Previously on Han Mei...
Interview (2007)
Conference Presentation (2009)
Review of Ume CD (Also on Amazon)
Write her up soon, from extensive notes on CDs w/ RRR & others. Conference presentations. Explore her scholarship too; see notes on UBC conf...
When I get this & all the other artists' blog pages to the point Sainkho's is at, I will be close to writing them all up into final drafts.
- Distant Wind (2001)
- Road to Kashbgar (2004)
- Outside the Wall (2005)
- Ume (2006) <done, above>
- Red Chamber (2008)
Notes on Han Mei's material
Orchid
Ensemble
concept =
based on the Silk Road [like my jazz map: music as virtual
geography...songlines...imaginary folklore...] <any relationship w/ YoYoMa
project? buy that to compare...>
1...horses...clipclop
2...endless
sands...3 distinct sounds/voices, carefully balanced and twining, transparent;
ask abt Moshe Dernberg, context of comps/commissions—ask abt Canada arts
support; & Vancouver/Canada music culture, Chin cmty there
3...7/8,
Persian/Indian inflected...erhu in the foreground as solo voice largely in this
CD—ask abt that instru
4...Chn
folk sound, w/ perc added—solo zheng...ask abt Li Zuji, context of the comp at
the time, & her rel to it
5...this track, like whole CD, is a
musicalization of visions—this one 3 buddhist divines—My book’s aspiration to
capture the poetry & mystery, will go down that path somehow—so ask her
about how she does that in her work, from trad Chinese, socialized, and
liberated-creative-experimental artist, all 3...
...also—compare
the worlds you have your own feet in—art music, improvised music, folk music,
music scholarship; you’ve touched on the difference between the latter in China
& US--& Canada & Europe?—(pick her brain on that)
6...a song
from 10th-cent Persian Jews who settled in Central China—poignant
beauty—Yiddish-inflected—this trio good at making art music stmts of
this sort (as opposed to the musical indulgences of the comp/imp virtuoso...Lan
Tung erhu player arr. this..ask abt her
7...ask
about all arrangers & singer—maqam (like mode, & raga) in trad. of music as
mood-alterer (etymology of all = mode/mete measure; mood = affect/anger
(archaic); maqam & raga related? (sounds like it)—a suite more than a
cycle...compare to early jazz forms (see jazz research posts on this, about JR
Europe & others, their forms, like sonata, theme-&-vars, symphonic:
forms as function, as opposed to blues & other such forms as cycles leading
to freedom via improv-on-automatic [this is a new idea I’m having about
form/content; develop/explore it...compare to East Germans who improvise on
compositions written for them to do so
8....the
Persian thing again, w/ an Iranian singer <thoughts: the writer’s
focus/attention is what makes something important/understood to new
people...I’m like a director of a movie, my subjects have to trust and submit
and cooperate—as in previous 2 books, I have a sense that who/what I’m looking
at shd have more credit...> love that yodel improv...ask about voc
& marimba improv (first real jam on otherwise composed CD) <...and I’m
showing why. This is also the reason I’m not satisfied with an academic
monograph, a careerist book that doesn’t get read widely and deeply
enough, for good reason...their music is important and beautiful, deserves
better>
this track
will segue me into my look at Eastern Arts in Utah, its personality, history,
the Roots book, why it’s in Utah—that, and the Jewish/Persian history show how
immigrant communities form in pockets of time & space, largely under the
radar...
Outside
the Wall
Xi’an
Medley
...the strings sing &
speak, high...that Chinese inflection so voiced, those arpeggios—this piece
savors and explores that vocab, slowly, stately, w/ more notes in the melodies
than the trad pent scale...a recital of ancient tunes in a calm, reflective,
modern way...score? composer? bass tones at end make for dramatic climax..
The
Greening...tuning? score? composer?
dynamic (volume, tempo) flux..zheng/koto world—what’s the relationship there?
why is it “challenging?” much tension (virtuosity action) & release
(meditation, reflection)—again, bass at end wraps it up
Three
Variations Huan Yi?
