Clarification

Just heard back from the manufacturer, the founder's birth name is 馮寶慶Feng BaoQing, 馮柄中Feng BingZhong is his "art name"

This post refers back to the previous post Interviews of the Manufacturer and the Tuner

Interviews of the Manufacturer and the Tuner

This is the longer one, about 15 mins, lots of reading for you non-Chinese speaking people, but trust me, it will worth every single minute!!

<0:02>
(Feng's Xun) ← [The Manufacturer I got my Xun from]

(The Memory of Xun)
(Premiere: 4 Jan 2008)
(Replay: 5, 8, 9 Jan 2008)

(ChangAn Art Gallery of Clay)

<0:15> (Feng's Xun)
(ChangAn Art Gallery of Clay)
Art & Artist
(The People)
XI'AN TV
channel 6

<0:22> This is 棗園村ZaoYuan Village located at 臨潼斜口LinTongXieKo, 西安Xi'An, 陝西ShaanXi Province.
It's not a big village, every household is now making clay Xuns for a living.
This is where 王盛祥Wang ShengXiang (Xun Tuner) is currently doing a job that he's passionate about.
After he retired from the Food Bureau, he started to experiment and develop clay Xun.
The Xun that him, his investor Feng BaoQing, and clay artist Ji QingFeng developed and patented now has a significant respect and importance in the Chinese folk music community.

And every year, over 10,000 completely hand-made fine tuned Xun became a unique cultural brand of ShaanXi (the Province where my grandparents were from).

<0:57> (R=Reporter, W=Wang ShengXiang)
R: What do you find to be the most interesting thing about this job (making and tuning Xuns)
W: The Xun we make here is for performing, it's an instrument. It has about 7,000 years of history by now; therefore, when held by any person who loves the Xun, they can feel the historical bitterness in it. And I as the maker of this Xun, I feel really proud!!
R: All the tools you have here I'm guessing should be considered very professional grade, right? For tuning the instrument.
W: Ya, sort of, I use a digital tuner.

<1:44> (Narrative)
Since 2004, Wang ShengXiang has been experimenting and developing methods to tune the clay Xun before it's being baked, which in turn significantly improved both the quantity and quality of the Xuns produced by the Feng's Xun. Although Wang ShengXiang never had any formal musical training, but he was born with great sensitivity to pitch, along with his experimental personality, he managed to start his second career at the age of 60.

<2:33> W: Nowadays, in all of China, there aren't many companys that make performable Xuns. On average, there is about several hundred thousand Xuns made in China every year, but only less than 20,000 out of 7-800,000 of these Xun are performable, the rest of them are mostly decorative Xuns, those are basically novelty items, just for show. The Xuns we make here are specifically for performing.
R: Can be used as an instrument.
W: Yes, and it can be played along side other, all sorts of musical instruments.

<3:15> 
W: This kiln is where the clay artists got married.
R: Awww~
W: Back in those days we got him married here in this kiln.

<3:29> (shows the oven where they bake the Xuns till they set their shapes)
W: (For) Baking the Xuns...
R: Seems like quite a primitive approach, eh~ a very traditional method (that you guys are using).
W: This is a traditional kiln...
R: The fire and temperature has to be...?
W: From low to high, it is a very skilful step (of the Xun making process) is to control the temperature of the fire.
R: So if you didn't get it right it would all be destroyed?
W: Ya
R: Is that another kiln over there?
W: Ya, there's another one over there. It's also in use, these 2 kilns, because there's a lot of Xun makers in this village; even though we said this is just one workshop, we are actually just one big family, and that we have a lot of people working together.

<4:08>(J=姬慶豐Ji QingFeng, the clay artist at the Feng's Xun)
R: That bigger kiln back there had 30 years of history you said? (W: Uhuh) And you said it was originally for making flower pots?
J: At the very beginning we did clay pots and barrels, big flour tanks we use in the village, that's what we baked at the very beginning, but now, that [the making of pots and barrel] has been eliminated.
R: Does that also uses the red clay?
J: Ah ya! First made flower pots, made flower pots for a while and then started making Xuns.
W: What we do here is a craft of art on its own. After I came here, I heard them say, "in the past, a girl would rather marry a clay mason than a gold or silversmith" why is that? To become goldsmiths and silversmiths you need a lot of overhead costs, you have to fork out the money to get the gold or silver before you can work on it and make jewellery out of it. But for clay, it's everywhere, you can just dig it up from the ground, so the cost (to get started) is really low. So that's why they had that saying.
R: So the next saying would probably become "a girl would rather marry a Xun maker than a gold or silver smith. Haha...
Everyone: Hahaha...

