imagine non-Chinese audiences/individuals receiving this material? as compared/contrasted to Chinese? in world music context? what do you think of that context?

since you play w/ these Af-Am improvisers, do you see any special resonance there, more than elsewhere?

many stops & starts in this piece. What’s that about?
Han Palace Autumn Moon—any knowledge of relationship between Han dynasty & people named Han? [generally: ask for brief explanations of not the real history behind these words, but of her own sense & tellings of them] slow, relaxed, midrange (tho each note utterance is intense)...some gentle...these are all like suites, more than cycles...again, how are they taught, & lrnd (written material, to be embellished/expanded in some way by each player? how?

? pipa a man’s or woman’s instru, particularly? what’s that clave-like click? how are the dynamics learned? do they correspond w/ some lit/emotional narratives?
Song of the Northern Frontier—very slow rubato...none of this seems metered, all very organic time—story behind this piece? it unfolds slowly, stops, resumes w/ stately gesture...time is really slowed & stilled by this, w/ the pauses & resumptions—the intro evokes blues guitar in several ways--? you ever thought of that? the minor scale, percussive phrasing, nervous energy/intensity, bent notes---
Zhao Jun Crosses the Frontier Pass—brash opening...but slow-rubato tempo, as all--& intense tremolo—slaps the instru. ?what is the rel. btwn imp & comp here?
title track—why? story? is each of the 5 in its own musical section?—very expository, the way it states things [again, the click] then expands on them, stops, moves to new thing

then preview their other trad-inflected wrks (in story 1, say I’d already covered some, intvued them; wd later catch more as they came out; preview all up to date, to elaborate on in Han Trifecta chap

segue from pipa to Sainkho, because Central Asia was its source. Compare Out of Tuva to other grp I have; preview Sainkho’s trad-inflected stuff/themes (see above table);

Roots order will not be same as whole book; that will be from furthest Mongolian West, and voice, both most primal, also where the pipa came from (re: strings as Pythagorean via Hyperboria per P Kingsley; thru mother China, to daughters Korea, Japan, America)--quote this from Wu Man’s Immeasurable Light liner notes: “...early technical sources on music as well as in Chinese poetry and song...place the origins of the pipa and its music historically and geographically around the beginning of the first millennium in Central Asia, like from among Iranised Turco-Mongols in the Kushan realm of that time, acknowledge its rapid adoption and its incorporation in cosmological and music-theoretical discussion in early China itself, and attest to the refinement and emotional power of its early music.” peg this to Sainkho’s In Trance, because of the caves thing; mention too the image from graf before, of pipa body exemplifying the Three Powers, and the strings the Four Seasons

As PK said of Sainkho [cite], most of the recordings by everyone here clearly fall in the category of experimental and improvised music, usually cross-cultural collaborations, bringing the vocabulary of the traditional out into the modern. In that sense, all of their recorded work is showing its roots, as all trees are on a continuum with their roots... [Jin clearest such eg (no CD of trad rep for komungo); RRR’s wrk as teacher and writer (the book) is more preservationist than any of his CDs, the roots of which consist of the instrus but not their trad contexts; and the other Americans (all Asian-Ams except Tatsu and PO; touch on them) are notable for the Asian themes/paradigms they draw on, and for collabs w/ Asians, but their personal roots are American culture/music. If anything, their versions of the trad gestures are CDs of melting pot jazz, before they got into Asian stuff] but in a few cases, the traditional context is rather preserved and presented, or revived and presented, not left behind in favor of the modern.

The most common context of all such gestures reflects the fact that their personal roots as musicians--in family, schooling, and early careers--are more conventional than most of their subsequent more experimental and cross-cultural main body of work. list: Out of Tuva, Wu Man’s & Min’s trad CDs, These recordings of traditional repertoire in traditional style thus tend to come early in their careers, standing in retrospect like novitiate homages to their respective traditions, rites of passage through demonstrated mastery of the discipline and its canonic material, before taking flight from them and never looking back to the conventional career track they more commonly led to...That said, even those recordings are also directed at global Western-language audiences more than limited to their own Asian ones, and so merit some attention as such for what they say about what they led to in these artists.

