A Realistic, Affectionate Look--Talking with Lin Ku-fang About Traditional Music in Contemporary Life

"It all sounds the same," "Very ancient," "Noisy"_ does this sound like your impression of traditional Chinese music? If so, perhaps you should come and listen to how Lin Ku-fang explains these "tendentious phrases"; if not, perhaps you could come and listen to how Lin Kufang discusses the role of traditional music in contemporary life.

Q: Compared to traditional literature or painting, Chinese music seems to be even more diminished in importance in contemporary life. Why is this?

A: The composition of an ancient culture is complex and all-inclusive. It couldn't lack a basic art such as music. However, music must be transmitted by performance; if it becomes separated from people, it's gone. For this reason it is most seriously limited by time and space. When the rulership of the court changes, things from earlier times are erased by time. Because of this, there are relatively few "musical exemplars" left behind by each era, unlike the graphic arts such as painting or architecture, which leave some traces behind which cannot so easily be completely destroyed. This is why music is a relatively unclear element in the composition of Chinese culture.

Besides, from ancient times, Chinese people have shown total respect to the written word. You can even say that they are overly reverent toward it. This caused music, which is most inimical to written language, to turn into written records in the hands of the scholars; and at the same time, to be combined with political ritual and become the system of "ceremonial music." In the past, the focus of what scholars came in contact with in music was this type of political, ritual music.

From the musical point of view, this kind of political, ceremonial music was a kind of "alienation" of ritual music, because it was too political-of course, from certain points of view, we admit its positive function in history, such as grand music, the harmony of heaven and earth, etc.-but, with the Twenty-Five Dynastic Histories full of such "musical records," the face of the music has become obscured.

This is the reason that traditional music has become weaker, from the point of view of musical features and of history. However, to talk about the reasons that there has been an interruption in Chinese musical tradition in contemporary times, the crucial reason comes from the end of the Qing dynasty and the beginning of the Republican era, after Western culture entered. I often talk about this sort of onslaught as a "total blackout." During this time, too much traditional culture was rejected; this has to do with the intellectuals leading the way to oppose tradition. Yet, among other cultural traditions, music sustained especially serious damage. This is also because of the special nature of Chinese music.

Chinese and Western musical traditions really aren't totally opposed systems; it's not like the case with Indian music, which can be made comparable with the Western system only with the greatest difficulty. For this reason, the erosion of Indian music by Western music has taken place on a smaller scale. Chinese music has its own properties; for example, the pentatonic scale used by Chinese, and the notes. Although these are different from those of Western music, still, the differences between the two systems aren't so great as is the disparity between Indian music and Western music. Indian music has a lot of irregular rhythms; one musical piece might go from one beat per measure to 16 beats per measure, and you just can't put your finger on the down beat. Although Chinese music has plenty of free style rhythms, there is always a "pattern signature" upon entering the style to set it up; whenever there is a regular beat, it's easy to formulate it in Western musical terms. Because of this, it's been completely assimilated.

These days in Taiwan we like to talk of "cultural assimilation," but I especially like to talk of "cultural properties." A property is something that exists because it cannot be replaced. Particularly for weaker cultures, there ought to be more emphasis on properties than on assimilation. When looking at traditional music, at the beginning we don't talk of assimilation, but first take a look at its properties.

Fusion requires dialogue

Q: As you say, the critical time for the "weakening" of Chinese music was at the end of the Qing and the early Republican era. Is this because this was a time for "fusion" between things Chinese and Western? We know, for example, about Li Shutong, who later became the monk Great Master Hongyi; he experimented with introducing some musical forms and trying to combine them. What do you think of what he did? At the time, before people in the arts such as Li Shutong accepted Western culture, which kinds of Chinese music were they in contact with?

A: The end of the Qing and the early Republican era was the time of the most intense conflict between Chinese and Western culture. I think that there was no way for that period really to speak of "fusion." It was just a time to "learn" about the West. Fusion is possible only when two subjects have a "dialogue." At that time, there was no dialogue between them.

At that time, the music "combining the Chinese and the Western" that people like Li Shutong made wasn't really much good. The lyrics that Li wrote were very good; his calligraphy was great. But nobody has kept on singing his songs. The songs that are still performed, such as "Outside the Chang Pavilion," "When I Think of My Youth," and so on, all borrow the melodies of Western folk songs. This is an example of "fusion" gone wrong. A better musician from that time was Huang Zi; he left behind two or three songs that we're all familiar with.