<5:12>
W: There's actually a difference between baking (making Xun) and red clay (making regular red clay flower pots). Red clay requires strong, high temperature baking the entire way through, at about 1200°C. This thing (the Xun) only needs up to 6-700°C, at most not more than 800°C, and then there's this process called "smoking black"

"Smoking black" is when we use asphalt, there's a specific "smoking black" craft, when you do that, you need to close the kiln door and seal it tight, plug the two chimneys on top of the kiln, block the front of the kiln completely with mud, at this point there's nowhere for the smoke to go, it can only go into the Xuns that are being baked inside the kiln. The longer the Xuns are in there, the "deeper" the smoke goes. Therefore, the Xuns we make here are also called "Dark Skinned Clay", that is there's only a surface layer of the clay that's black, so that when we're engraving or carving patterns, flowers and such, there's more layering and texture (to the piece).
R: Because the red from inside would show...
W: Right!! But if you smoked the Xuns completely black, then the flowers (or any other engravings) would not have any texture and would not look nice. To Feng's Xun, we demand (our products) to be baked till slightly harder than those regular decorative Xuns; because the Xuns we make here are for performing, especially for when it's very cold or hot out, or during rapid climate changes, if the Xun is not hard enough, or if it wasn't baked enough, it's not tough enough, when you play it in the cold, it might crack.
R: What are the differences between the Feng's Xun and some other conventional Xuns? I heard you guys have applied for a patent (for your Xun).
W: Ah yes. Because what we make here are Xuns specifically for professional performance purpose; therefore, when we make the shell for the Xuns, we have to take into consideration the comfortableness of the hand-held position. Decorative Xuns usually just sit there for people to look at so they don't need to be comfortable for holding in the hands. Uh...
R: So they are fine as long as they look like the shape of a Xun.
W: Ah ya, therefore when we pick this shape, we called it a bullet shaped, for say, (bends down to get the Xun) this Xun, it just looks quite similar to a bullet, this kind of Xun, you hold it up, and your fingers would naturally sit flat on its surface, it's very convenient for each finger lift up and put down, so the transitions is a lot smoother when performing on it.

Another thing is that the Feng's Xun, structural-wise, it's classified into single-chamber Xun, dual-chamber Xun (mine), and triple-chamber Xun, the best Xun we make here is the triple-chambered one. From the outside they all look the same as one piece, but there are variations on the structure inside. It is divided into three chamber, the air flow inside a triple-chamber is different from the air flow in a single-chambered one. This affects the range and the tone quality of the Xun a lot.

Starting from last year (2007), the Feng's Xun had developed Xuns that can perform up to two octaves. This Xun can go up to "re" (I think he meant the Xun can play a 12th)
R: So just a regular, average one.
W: It can also play overtones, let me try it. (Plays Xun) This is its basic tones, it can play one overtone. (Plays Xun)
R: Dealing with Xuns since 2000, your 60 some odd years old now, doing what you do at this age, what are you working for?
W: Ever since I fell in love with the Xun, it's like I'm being possessed, I became obsessive. I originally played the 笛子DiZi (the Chinese Flute), after I started playing the Xun for two months, I didn't wanna do anything else, and I recently discovered that a lot of people who play the Xun have the same problem that I had.
R: So what do you think is the charm of this instrument?
W: There's no other instrument that is comparable to its (the Xun's) tone quality. And there's no other instrument that can substitute the Xun. Ever since I fell in love with it, I have a wish, I hope that for the time I'm still alive, I make 100,000 Xuns, erm, I want to let everyone in China who loves the Xun, can play on reasonably-priced, good quality Xun, that's made by me.

