A Dissertation on Chinese Ritual Music Reveals the Changes in Life and Rituals in the ****************************************************************************************** * A Dissertation on Chinese Ritual Music Reveals the Changes in Life and Rituals in the Ru ****************************************************************************************** Jan Chmelarčík graduated from the Master’s programme in sinology at the Charles University Arts and is now a postgraduate student at the Institute of Musicology, focusing on the rit Southwestern Shandong. He is also an active performer of Chinese music – he is one of the have mastered the 21-string zheng zither; along with his former classmates, he is also a m Kungpao China Rock Revival Band. What made you choose to study sinology? It was more of a coincidence. I hadn’t concentrated on a single field before going to coll I wanted to study languages. At our secondary school, they recommended us to choose less c that’s why I went for Chinese. And how did you end up playing the zither? Thanks to your interest in Chinese culture? I’ve played the guitar since I was about twelve. Me and other students of sinology formed Rock Revival Band [ URL "http://www.kungpao.cz"] and started to cover Chinese rock songs. band is still alive and kicking, we’ll celebrate our 10th anniversary on May 19 at the Fut Prague. At one point, we started playing traditional Chinese instruments. Our Chinese hist Olivová, played the zheng zither and I borrowed one of her instruments. Live with Kung Pao Later, you even went to China to study the instrument… That year, some scholarships were available and one of the schools that accepted students intergovernmental agreements was the Shanghai Music Conservatory. I applied and it worked only zheng lessons, but also lectures in the history of Chinese music, an introduction to storytelling and folk songs. Even though I had studied Chinese for 5 years already, I must music history class, for instance, was very difficult for me language-wise. How much did you focus on the zheng itself? I would usually have one lesson a week with my teacher, Mrs. Sun Wenyan. I would practice day almost the whole morning or afternoon. Apart from that, I was exploring Shanghai, lear Chinese, the Shanghai dialect and music theory and preparing for other classes. How difficult is it to play a 21-string zither? I once tried to play the piano and I’d say the piano is harder. Zheng has one advantage fo if it’s tuned correctly, imperfect performance does not hurt one’s ears as much as the vio You can play rather miserably, but the instrument will still sound pretty. However, reachi playing the zheng is just as difficult as with any other instrument. How many people in the Czech Republic can play this instrument? I don’t know, but I’d say that about ten people own it. Some of them play it – at least fr I hope. Where can you get hold of such an instrument? It is being manufactured almost exclusively in China. You can get it on eBay, but that com expensive, because it is usually imported to the U.S. first and then distributed further. from China can be risky – the instruments often arrive damaged. I carried my instrument fr How many times have you been to China? Eight times total. My longest time there was eleven months on an exchange stay based on an intergovernmental agreement, during which I did the field work for my dissertation. Did you focus on a musicology topic already in your Master’s thesis? In my Master’s thesis, I focused on the cultural aspects of the zheng zither in the 20th c the source material from China. I was also drawing from my own experience of playing the z Why did you choose to write your dissertation at the Institute of Musicology? The Institute of Far Eastern Studies was interested in my project as well, but I had the f wouldn’t provide the guidance I needed. So I applied to musicology, where the assistant pr Vlastislav Matoušek became my advisor. How far are you into your dissertation? I have a draft of about 500 pages, but it’s still a long way to go. I had some trouble gat material, as I am focusing on a specific region of China and there are no books about it e so I must often travel to meet their authors themselves. I only managed to do my initial f my 3rd year. At first, I thought I’d be able to write the dissertation based on that, but to a startling realization: I am focusing mostly on bands that play at funerals, memorial weddings. And I didn’t have a single recording of a funeral. That’s because the people in to obey the Chinese law that forbids burials into the ground. The official argument says t destroy arable land, which is very valuable in China. Funerals are either replaced by an o with cremation and three minutes of reproduced music, or, quite often, conducted secretly without music. This makes the memorial ceremonies that take place at the third anniversary more important as a venue for traditional music. Music at a memorial ceremony, Shandong I only found out about this after I had come back to Prague and applied for the Chiang Chi scholarship. Thanks to the scholarship, I could do more field work. Then I managed to actu funeral, but I almost got arrested, because the mayor of the village, who was supposed to but instead was taking part as a guest of honour, thought that I was an agent of the Chine disguised as a Czech ethnomusicologist and that I was collecting compromising information At the same time, the neighbourhood where the musicians that I’m writing about lived was s three hundred policemen both in uniforms and plainclothes under the orders of the local go kept the local people from going to protest for the tenth time at the central government i the unfair compensations for the appropriation of their land by developers. The last time foreigner in this region was five years ago – 60 years in the village itself – and as a wh camera I was immediately suspicious. Based on this and other experiences I’ve had in the r to redefine my whole approach to the dissertation, so that it has more value than just me I also wanted to give a report on what’s happening in the rural areas of China, because pe don’t know much about it. Wedding music I also managed to get a scholarship of the Anglo-Czech Educational Fund, which enabled me School of Oriental and African Studies in London, where they do research on Chinese music, field work in China. I met the most important members and pretty much the whole academic c Chinese music – I especially admired the work of my British colleagues. I thought they wou my line of work, but in the end, I had mixed feelings about the visit. The stay at SOAS wa doubt inspiring, but there were significant differences between me and my British advisors methodology, content and structure of my thesis. So, to get back to your question. Now I have so much material that I’m in over my head, bu some time and I believe my British colleagues will eventually recommend my dissertation fo Sample recordings of zheng zither performances [ URL "http://www.myspace.com/heyangcz"] Photography: Personal archive of Jan Chmelarčík (Lucie Kettnerová)