Before contact with Western culture, I think the music that people like Li Shutong were listening to was probably something like-Kun Opera! In the atmosphere of such a time, the extremely refined part of the culture that a small fraction of highly cultivated people were listening to, such as the qin, was easily dispensed with. So you'll notice that Fu Lei, Fu Zong's father, really liked Kun Opera, but he had his son learn the piano.

The cultured people of that time threw away the most exquisite things. Even in philosophy it was this way. Of course, there were also some old people who hadn't thrown away anything all their lives, but the young people-some even before they were able to reflect on what they were doing-threw these things away just because they had been exposed to Western culture.

The most miserable

Q: In your book, A Realistic, Affectionate Look, you say a lot about the aesthetic properties of Chinese music. However, what is most regrettable is that the impression that Chinese music leaves for most people really isn't that part of "aesthetics" which you most often speak of. Is it that we've already abandoned the most exquisite parts?

A: In reference to the uninspiring impressions people have, that traditional art is "conservative" or "backward," what I want to emphasize is that an ancient civilization is different from a new civilization; it's not always creating new things. When you look at Chinese culture, you can't just look at 30 or 50 years; you have to look at 300 or 500 years. In 30 or 50 years of Chinese culture, there are very few changes, but over 300 or 500 years, you will notice that it is changing just like the others. Its pace of change is a bit slower, but it's far from true that it's not moving. This is the first point.

Another point is that when we encounter an ancient culture, we want to see what's "good" about it, not look for what's "bad." What everybody sees is what stays alive at the folk level. And this level is looked down on. It's like the old expression, "The most miserable are barbers and percussion-and-shawm performers," because everybody looked at barbers and the suona and percussion performers who play at funerals as the lowest levels of society. And "Using refined and vulgar as standards to discuss beauty and ugliness": this is a mistake everybody makes. If you go humbly to make the acquaintances of these fine artists at the popular level, they are actually quite spectacular; there are many of them continually creating and renewing. When the creative things return to the palace of music, they might develop an "art," which will stand together with the refined things of the cultured people in the tradition.

The present situation is that the refined components have already been abandoned by the intellectuals. Originally, folk society has some exquisite things, things that are continuously being created; otherwise, there would not always be "percussion performances." This really can be "reborn," but at present nobody respects it. When the cultured people of the past belittled it, this was a case of parts being belittled within the same system. Now the situation is one of "barbers and performers of percussion-and-shawm music," and the children will learn piano; this is wrapped up with the conventional practices of refined and vulgar tastes. In such a situation, traditional music naturally is liable to be badly damaged.

Actually, this Chinese system isn't one that places a lot of emphasis on "creative originality." But that's not to say that it "doesn't have any creativity." To have creative originality, you must have a deeply settled background. Some cultures place more emphasis on the depth of settlement, others emphasize the creativity more, but to stress just one or the other means death.

A characteristic of Chinese culture is that it is easier to produce a settled, precipitated culture, because the creativity that it stresses is "creation of the same." What is creation of the same, or creation of the different? Heterogeneous creation is, "The song I wrote is different from yours." Homogeneous creation is, "What I got from your song has become my song."

For instance, there is a song "Eight Beat Time Signature." In China there are several hundred variations. In the Henan zheng style it is called "Harmony under Heaven." In Shandong zheng style it is called "Big Eight Time Signature." As an incidental song in Guangdong it is called "The Hungry Horse Shakes the Bell." For the pipa, it is "Springtime." Each time it is performed, it's different. Do you say that traditional music stresses creativity or not? It's continually creating at every level. In Western music, perhaps it's only the composer who is creative, while all the rest are interpreters. In Chinese music, the creators are at every level, and the performers are especially important creators. It is "homogeneous evolution," "looking for difference in homogeneity, looking for similarity in difference," "common appreciation of the elite and the popular, stressing commonality over difference." These seem to be simple, ordinary descriptions, but this is its real nature.