<10:55> (Narrative)While developing the Feng's Xun, Wang ShengXiang also started composing. 漢城謠HanChengYao (The Song of the Han City), the Xun music he composed and performed himself, caught a lot of attention at the 陝西民樂大賽ShaanXi Folk Music Competition in 2007, and won first place in the "Xun Music - Amateur" group; and got the approval of a several high level authorities including the Chief of the Cultural Bureau Liu KuanYin. To Wang ShengXiang, who had never studied a day of composing, a piece like that has to have be brewing at the bottom of his heart for quite a few years [or even decades]

<11:42> (Narrative)
To Wang ShengXiang, there's one person in this career of his, who he really admires, that is the founder of the Feng's Xun, a "young fella" who only wanted to promote the culture of the Xun, 馮柄中Feng BingZhong (this doesn't sound like the one they said in the video, the one in the video is 馮寶慶Feng BaoQing, but I believe the video was wrong, this is the name I put down is on a lot of information I found on the internet about this company. I have sent a message to the manufacturer to verify, I will update this piece of information once I hear back from them.)

<12:07> (F=馮柄中Feng BingZhong, founder of the Feng's Xun)
R: We've been chatting all morning, Master Wang (Chinese call every knowledgeable person a "Master" out of respect) told me a lot about the destiny between him and you. Can you tell us more about how you two get to meet and know each other?
F: Actually we met about 3 years ago, I was selling (my Xuns) over there, Master Wang is really passionate about music, it was the tone of the Xun that moved and inspired Master Wang, and we became friends. It is truly a friendship over the generations, he's 60 something, and I'm only 30 something, and we wanted to pursuit this career of (promoting) the culture of the Xun.

Before I was 30, I don't know music, don't know nothing about 123 (Numbered Musical Notation) or do-re-mi, I only started slowly learned how to play the Xun after I was 30. When a person has the will to learn, he can slowly learn just about anything.
R: At the beginning, how did you establish this close relationship with the Xun?
F: Back in the days when I had a store near 大雁塔DaYan Tower (a tourist destination in 西安Xi'An, 陝西ShaanXi Province), I brought several Xuns over to the 書院門College Doors (another tourist destination), at that point there were no Xun merchants at the College Doors, I brought 10 - 20 of them, for say, the cost was $1 each (Chinese dollars, at current exchange rate that is $0.18 Canadian dollars, or $0.16 US), I can sell it to a foreigner for $10, I thought the profit was alright, so that's how I slowly started to sell Xuns, and eventually learned how to play them.

I went to the 鼓樓Drum Tower (of course another tourist destination) to learn more about the Xun culture. A lot of tourists from out of town came up and mentioned the introduction about Xun music in the book 廢都FeiDu (Abandoned City), written by Master Jia PingWa, and Chief (of the Cultural Bureau) Liu KuanYin, which really promoted the Xun to everyone in China. But back then I was selling these decorative Xun (which is where I got my first one).
R: You can make a sound out of it but there's no tuning and you can't perform a song with it.
F: Yah, they can be used for performance, and they also tried to pass these decorative Xuns on as performance Xuns, which then misled the consumers. Therefore, we had a common belief, Master Wang know how to tune it, I know how to play it and sell it, so I summoned the few of us and say "why don't we popularize the Xun? And we can bring wealth to the people in the ShaanXi Province!!" Because this Xun we have in ShaanXi, came from 半坡BanPo, ShaanXi, so this is a thing with a very long history, it is also a tourist cultural brand name for ShaanXi Province.

So we figured we name this brand of Xun after my family name [Note: Chinese family names are put in front of the given name], invited Master Wang, and our clay artist, the three of us work together sincerely, hoping to promote this Xun culture as our cultural career for the rest of our lives.

<14:32> (Narrative)
They did another big thing in 2007, that is they fork out their own money and published the first DVD tutorial set in all of China (which is a gift they give to their customers, and I have a digital copy of it). Feng BaoQing, Wang ShengXiang, and the clay artist Ji QingFeng, all wish that one day Xun music can be written into the University curriculum, and become a profession, so that this ancient musical instrument can prolong its life, and they want to put in their effort in that process.

