Cataya's Lair

There is a saying that 99 percent of all Chinese are farmers, and it's true that most Chinese music – excluding the classical, operatic and art music traditions – originates with rural, peasant traditions, and has deep regional roots.

For centuries, farmers in the north have practiced wind-and-percussion ensembles. Ding County of Hebei is famous for artistry in the double reeds: the guanzi (double-reed pipe), the haidi (small oboe) and the suona (Northern oboe). In Xian, the Western Capital of China, musicians for centuries practiced the sheng (a free-reed mouth organ) and di (reeded transverse flute) for joining ensembles called Xian drum music.

Eastern China is "fiddle" country, and bowed instruments such as the erhu, zhonghu, and the gaohu are popular as both solo and ensemble instruments. The Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Shandong provinces have produced a lot of fiddlers, including Wang Dianyu, Zhao Yuchai and the influential A Bing (1893–1950), a street musician famous for his many compositions.

Traditionally the Chinese have believed that sound influences the harmony of the universe. Until quite recently the Chinese theoretically opposed music performed solely for entertainment, accordingly, musical entertainers were relegated to an extremely low social status.

Chinese music is the body of vocal and instrumental music composed and played by Chinese People. For several thousands of years Chinese Culture was dominated by the teachings of the philosopher Confucius, who conceived of music in the highest sense as a means of calming the passions and of dispelling unrest and lust, rather than as a form of amusement. The ancient Chinese belief that music is meant not to amuse but to purify one's thoughts.

Melody and tone are prominent expressive features of Chinese music, and great emphasis is given to the proper articulation and inflection of each musical tone.

Chinese musical instruments have been classified according to the materials used in their construction, namely, metal, stone, silk, bamboo, gourd, clay, skin and wood. The older instruments include long zithers, flutes, panpipes, the sheng, or mouth organ and percussion instruments, such as clappers, drums and gongs. Of later origin are various lutes and fiddles introduced to China from Central Asia.


For further info, see:

http://worldmusic.nationalgeographic.com/worldmusic/view/page.basic/genre/content.genre/chinese_traditional_709

http://www.philmultic.com/home/instruments/

http://www.chinesemusic.co.uk/english/music.html