Cultural Lecture: Traditional Music

Yang Laoshi, a specialist in “Ming zu Yin Yue” or Ethnic Music, gave the lecture on China’s traditional music and instruments. In China, the term folk music encompasses Han traditional songs, instruments, and music, the other 55 ethnic minorities and their traditional music and instruments.

Within the study of music there are five categories: instrumental, singing and dancing, spoken word and music, opera and folk songs. Yang Laoshi focused his lecture on instrumental music, giving the students an opportunity to hear music using several instruments discussed in the lecture.

Instrumental music in traditional folk songs is composed from four types of instruments: wind, string and bow, percussive, and plucked string. Yang Laoshi chose the most famous instrument from each of these four types to present to the students.

The Suo na is a wind instrument, requiring a great deal of breath control to play. It is very loud and there is a wide range in tone and depth. This instrument can be found in festivals and wedding ceremonies, as the sound is rich and lively. There are northern and southern styles for playing the Suo na. It looks like a mix between a flute and a trumpet’s end and is held like a recorder when played. Yang Laoshi performed “Bird Song” on the Suo na and was able to make the instrument chirp like many different kinds of birds. The students also listened to a recording of “Song to Yellow Earth” a song performed with a large Suo na which is quieter and more mournful in sound.

Yang Laoshi presented the Er hu, which is a string and bow instrument. It has a long wooden neck and the small sound chamber at its base is covered in python skin. The Er hu has two strings and the bow is made of horsehair. The Er hu has a beautiful and expressive sound. The song “Two Lakes Reflecting The Moon” is written by the most famous Er hu player in history and is about the difficult lives of street performers. A much more lively and less mournful song, also extremely popular on the Er hu is the song “Horse Racing”, which was a great hit among the students. It reminded some of the “Flight of the Bumblebees”.

The Gu zheng is a very old instrument among the Chinese. It is a plucked string instrument and is sometimes called the “Chinese piano”. It rests horizontally on two stands and sometimes resembles the sounds of a harp, though the range possible on this instrument is incredibly sophisticated. The students listened to a recording of a Gu zheng in the song, “Romantic Night on a River in Spring”.

The fourth and final instrument introduced by Yang Laoshi was also a wind instrument, the Wulu Si. This is a very popular instrument among Southern ethnic minorities, especially the Dai zu in Yunnan province. Men and women express their love for one another using the Wulu Si. One end of this instrument is a gourd and three pipes extend from the gourd’s bottom. It is also held like a recorder with the gourd top being where the player blows into the instrument. Students listened to “Bamboo Under the Moonlight” a Dai zu traditional song.

Yang Laoshi concluded his lecture saying that a traditional folk ensemble will generally have each of the above-mentioned instruments among many others, all of which are traditionally Chinese in origin. These ensembles never include instruments from outside of traditional China.