--- End of Video ---

Legend: the information in brackets - ( ) are things that are not actually said in the video but implied meanings between the lines, or are information that I know and I filled in the blanks.

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Reflection:

After watching this video for no less than 100 times, accumulated over 7 hours of work, plus another hour of reviewing and revising my work, I finally finished what I now call "the translated/interpreted transcription" of this interview, meaning I did not just translate directly what was said, but I also added the implied but un-spoken words from my understanding. It was a lot of fun but really exhausting, yet at the end, it's even more rewarding!!

The thing that touched me the most about this video is that the three main characters in this lovely story are all very passionate about the Xun, and I think this passion is highly contagious, and I, fortunately understands their language and got "infected" by their enthusiast!!

I didn't exactly know how the Xun is made, but I can tell it is a very complicated and delicate process. From what the clay artist and the tuner said, it really seem like a fine art to be able to properly make and tune a Xun, I am now more fascinated by this beautiful instrument than ever!!

Please stay tuned for my next translated/interpreted transcription project, where I will translate and transcribe the interview of just the tuner Mr. Wang.

P.S.: The mandarin that the clay artist Mr. Ji, and the founder Mr. Feng was speaking had a very strong ShaanXi accent, which I am glad  that I had a lot of training from my grandparents or this translation process would have taken even longer!!

Brief Update

I have my presentation next Wednesday, so I have been working on my Power Point and handouts for the class. Also I am working on transcribing and translating the videos posted by the manufacturer I bought my Xun from, the videos are interviews of their Xun maker and their Xun tuner. 

In the videos, they talk about their philosophy towards this craft and why they love doing it and stuff like that, it's only a total of 20 minutes worth of video, but transcribing and translating really takes a long time!! Stay tuned for my next post with the video and my translated transcription~!!

Some Examples of Chinese Court Music

 

As you can hear from these examples, the texture of the Chinese court music is very complex, they have a number of different instruments playing; however, most of the time there's only one instrument playing the melody.

Role of Music in 儒教RuJiao (Confucianism)

Important Note: 

Most Western people know 孔子KongZi as Confucius, which is one of my biggest Chinese-culture-in-Western-world pet peeves; therefore, this is the only time I would use this term when referring to one of the greatest philosopher in Chinese history, so please get use to his proper name: 孔子KongZi, or you can skip reading this post right now!! Same thing with Mencius, his proper name is 孟子MengZi, in case I ever need to mention him in my studies!!

Six Arts as Defined by 孔子KongZi:

1.      禮Li - proper, etiquette, proper manner

2.     樂Yue - ability to appreciate music as both a performer and an audience

3.     射She (pronounced as "shir" without the "r") - archery or sportsmanship, particularly about how one treats his opponent - with 禮Li

4.     御Yu - ability to charioteer a horse carriage, both as a sport and as a means of transportation

5.     書Shu (flat high pitch accent) - ability to read, write, and understand literature; have knowledge of history and politics; and great skills in calligraphy

6.     數Shu (downward accent) - good sense of mathematics (and you people wonder why Asians are good with math...

孔子KongZi emphasized a lot on music when he was teaching his disciples, and a lot of these are referenced in the literature of 儒教RuJiao (Confucianism):

• 四書SiShu (The Four Books):

• 論語LunYu (Analects): mainly notes from 孔子KongZi's pupils
• 孟子MengZi (Mencius): autobiography of 孟子MengZi, and some notes from 孔子KongZi's pupils
• 大學DaXue: thesis and papers written by the students of 孔子KongZi's grandson, about the teachings of 孔子KongZi in terms of higher education
• 中庸ZhongYong (Doctrine of the Mean): states that the best way to deal with all things in life is to take a moderate path.

• 五經WuJing (The Five Canonical Classics):

• 詩經ShiJing (Canon of Poetry): about 305 poems of cultural heritage of 孔子KongZi.
• 書經ShuJing (Canon of History): edited compilation of historical documents up to 孔子KongZi's day.
• 禮Li (The Book of Rites): deals with all forms of human relationships, 禮記LiJi, the one section that extensively talks about the importance of music in interpersonal rites
• 易經YiJing (Canon of Changes): principle of life - 陰陽YinYang ("Yin" is shade, negative, female; and "Yang" is light, positive, male). 
• 春秋ChunQiu (Annals of Spring and Autumn): devoted to a history of 孔子KongZi's own time, supposedly written by himself.

