Sizhu Instrumental Music of South China: Ethos, Theory and Practice by Alan R. Thrasher (review)

Indigenous Chinese instrumental ensemble traditions of different regions feature various instrumental combinations, repertoires, intonations, folk ethos, and performance aesthetics nurtured by local native subcultures. With much attention paid to those traditions, modern Chinese music scholars and Western ethnomusicologists have for the past three decades, conducted extensive fieldwork research and musical analyses on some of the best known genres, including Jangnan Sizhu and Chaozhou Xianshiyue. Thrasher’s investigation of parallel ensemble traditions in adjacent provinces of South China exemplifies a new comparative and categorical approach in this area of research.

The book is very well organized in structure, and informative in its subject matter. Thrasher offers many new insights into the sizhu (silk and bamboo) ensemble traditions of Hakka, Chaozhou, Minnan, and Cantonese music primarily in the South Chinese provinces of Fujian and Guangdong, extending potential readership in the fields of Chinese music theory, Chinese culture and history studies, and Western ethnomusicology. Thrasher discusses both shared features of each tradition and the uniqueness of individual genres, tracing the musical, cultural, and aesthetic roots back to the ancient court and folk music of the Confucius era. He presents a clear picture of what these traditions are, their origins, and how they function and survive in contemporary China. Slightly different from the ethnographic approaches in Western mainstream ethnomusicology evident in previous research on individual Chinese ensemble traditions, Thrasher’s narrative takes on both emic and etic interpretations, using broad geographical, historical, and cultural perspectives. Comparing the commonalities and uniqueness of each ensemble tradition, Thrasher demonstrates a new approach for the study of traditional Chinese musical culture, known for its thousands of years of history and abundant philosophical perspectives, which is not always within the scope of Western ethnomusicological methodology. Thrasher also provides the most updated bibliographic information on sizhu traditions in both Chinese and Western studies. Most of the author’s viewpoints are clearly presented, supplemented with cross-references to his informants’ interview notes, modern Chinese scholars’ research findings, ancient classical Chinese music literature, and Western ethnomusicologists’ insights.

Sizhu is both a categorical term for a type of string and wind instrument chamber music ensemble and a name for a regional instrumental music tradition in Eastern China’s Yangzi Delta area known as Jiangnan sizhu. In recognizing the commonly shared crucial musical features and cultural aesthetics, Thrasher borrows this terminology and categorizes four ensemble traditions in Fujian and Guangdong provinces with generalized analysis.

The first chapter, “Sizhu Music in South China,” introduces Chinese music categories in Chinese music scholarship, within which sizhu is a distinguished domain of instrumental music, comprising several local music traditions throughout China. The background information in relation to music cultures of South China and social perspectives of this category are discussed in great detail. Categorizing traditional music genres has been a subject of modern Chinese music research prior to the People’s Republic, when Lu Ji published his well-known thesis Outline of National Folk Music Research in 1942, where he summarized traditional Chinese music into eight types. One of them, according to Lu Ji, is folk instrumental music consisting of two subtypes of solo and ensemble traditions. In the later twentieth century, Chinese musicologists Li Minxiong and Ye Dong divided Chinese instrumental ensembles into two categories: sizhu and chuida, while Gao Houyang and Yuan Jingfang divided them into five categories, with sizhu as a category domain.

Thrasher adopts the former concept toward what he sees as two basic instrumental ensemble domains—“the relatively soft chamber and the louder ceremonial music.” He emphasizes the shared music aesthetics of the four traditions, underlining the influences of Confucian social values. In chapter 2, “Yuelun: The Confucius Foundation,” Thrasher provides a penetrating examination of Confucian theory, the ancient corpus of behavioral doctrine, which promoted music as a means of achieving social harmony. Through his analyses of musical forms and styles, such as the...