NOTE FROM JONAH: This is Part I in “A Guide to Chinese Musical Instruments” a video series for Danwei.
- Guzheng 古筝 | Wu Fei 吴非 | Yuzhou Changwan – Fishermans’ Evening Song 渔舟唱晚
- Erhu 二胡 | Liu Hong 刘虹 | Jiang He Shui – Running River 江河水
- Dizi 笛子 | Zhang Zhongzhong 张钟中 | Mumin Xinge – New Shepherds’ Song 牧民新歌
- Zhongruan 中阮 | Wang Yiping 王一平 | Yi Dance 彝族舞曲
- Pipa 琵琶 | Dong Nan 董楠 | Chunjiang Hua Yueye – Moonlit Night on the Spring River 春江花月夜
- Flowerpot and Paigu Drums 花盆鼓、排鼓 | Wang Jun 王军 | Improvisation 即兴
While most of you know me as a photographer, videographer, designer or wonderer — I’m also a musician. Before photography took over my life, I was playing some instrument around the clock for years and even grabbed a minor in music from university.
A few weeks back, when I was talking to Jeremy Goldkorn, I mentioned it would be cool to film some Chinese musicians for Danwei. I didn’t realize exactly how literal Jeremy would take this statement and within a week, Jeremy and his Guzheng playing wife Wu Fei had a venue and musicians lined up. They actually had the same idea on the shelf for awhile.
For me this was a real treat: combining a love for music and photography.
And while I have heard plenty of ear breaking erhu’s and hollow sounding pipa’s on the streets of China, shooting these musicians really changed my impression of ancient Chinese instruments.
Normally when you hear a pipa, erhu or other ancient Chinese instrument the sound falls into the realm of “cheesy.” This is because normally you hear them on the intrinsically cheesy CCTV or during touristy activities where the point is to paint a picture of stereotypical China, and therefor, the stereotypical music gets used over and over.
However, if you wonder the halls of the China Conservatory of Music this is not the case.
The instruments and players are simply much more real. While the vibe is serious at the conservatory and you can tell these students take their crafts extremely seriously, the community seems to be light hearted and happy.
So — with the Danwei team and Kit Gillet we were privileged enough to have a single stage, a single musician (at a time) and a couple of cameras record solos and show that these instruments don’t have to be cheesy.
Breaking Traditional Barriers
While my impression of traditional Chinese instruments has certainly been changed from shooting these videos — what has become clear to me is how traditional these instruments really are.
Western instruments are used in myriad creative ways now. A trumpet can play rock music, classical music or punk music. The piano or guitar span any and all musical categories. However, very rarely do you see a pipa being used for other purposes beyond traditional Chinese music. So if musicians are on the creative side of people, why aren’t Chinese instruments being used creatively outside of the sphere of traditional music?
The answer to this might be rooted in Chinese history, culture and perhaps even in communism — which hasn’t been the best tool to motivate independent thinking or creativity. Perhaps generations of relative mono-thinking has stopped these instrument from evolving into non traditional forms. There is certainly an artistic boom going on in China — however, weather the boom spans all art forms is debatable. I noticed this a lot working with Chinese designers at China Daily. Getting people to think outside of the box could be very difficult. However, they were pretty good at following instructions. The problem with creativity – is there is not a finite set of instructions. Telling someone to be “more creative” doesn’t always produce good results.
When you apply this to Chinese instruments, you might ask — can they improvise? If you put a pipa player in a jazz band, can they listen and play? When I asked featured guzheng musician Wu Fei about this she said “Chinese musicians who play traditional instruments are not very open-minded to integrate internationally due to the culture and contemporary history.”
However, Wu has certainly been amongst a small crowd of Chinese musicians who is toppling barriers in traditional instruments. Fei contributed music to my recent film The Fate of Old Beijing, documenting hutong redevelopment in Beijing. While the music for this project isn’t neccessirly tradtional, its not the normal guzheng we are used to hearing. However, she has gone much further than this. This video of her playing “Akramachamarei,” a composition from John Zorn’s second Masada series “The Book of Angels,” really shows a different view of the Chinese instrument.
Fei is not the only one pushing barriers with these ancient instruments. The “current situation is that the growth of chinese and western (or world instruments) integration is much faster than 10 years ago,” Fei says.
I asked Fei for some examples and she pointed me toward Xu Fengxia (based in germany) a guzheng/san xian player and Wu Man (based in california) a pipa player. Both of these musicians are incredibly talented and are certainly pushing creative boundaries. Perhaps not ironically, both of these Chinese musicians — don’t live in China. According to Fei, things are changing — however, there’s probably a good bit of time before we start seeing more punk pipa or electro-erhu.
If you are into creative music I strongly suggest checking out Xu Fegnxia and Wu Man out, as well as Fei’s music here.
Behind the Scenes
For A Guide to Chinese Musical Instruments, I made six videos for Danwei, each featuring one instrument and a couple remarks about the instrument from the musician.
The videos were shot with a stationary Canon 5DMII with a Canon 24mm f/1.4 and a moving Canon 7D with a Canon 70-200mm f/2.8. While two cameras were rolling audio was recorded with the tremendously useful Zoom H1 Handy Recorder and synced in post production with Plural Eyes. I made the decision to turn the detailed shots from the 7D into black and white as a representation of these instruments’ ancient histories.
I really love the two camera approach, especially for interviews that could otherwise be mundane. Now that I’ve gotten used to, I can’t really imagine only shooting with one camera at a time.
It gives news a more cinematic feel. For more on this check out a great post “CNN’S CUBIE KING ON SHOOTING DSLR AND DEVELOPING A MORE CINEMATIC APPROACH TO JOURNALISM” on DSLR News Shooter from a couple weeks ago. Cubie King gives a what would be boring interview a cinematic effect by continually switching between frames.