All these literatures shared the authors' views about music and how it relates to their daily life. 孔子KongZi believes that music and universal harmony are complementary to one another, and is hence essential to all humanities.

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The above information is taken from The Music of China, by Bliss Wiant

P.S.: I LOVE this book!! All the interesting information in this post and the last one About Traditional Chinese Music are all from the just the Introduction chapter of this book, can't way to read more!!

About Traditional Chinese Music

Music

Music in Chinese is 音樂 (Yin Yue). 音Yin means tone, which includes pitch and rhythm. 樂Yue means pleasure and joy. Therefore, just pitch and rhythm cannot be called music in China, it has to also be pleasant and provides joy in combination with pitch and rhythm to be considered as "music". Music in ancient China can be classified into two kinds, 雅樂(YaYue) Elegant Music, and 俗樂(SuYue) Common Music. 

Elegant Music 雅樂(YaYue)

• 雅(Ya): elegant, polished, refined, polite
• Monosyllabic
• Appeal to mind and soul
• Sign of self-discipline
• Stimulate man to be his best self
• Used to identify an imperial reign
• Written and performed by well educated people (including some emperors)
• Most commonly used instruments:
• 琴Qin, 瑟Se: stringed instruments with long strings
• 笙Sheng: reed mouth organ
• 胡琴HuQin: two-stringed violin (what I was originally going to learn)

Common Music 俗樂(SuYue)

• 俗(Su): vulgar, common, unrefined
• Melismatic
• Rhythms resembles European folk melodies
• Only pleases the ear and does not have higher meaning
• Too many embellishments to be exactly notated, performers often add their own embellishments to it (just like any other folk music)

Instrument classification:

Chinese instruments are classified by the material it's made out of, other than how the instrument is played, which is how the world of Western music do their classification (I have put the Western counterpart of each example in brackets):

• 金Jin (Metal): generally refers to instruments made out of gold or other metal. Examples: 編鐘BianZhong (a set of bronze bells), 鑼Luo (gongs), 喇叭 LaBa (trumpet), and 鏺Bo (cymbals).
• 石Shi (Stone): refers to instruments made out of stone, especially jade, which is often used with metal in formal orchestral combination. Example: 編磬BianQing - a mallet percussion instrument which consists of a rack of stone plates that are hung by ropes from a wooden frame.
• 絲Si (Silk): silk threads were used for making strings for all Chinese string instruments including, and are further classified by how they are played:
• Plucked: 箜篌KongHou (harp)
• Bowed: 胡琴HuQin (violin) 
• Struck: 揚琴YangQin (dulcimer) 
• 竹Zhu (Bamboo): mainly refers to Chinese wood wind instruments. Examples: 笛子DiZi (flute), 嗩吶SuoNa, and 簫Xiao (Recorder).
• 匏Pao (Gourd): this is a class of instrument which has no counterpart in the world of Western music. Example: 笙Sheng (Click here for an interesting cross over of the Sheng and Super Mario)
• 土Tu (Earth): this family consists of instruments made out of baked earth/clay. Example: 塤Xun (ocarina) *YAY!!!*, and 缶Fou - a clay pot played as a percussion instrument, which was part of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Opening Ceremony (the count down) 
• 革Ge (Leather): basically drums of all shapes and sizes.
• 木Mu (Wood): most of the wood instruments are percussion instruments of some sort. Examples: 木魚MuYu (temple block), and 拍板PaiBan (clapper made with several pieces of flat wood)
  Fun Fact: the clapper was actually most commonly used for keeping the rhythm for what I would consider Ancient Chinese rap. It was basically a form of story telling, kinda like a stand-up comedy show that rhymes and have a strong sense of rhythm. It was one of the major entertainment back in the days. Essentially, a "story teller" will sit down at a tea house and begin to clap the clapper and start telling tales that was either made up by the "story teller" or mythology stories passed down generations. If a story teller is very good at what he does, and really funny, he would probably rent an opera house and do a staged performance with a drum instead, like this guy.