Excellent phrases made in heaven

I like to use language from Zen to illustrate how Chinese look at art. When people say, "The Dao and art are one," this is using life experience to express art. It's like painting landscapes. The first step in observing oneself is to "look at landscape" itself. After looking, paint. As one begins to portray, this is yet another level of observation. Life achieves completion through a process of "entering and exiting."

This is a little bit like "self-cultivation." Regardless of whether it's at the level of art or of the individual, the meaning of self-cultivation is that you continuously observe life. Human life has always been birth, age, sickness, and death. What's so special about that? But it all depends on how you look at it. Chinese people say, "the Dao and art are one." It's like this at the level of the individual, and of art. What I mean is, traditional music is just like everything else in Chinese culture; actually, it's always evolving. There's always a basis in life and in living, so when it seems to be "about the same, minimizing the differences," in fact, each variation has its inner meaning.

For this reason, good art certainly can "be commonly appreciated by the elite and the popular." Saying that a song achieves appreciation by both the elite and the masses isn't saying that "everybody can understand it." Rather, it's that everybody hears it differently. It starts from a "conventional" basis, and through creation of the same, it gradually branches off; it accumulates, and transforms upwards towards the level of the "refined," all the way to the philosophical plane. For this reason, I say that a settled art certainly is a kind of "extremely sophisticated and philosophically balanced" thing.

Q: As you have said, the intellectuals threw out the most refined part of traditional music, and ordinarily people talk about aesthetic values in social terms, in terms of elite or common values, so they belittle folk music. In an era such as this, when traditional music is becoming more and more distant from modern life, what use does it have, and how do we obtain access to it?

A: Frankly speaking, I hate answering this kind of question more than anything else. Why do you worry so much about "modern life" and not "present life"? To speak of life "right now" emphasizes the raw fact of your individuality. How are you going to live? What sort of vital plot are you going to embody? The choice is entirely up to you. To say, "modern life," you've just mistakenly put yourself into the system as one of its numbers. I think what we want to stress is "right now" and not "modernity."

Maybe somebody will say, I don't have so much confidence, sometimes I still want to think it over. What color is in fashion this year? OK, for the time being let's put "individual choice" aside and straightforwardly discuss "modernity."

What is "modern?" Now, it's the so-called "information age." In our life, perhaps we have "more and more information." However, it has led to "less and less freedom." For example, with advances in technology, televisions of the future can have 500 channels. How will you select which program you want to watch? We'll change the channel every 5 seconds; by the time we're finished, it's been 45 minutes. I think at the end of the program viewing, you can conclude it's all fighting and bed scenes, because while you're watching, those are the things which bring out a direct response from your brain. If you want to watch programs with any depth, I think. . . . the channel changer will quickly go right over them. So for this reason, I think that the information society has "maximum information, minimum freedom." It's really like this.

What is most serious is the lack of freedom brought about by the homogenization of information, because information is penetrating you everywhere and at all times. Why do advertisements often say, "If you're not this way, you're falling behind." Why is Andy Lau [a movie star and pop singer] so popular? If this were ancient times he wouldn't be so popular. Information makes us become herd animals, become like fans of Kwok Fushing and Andy Lau; it's because you're under attack by the media.

Maybe I'm just somebody who's come over from traditional society; from the point of view of the information society, perhaps I'm "too narrow-minded." Yet, I always feel that there's no rationale to a life controlled by the media, spent pursuing what's popular. That kind of life is really very shallow, very vulgar. To use a Zen saying, "A person who has recognized the mysteriousness of time is someone who has had a great realization." In one's life, one must "Each day achieve each day's understanding; each decade achieve each decade's glory." In the information society, running after data every day, everybody lives a life that is "fashionably identical." You will look back on a lifetime lived like that as an empty one.

So, in this age when the earth is gradually becoming a "global village," I prefer not to talk about "assimilation," because it is an inevitable trend. For this reason, at such a time, what is needed are some counter-actions and counter-thoughts, to eliminate the side-effects. I think that in this so-called "modern" information society, there are two things we need to pay attention to: first, data are no substitute for real life experience; second, because of information, we are able to make contact with other life experiences from society or history, taking our own lives as a basis and using the information alertly. We are able to use the data, and we will have even more opportunities than in earlier times. We won't get washed away in a flood of information.