As for those “revived” more than “preserved,” a few of the majority of CDs free of traditional repertoire and context nonetheless draw more overtly than they on same. See above tables for those

(Like dif btwn bringing a token bit of one’s Old World identity to the New World melting pot and presenting it intact and integrated to the New World as a new and vital part of its salad bowl. Even so, if the intended audience is the New World, transmission/reception of that is bound to be different than if done in the home context.) Looking at whatever we can of these trad-context gestures will inform our looks at the sep chapters on the more central and larger part of their recorded work, where those trad vocab, instrus, & other aspects will come to the service of the more original new & improvised music of our focus.

Sainkho--Out of Tuva

see notes it’s like her version of the Russo-dominated ethnic culture, as West aesthetic dominated in China & Korea

out in 1993, but mostly recorded 1986-89, some 92-3

Out of Tuva is made to order for this chapter, in its liner notes as well as its tracks. Written by noted Russian music journalist Artemy Troitsky (The New York Times called him “the leading Soviet rock critic” in 1988), they tell Sainkho’s history as lead singer for Sayani, the Tuvan State Folk Ensemble. “But I got bored with it,” she told him when they first met. “Improvised music is a lot more challenging.”

That first meeting was backstage in Moscow after one of her concerts with Tri-O, the avant-garde group with which she made her debut as “the Russian answer to Diamanda Galas, Shelley Hirsch, and other wild women singers.” Troitsky was impressed with the way she worked in traditional Tuvan vocal techniques and material to the experimental music, and asked her to play for him recordings of her more conventional work with Sayani.

Troitsky wasn’t bored with it. He pushed past her dismissal of that early part of her career when he met her to get her to play him recordings of it.

<listen to again, sum up only the trad trax (glance at the others here--, then do fully in main Sainkho chap); wrk in stuff about Tuva generally here, compare to more trad CD by group that came to L&C> 1-5, mostly synth accomp (not 2); 6-9 over live orch, more Asian-trad, like on Phases CD. Figure out most literary way to describe the common feel of all these trad trax, w/o getting hung up on musical mechanics. Try to find out more about them on Google

chrono order, not track order:

1) My Tuva t.13 (’86, rec. in Kyzyll) Troitsky’s notes: “[I]n the mid-eighties Sainkho Namchylak was studying music in Moscow. She wanted to combine original Siberian folklore with contemporary elements. Her very first recordings featured her voice, backed with percussions and electronics. Sainkho admits they were strongly influenced by Yma Sumac.” listen to her, sum up. trad, arr. by S.; opens w/ very hi vox (my Minnie Ripperton), rest in mid-outside vox; the pkg is reminiscent of the trad Chin CD (esp. synth harmonies, w/ metal perc), ca. 1986: couching trad in “civilized paradigm/aesthetic”--

2) Ritual Song t8--more elemental; that little catch in the outside voice is what Minja called a “bell” effect, in ganga; cite her words on the You Tube vid; very Nat Amer sound at first; then a bit of (Sacre?) Stravinsky theme in there--lo breathy crone vox, hi ulul then morphing into Min Rip, Yma Sumac, only more gliss;an improv over only drumming,shamanism hiding in plain sight, if ideology & prblm <Tuvans to Russia much like Tibet to China, ideologically>

3) Seyd Ozero t9--same style as My Tuva, electronica pop version of trad piece; gorgeous nasal midrange outside vox

4) Haragannig t10--ditto interesting that the open throated sound is female here, and in ganga, and the koo, for males, a choke (thus something assoc w/ infertility in females)

5) Hymn t. 12 (trax 2-5 here all rec in Moscow btwn 86-88); talk about them all as one concept, # 2 precursing her most radical stuff did she do the synth stuff?