Functions of Music:

• Western:
• Artistic
• Religious
• Embellishment for life
• Chinese:
• Essential, fundamental to life
• Pervasive

Challenges of Researching about Ancient Chinese Music:

1. 秦始皇QinShiHuang, the first emperor in Qin Dynasty (221 - 206 BC), destroyed a lot of literature and state records prior to his rule.
2. Inadequate notation of ancient Chinese music.
3. Written literature (that survived the destruction by 秦始皇QinShiHuang, or written after his time) in the old days did not have much punctuation, which cause difficulty when one's trying to understand and interpret the records.
4. The Chinese created a lot of words over times, a word that had only one meaning in the past, may have five more meanings to it now, or the use of the word can be different then and now.

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While listening to my fellow classmates' presentations, it seemed to me a lot of good music in Western culture were made by poor, lower class, oppressed people, as if upper class people are supposed to be elegant and reserving, when music requires the person to be expressive, as a result, very seldom we have people with high social status compose and perform music. On the other hand, in traditional Chinese culture, music can be elegant and a state of class, even emperors often play an instrument to entertain himself. Instead of making music or not, ancient China use "elegant music" and "common music" to distinguish the people's social status.

That's it for now... Stay tuned for more about traditional Chinese music in near future... I still have much to read, research, and learn!!

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The information in this post was obtained from Music of China by Bliss Wiant with the occasional help of Wikipedia.

First Videos of Actually Playing

I have been listening to the songs I plan on learning for more than a week now, and I have also re-transcribed them with Numbered Musical Notation, I am very familiar with the pieces so I decided to give it a try on my Xun. And here's me playing The River Runs Red (滿江紅) for the first time. 

And here's me playing The Red Bean Poem (紅豆詞)

I am still a bit rusty on my fingerings, but I think it is a pretty good start!! Also, I was in the Music Building when I did this recording, so forgive me for the amazing drum set and marimba sounds in the background.

Numbered Musical Notation of the Songs I am Learning

Fig.1 The Red Bean Poem

Fig.2 The River Runs Red

This experience enhanced my learning process of the the Numbered Musical Notation, and because I was listening to the performances over and over again, so I get really familiar with the melody; when I finally move onto playing the songs, the notes were pretty accurate right away. Another thing I realized was this notation system is easier than staff music for sight-reading. I think this is because I encountered numbers far before I started reading Western art music, so numbers are easier to be "processed" than staff music in my brain.

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Side experiment: all you readers out there, try to read these Numbered Musical Notation on an instrument that you're not familiar with, and comment below how you did, and whether you find it easier to sight-read than staff music or not.

Listening to the Tunes I am Learning to Play - Man Jiang Hong

滿江紅 The River Runs Red

Same as The Red Bean Poem, I am going to revise the music I got to make sure it is how it supposed to sound like.

Listening to the Tunes I am Learning to Play - Hong Dou Ci

紅豆詞 The Red Bean Poem

I have noticed that all the videos I found on YouTube sounds the same and that the written music I got for the song is slightly off, so I am going to attempt to re-notate the song from what I hear and post it here when I'm done.

How to Play the Xun

Although the title of my blog says Xun is the ancestor of all ocarinas, it is played in a slightly different way. 

For an ocarina, the performer's mouth covers the air hole directly and you blow air into it directly, very straight forward (literally!). For the Xun, the performer has to blow air into the air hole at a very specific angle in order to give that full, warm timber it is supposed to produce. 

For flute players it should be easier to grasp the technique as the angle is similar to that of the angle that you guys do with the flute; as for non-flute players, the easiest way to explain the angle which you blow air over the Xun would be the angle you blow air over a bottle to make the warm humming sound. 

The way I figure out the angle is open up the entire Xun, and tilt the Xun at different angle while blowing air into it, when it creates a full, round sound, that means I've got the angle right. 

From various videos I found online, they all mention one very important thing, relax your body while playing the Xun, no tension in the shoulder, back, or neck; and don't press the Xun towards your lower lips.