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Unearthing China's Informal Musicians: An Archaeological and Textual Study of the Shang to Tang Periods

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 March 2019

Ingrid Furniss
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In the past three decades, the study of music in ancient China has expanded significantly with the discovery of numerous tombs containing musical instruments. These finds have revealed substantial information about ancient music theory and organology. One issue that has remained on the periphery, however, is the study of the musicians themselves. From the Eastern Zhou (770–221 BCE) to Tang (618–907 CE) periods, musicians fell broadly into three groups: (1) formal musicians who performed for important ritual occasions and state sacrifices; (2) informal musicians who provided entertainment for banquets and other less formal occasions; and (3) military musicians who performed in processions. Formal musicians generally specialized in yayue (refined music), the official music of the royal Zhou court. Yayue continued to be played in formal ritual settings at court long after the Zhou period. Informal and military musicians specialized in less traditional forms of music, such as suyue (“popular” or “folk” music) and foreign music. Formal and informal musicians appear in the archaeological record as early as Eastern Zhou, while military musicians appear slightly later in the Han. Of these three groups, informal musicians appear to have been most popular among elite audiences, especially between the Han (206 BCE–229 CE) and Tang periods. These musicians were often paired with lively dancers, acrobats, sword-swallowers, and jesters, indicating the entertainment—rather than formal—nature of the music they performed. As demonstrated by sculptural works and mural paintings excavated from Han through Tang tombs, the most common types of musicians outside the more formal music sectors at court were foreigners, dwarfs, idealized women, and scholarly recluses. This paper will focus on archaeological and textual evidence for the existence of these informal musicians as early as Shang (c. 1570–1070 BCE) and Eastern Zhou, and the rising popularity of such performers in the period from Han to Tang. I hope to show that the very social marginality of informal musicians is exactly what enhanced their exoticism and popular appeal among their elite audiences.

Type
Articles
Information
Yearbook for Traditional Music , Volume 41 , 2009 , pp. 23 - 41
Copyright
Copyright © 2009 by the International Council for Traditional Music

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