Title track score? “great amount of participation”?
Purple Lotus—John Oliver comp., w/ str 4-tet—G-Bb-C [whole/half
dialectic] is the DNA common ground—like Ornette harmolodic cits in book—str
4tet like a lot of little worker bees serving the big zheng queen—yin/yang—they
are male, via script/mobility/speed/hive-harmony...male hive & individual
queen, sometimes in dialogue, others counterpoint/complementary—1-step melody
here is the whole step, from 7-1—a diffrnt DNA than half-step—minimalist feel,
Asian-inflected
Bamboo like Distant Wind, last
track is spacey...ask how the tape “preserves & amplifies etc...” such an
energy...the energy I found in female voice as imp-music instru, in last
book...but here it is in the zheng string, as with Alice Coltrane and her
dynamic with the guys...rhythmic tremolo vibe in much of tape, str 4tet,
fingering like insect energy—and the slower overtone moan that can emerge from
same...
Texts
John
Oliver’s interview with Mei Han
Outside the Wall seems to
refer to the Maoist bamboo curtain...suggest Great Wall...resonates with Berlin
Wall ??ask
her to talk about that; mention to her my E. German study...
re: difference between
Ethnomusicology (as, by nature, she says, a Western discipline) in West &
in China; is its scope ancient Chinese music, plus the 55 minority groups?
??for RRR—his version of his
initial response to Mei, to go with hers here.
She describes initiation,
via RRR, into improv music, atonal tuning, as liberating. As he said, most
other Chn musicians didn’t like it. Why is she different? outside the wall?
her early experience with
music was scary, as Mao world used it (narrow, & pugnacious, harsh,
aggressive); so zheng sweet & soft appealed to her, age 11; like Jin, she
studied w/ a folk musician (Gao Zicheng) in the wake of that kind of
nationalist resurgence, folk music from a specific region/repertoire, by ear;
??any elements of improv/comp from that context stick into her present work?
Struggling
with Typhoon—harsh effects... on
this sweet zheng. Did that piece reconcile her to the violence that had scared
her as a child??
?? her Western classical
training started in Russia. Difference between that & Europe? No. America?
she talks about the rhythmic
shock, specifically, of Indian/Persian music (Chinese squared duple rhythm. Re:
that—the Persian tracks on Kasgbar
she expressed desire to
express more nuance in feelings, more texture & complexity—I noticed that
especially in Ume & Outside—like Satie, something opening up, looking at
new things under a microscope. comment?
talk about Canada’s musical
culture (my thoughts on it: N. America’s Europe? as she says about Vancouver,
my coming of age in San Francisco seemed more comfortably multicultural than
East Coast)—it got her into improv, as opposed to New Music (box)—peg that to
Cage, G Lewis, etc...controversy about improvisation...and Cage got his
attitude via Zen (Asia). probe her about that
she mentions Cage’s comp for
3 kotos (a descendant of zheng)—China didn’t hear of Cage because of Communist
shutout of West? is that why China not on my radar screen earlier too?
she likes minimalism; I’ve
thought about its similarity to Chinese music too...but she calls it detailed,
and [paraphrasing] ambiguous. Later she explained more about minimalism
being more about colors and mood than melodies/technique.
ask something about
programmatic aspect of the music, the language poetics: dog & dragon, silk
road, the wall, all the diffrnt titles—peg to ancient Greek mousike, East
German/Russian improvd music (in its similar fusion of
folk/jazz/classical/theater)...Bill Evans & song form (Russian
influenced)...Braxton’s language-music work, Sun Ra’s mythos...and, in her
case, the Maoist social realism of her childhood
first of
text questions: ask about role of women in Chinese music, and in this new/imp
music culture [not only Asian-born are most prominent, but also Asian-Amer];
mention women as pioneers of voice...
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Comments are open and welcome. Keep in mind that my more completed chapter drafts are referring to other chapters not yet written as though they are. I've gotten the book mostly researched and written up in my head, so I make those references to cue me to put them in my future write-ups