My wife and I were up
late. She and my younger daughter study
the guzheng and she often practices
way into the evening. The guzheng is a twenty-one stringed
instrument with movable bridges. It uses
a pentatonic scale tuned to Do, Re, Mi, So, and La, but Fa and Ti can be
produced by pressing the strings behind the bridges. The scale is essentially same as a
traditional ‘blues scale.’ A bending platform
behind the frets, to reach half tones and microtones, takes up most of the real
estate on a guzheng and adds, to my
ears, the linkages to an earthy, blues sound. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guzheng
She’d recalled the visit of a friend of ours. He’s a guitar player and he sat down at the guzheng and began to play the notes and
rhythm as if it were capable of completely different sounds. Magically, it no
longer sounded like a guzheng. It no longer sounded “Chinese.” I remembered, incorrectly, that he likened
the guzheng to the West African kora,
which is also a twenty-one stringed instrument.
(I believe what my friend had actually suggested was the West African
thumb piano – The Kalimba, which is also a pentatonic scale) I found a kora recital on youtube. (what an
age we live in, instantaneous ), and we played along for a while, me on my
unamplified electric guitar and she on the guzheng. She then, went off, as they say, vamping on
the rhythm that the kora player lead with for a ten minute or so improvisation. I just stopped and listened for a while. It was beautiful.
Then she paused. “I
wish I had jazz skills and could bridge the integration.” To my ears, she just had. But, of course, I know what she means. To “master” guzheng is a life’s work. To
“master” jazz theory takes another spin of the globe and then integrating the
two . . . Spontaneity though, regardless of one’s level is always before us. Mastery is a fine goal, but a completely
illusory destination. Jazz, at least, is an homage to mastery and the realization of what is always possible
right now.
I looked on line this morning and came across at least one
jazz musician who has made use of the guzheng. Alas, Jon Jang was not to be found there on
Rdio, but an album he did with David Murray the remarkable tenor sax player, was
available on Grooveshark. http://grooveshark.com/#!/profile/Jon+Jang+Sextet/22734350
Mr. Jang, who in China would be named Mr. “Hu” is a pianist
from the generation before me, born in 1954, who went to Oberlin and lives and
plays in San Francisco. Apparently he
played here in Beijing back in 1997.
Please come back! The tune I’ve
on now is “Variation on the Sorrow of Meng Jiang Nu”, which, as soon as I
mentioned the title, my wife an daughters recognized right away.
The short synopsis is:
Meng Jiang Nu’s husband was called up by the archetypical tyrannical
emperor Qin Shi Huang Di (259 – 210 BC) to labor at the construction of the Great
Wall. The two had only just been married
and sadly, he headed off to do the obligatory.
She hadn’t heard a peep, but then received a rumor that he’d died,
during the construction effort.
Distraught, she went to the Wall, and upon hearing confirmation that
he’d died she began to cry for three days, after which time the Wall or a
section of it presumably exploded, producing his corpse. And with that, she threw herself in the ocean
and died.
I asked my wife what the timeless lesson was that all good
little Chinese boys and girls were to learn from this tale of woe on top of woe. Was it basically suggesting the importance of
a wife’s loyalty unto death? She rolled
her eyes and confirmed.
Back with Jon Jang, and his sextet, the arrangements are
beautiful. I’m favorably inclined, of
course, because jazz broad enough to testify to the Chinese tradition should be
theme music for all the brine that is dusty here at the DB. But I must say that I am still waiting to
hear the erhu player solo in a way
that feels free of the Chinese musical idiom.
(erhu is two stringed Chinese
bowed instrument. This disc doesn’t seem
to have a guzheng.) The jazz element is sturdy enough to handle
the Chinese influences. But is it
possible for a Chinese instrument to break out of its cultural confines for
anything more than accompaniment?
“Meditations on Integration” is a Mingus number and the erhu adds a lovely eerie, floating
quality, a 如泣如诉[1] to the head. But the instrument never seems to stand on
its own outside of its folk milieu. Perhaps
it needn’t. The disc is beautiful,
regardless and the vision speaks to something of what I’d like to see the
future be.
I seemed to recall, but can not find reference to after a
quick search, to a classic text on the history of world music, that referred to
Chinese music as “the land that rhythm forgot” or something similarly
disparaging. If Western European music
distinguishes itself, in part on harmonic sophistication, and the traditions of
West Africa are known for polyrhythmic brilliance. If the classical music of North and South
India is not only one of remarkable rhythmic prowess but, like the jazz idiom
one that allows a platform for individual improvisation, what then is the
contribution of Chinese music, beyond lilting, haunting, characteristic folk
melodies? I’ll have to dig deeper in to
this, at some point. Perhaps like Yuan Dynasty plays, much has simply
been lost.
Regardless, I heard something cool last evening. My gal,
casting aside the sheet music scratching and plucking away at the guzheng, in kora accompaniment, I
could’a swore I heard the ancient instrument, lay down its heavy “5000 years of
history” burden for a few minutes. It sounded
like something that could go anywhere.
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