CHIME 2007 - I Sing Who I Am – Identity, Ethnicitiy and Individuality (Abstract)
Barbarian Songsters: The Jurchens, A Hidden Minority in Chinese Music
Musical harmony in China as elsewhere has long been linked to social harmony. Its power through mutually reinforcing sound-wave oscillations is palpable not only audially but viscerally. Yet harmony has not been universal. Music has often been morally and ethnically strictured by anxious guardians of social order, national uniformity and at least outward conformity. The expansion of empire saw the inclusion of diverse ethnic groups and increased trade contacts with remote cultures as far as Persia and India. This resulted in the importation of music on a large scale, notably in the Táng dynasty, as well as its exportation, particularly to Japan and Korea.
Imported music, originally tied to ‘barbarian’ tongues, inevitably created conflicts in musical styles, to be resolved assimilation in varying degree. In the Maoist era this process was termed ‘foreign adapted to Chinese use’ (wài wéi Zhong yòng), analogous to ‘ancient adapted to modern use’ (gû wéi jin yòng). In fact every past dynasty had promulgated their own new musical norms, adapting and remoulding music to new tunings and titles. The Míng, heirs of Mongol Yuán, even officially imposed the five-note scale to distance itself from the foreign heptatonic tunes that had long dominated the country.
Yet Míng could not deny Mongol dynastys itself, which, though non-Hàn, ruled all China for almost a century (1280-1368), and unprecedentedly expanded its sphere of influence. But what of the dynasties who had shared power with the Sòng: the Khitan Liáo, Tangut Xixià, and Jurchen Jin? They have become for the most part culturally both invisible and inaudible. There could only be one Son of Heaven at a time, and that remained the Sòng (960-1278). Yet north China’s central plain was ruled by Jin (1125-1234) over a hundred years. Jurchen emperors Shìzong (r. 1161-1189), and especially his successor the cultured Zhangzong (r. 1190-1208), were musical. Yet while the influence of Indian music is too well attested to deny, the important musical contributions of the Jurchen (like that of their Manchu successors) are all but forgotten. In this paper I will examine the Jurchen musical profile still traceable in Chinese operatic song and dance.