Observe nature, intuit time's passing

Q: All right, can traditional values be of some assistance to modern life? Taking the example of the value of Chinese music itself, what sorts of order does it open up for practical life?

A: Traditional values, when chosen by people of each generation, are life experiences of a group of people in a very long time frame. Therefore, they are not just the genes in the gene pool, they also open up a space-time for you. Why do we say that a person has "a small nose and small eyes?" It's because he just sees what's right in front of him. A tradition allows us to see more than just what's right in front of us. For instance, what somebody who is versed in Chinese literature says today is not just the accumulated accomplishment of his or her 30 or 40 years, but rather is the accumulated result of a 3000-year-old system. When you understand tradition, your life is richer.

I think that you can take several practical points from Chinese music: The first concerns the observation of nature. Our age is an age which has left nature behind. Traditional musical art can supplement nature within our practical lives. Sometimes, when we listen to natural music in our homes, it's like being back in nature, or even lets us be more able to intuit nature than when we confront it without having our minds on it. When the music lets us enter a true nature, it is a unique experience. For example, the pipa piece "The High Moon" can give us nostalgia for "Who was the first person to see the moon rising over the river bank? When did the moon first shine on people?"

The second thing concerns value systems. I mentioned that the nature of the information age is "maximum data, minimum freedom." Another characteristic is "maximum security, minimum safety." For example, in present-day Taiwan, children have plenty of protection, but do they feel safe? No. I believe that one reason is because of indifference, and another reason is that children can get whatever they ask for. Their life is really like "hothouse flowers." The flowers in a greenhouse couldn't feel safe; they would have a latent disquietude.

If someone lives life openly, freely, and in a healthy manner, it is because he understands exhaustion, setbacks, and worry. If he understands worry, he can be compassionate. Reflection is the depth of life. These days the problems of the new youth stem from their having no worries. Of course, we can use practical activities to strengthen them. For example, we can take somebody camping, let the children be more independent, and so forth. But human beings don't get their input just from practical, face-to-face experience. The fact that there is art actually is a way to let us be moved by and resonate with experience. The basic tone of Chinese peoples' lives is to intuit time's passing. Perhaps in the past this sort of vital tone was considered to be pompous and gerontocratic. Now, we feel that it is very valuable for modern people; it lets people become aware of a kind of great energy.

What I'm talking about is that this kind of worry, or this kind of intuiting time's passing and keeping its memory, these autumnal feelings that are often being given hymns of praise in the traditional arts-especially in music, where they are transformed into the moods of songs-these all comprise an important point for our observation of our own limits. One doesn't become great by insight into one's own greatness, but by discovering one's own limits.

We used to curse at people, saying, "Youth don't know what worry tastes like, they just write poetry proclaiming worry." These days we can't wait for young people to hurry up and "write poetry proclaiming their worries." When they have worries, they begin to have feelings, and their lives become rich and abundant. Even as they are laughing, they see news reports of famine in the African country of Somalia; then they become aware, "Ah! so this is what life is like!" We can't wait for them to be unable to eat their hamburgers because of this; because of this, their lives will expand. The mood of Chinese tradition can help us realize the worry and finitude of human life.

A realistic, affectionate look

The third point where traditional music can function in modernity is what I often call a "sentimental cosmology." On this base, Chinese people experience nature and human life as closely interwoven, and so have a feeling of a kind of sentimental cosmos. This is what is meant in the phrase, "To know the thousand ancient meanings in the river's flow, and the all-encompassing, genuine feelings people have for one another." I believe this is the greatest asset Chinese culture has bequeathed on its inheritors.

I have used the title A Realistic, Affectionate Look to express my deepest understanding of Chinese culture. The "affectionate" part of Chinese culture is that feeling which takes the mountains, rivers, and great earth as something living. In A Realistic, Affectionate Look, I say:

"Even more often, between nature and the human world, Chinese people use this basic emotional tone to suggest emotions through analogy with the environment, or suggest the environment through analogy with the emotions. They ask, 'Who was the first person to see the moon rising over the river bank? When did the moon first shine on people?' They are moved to sigh, 'Who is using his boat tonight? In which tower of the bright moon is she thinking of him?' With this, the mountains, rivers, the great earth, as well as the people in the world and everything in it, are totally enveloped in a sentimentality which cannot be separated from oneself. And the human world can only proceed along in the middle, both burdened by it and transcendent of it.