6) Tchashpy-Hem

7) Aldan Hoynung

8) Fate -- balalaika-ish intro; woman vox in, soft midrange lyrics; minor; lo & hi double-reedy--Chinesey hi vox, la-la; then sudden sassy fast, spanky cheeky woman; instrus doing same plucky rhythms; back to slow & sad

China’s source of Korea & Japan in many ways [name them; scan bookmarks, books, etc. for that whole history] As it happens, the native Chinese among my musicians, tho others have been trained in trad repertoire, instru techs, are the only ones who’ve recorded it (Min, Wu, some Mei), or drawn directly on it for contemporary/experimental treatments (Wu, Mei)--so I’ll showcase that, along with the trad CDs, couched in story 1 scenario at Glendale

my angle being folk/new-imp, I’ll focus on the roots as “reverse-engineered” from my musicians (ie, from their separate chaps back to whatever I come up with here)

notice the prevalence of strings in this history; expand more on that VG history of bows on up, & glance at their current reaches out to other string music around the world [ahead, do a similar thing about winds, for the guys]. VG’s Yellow Bell chap (See Wik’s Music of China, Ling Lun); he too got at roots thru current P/B, & other shoots around the wrld. Also read this: http://www.philmultic.com/English/Chinese_music.html

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the rest, following, will just get their own chaps. In a graf, I can sum them up for how they differ from these trad-repertoire artists, then move on

Mei-- (segue off of Sainkho’s In Trance, for common cave link to both WM & S) anything about her approach to the zheng; the Red Chamber piece, & some Outside the Wall songs; her wrk w/ Dong people? no trad CD such as Wu & Min put out--jumped right into imp w/ RRR--but same kind of formal trad training from girlhood; then her own orig collabs & solo CDs that do work the trad stuff, to bring the zheng trad into the Now <also like Jin, once she finds out hard truth just above, she can take comfort in being with a fellow musician Western partner>

RRR (+PO)--his instrus, aesthetic, the white Western guy meeting the Asian woman world head on, plunging into her as much as she into him

Jin (+PO)--whole system [as w/ RRR, whole instru array, general wrldvu] & instru is her contrib to such aboveground roots; the individ pieces both solo & collab are her New terrain; also, like the Chinese women’s conserv formal training, her whole experience in the Kor folk trad.

Miya (+PO)--her turn to koto, from pno b<& Af-Am Western hubby> see Zorn bk, liner notes, her website, google, etc. Other CDs?

PO alone, pegging her to Dad’s age group, & time in CA (how else explain her books & CDs in his shelves--some signed? (a story 1 teaser; had their paths crossed? the signature suggests it’s PO, and that they might have more than crossed...but I don’t want to get to the bottom of that)--her turn to imp, DL, Eastern religs, away from the Ami maverick <and from worst of the World Sexism, via Sappho [hey...back to Greece, whence Sainkho; milk that]ref her inclusion in Zorn Arcana IV]

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Tatsu/AIR--Myumi, his Tokyo bkg; mention all Japanese guys from diss FIRST ON SCENE, AIR, CHICAGO-SF; weave from intvu WM’s involvement w/ them

Fred--what is Asian more than Af-Am: the Afro-Asian thing, & Asia-themed music (look thru his CDs for that) HEIR 2 AIR, EXPANDING IT 2 AFRO-ASIAN

Jason--ditto NEXT GEN

Taylor--like Susi Ibarra, other such, no real Asian schtick at all--just there, in the central place of the music that’s his role in this: the youngest, farthest past identity politics, past all Self/Other, West/Rest bs, into the global discourse (like me on pno--beyond West, white, Euro, cool, as AB is beyond such stuff and into cosmic origenius; Taylor a fellow AB protégé)

see how the above strategy of picking out trad trax blurs into more general/mythical evocations of Asia, from the Ami perch, thence into global round, as embodied in the kind of cre-imp discourse all are most identified with, transpersonally

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AsiAmericanDreaMusic

Chapter Three: Roots on the Ground

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