"This sort of affectionate transcendence, brought about by careful observation of the difficulties in the nature of life, added a sense of compassion and an emotional attitude to the ethical sensitivities of Confucius and Mencius towards providing standards for the life of the people; to the feeling of Confucians that they were living in unsuitable times, it contributed careful observation and a transcendence which is not separated from the human world. To the Daoists' sense of going with the flow and riding out the high waves, it added a bit of looking back with care and attachment; to the doctrines of Laozi and Zhuangzi, penetrating everything in the heartless universe, it brought the understanding that all creatures are sensitive. This is what Buddhists gave to Chinese culture, all the while Buddhism's character was being transformed into a Chinese style."

This is what I was calling a "sentimental cosmology." I think that if people could achieve this level of vision, they would not overly depend on things for their happiness, nor be overly tragic about their own existence. I feel that this is the most practical kind of service that Chinese music can provide. Of course, in literature and painting, you can also obtain this; but music is the most substantial and holistic, and most directly able to move the listener.

Q: Traditional music has its own "anti-performances" and "non-performance nature." Take for instance the case of cultivated music, which existed in the lives of cultivated people in such activities as calligraphy, painting, reciting poetry, recreations in the mountains, or gatherings with friends for tea or wine drinking, etc. Where are these cultivated people and activities these days? If you say that these ways of life no longer exist, how can traditional music have a role in modern life?

A: Lots of people like to ask questions like: "How is traditional music carried on in modern life? How can we modernize traditional music?" I'm often amazed why these sorts of questions are asked about traditional music. Western classical music is the furthest removed from life; such a huge orchestra cannot possibly be heard in ordinary life. But nobody ever asks questions about "the modern life of Western classical music." The equipment of Western wind and string instrumental music is a form belonging to more than a century ago, but nobody ever wonders why orchestras don't modernize. Western traditional music is called "classical" or "eternal," so why do we need questions about "modernization?"

In China, music of course has a good deal of "anti-performance qualities" or "non-performance qualities." However, with the changing times, Chinese music's "drive to live" is stronger than its "quotidian life" character; this is just because it is not the same as everyday life, and so by contrast its qualities stand out more clearly. It's analogous to how few people nowadays use a calligraphy brush to write; calligraphy on the contrary has become more prominent as a kind of art form.

Traditional music perhaps will change into an art which "supplements reality." However, don't forget, in such a society there are still many people who like nature; people still will face difficulties in life. In whatever historical circumstances it finds itself in, Chinese traditional music will always find a way to carry on.

p.98

In the world of traditional Chinese art, there is no duality between humans and nature. Humans are a part of nature, arising and subsiding concurrently with nature. Heaven and earth are vast, but humans know about human finalities. The painting is Recluse Fishermen and Mountain Stream, by Tang Yin of the Ming. (courtesy of the National Palace Museum).

p.100

When we encounter an ancient culture, we want to see what's "good" about it, not look for what's "bad."

p.101

"The most miserable-barbers and performers of percussion-and-shawm music." Because of prejudice in favor of the elite and against the popular, it is the "bad side" of traditional music which is first seen. (photo by Hsueh Chi-kuang)

p.102

In the present, the degree to which traditional music is seen as transcending life and nature exceeds the extent to which it is seen as part of daily life. Otherwise, the most common instrument of the people, the hu-qin, would have been accused of being "too detached from life."

p.103

One doesn't become great by insight into one's own greatness, but by discovering one's own limits.

p.104

In the midst of the traffic of urban life, traditional music seems distant but is close. The choice is yours.

p.105

Even more often,

between nature and the

human world, Chinese

people use this basic emotional tone to suggest emotions through analogy with the environment, or suggest the environment through analogy with the emotions. They ask, 'Who was the first person to see the moon rising over the river bank? When did the moon first shine on people?'

In the present, the degree to which traditional music is seen as transcending life and nature exceeds the extent to which it is seen as part of daily life. Otherwise, the most common instrument of the people, the hu-qin, would have been accused of being "too detached from life.".

In the midst of the traffic of urban life, traditional music seems distant but is close. The choice is yours.