Echoes of History: Naxi Music in Modern China (review)

Lijiang Prefecture, a major tourist destination today, is located in the northwestern corner of Yunnan Province. It is noted for its scenic beauty, colorful ethnic nationalities, and the Dongjing music of the Naxi, the most numerous (57.9 percent of the population) of the ethnic nationalities in Lijiang (p. 30). This music has been made famous by bands of septuagenarian musicians, residing and performing in a number of different towns. The focus of this book is their music, in particular the role of music and musicians in the politics of ethnicity.

The expository portion of this meticulously researched volume is only 197 pages, of which only sixty-two (chapters 4 and 5) are devoted to the description and analysis of musical genres current among the Naxi. Yet in this slender volume Helen Rees presents a multifaceted study of the evolution and renaissance of a localized musical genre in its in historical, social, and political context. She has left no pebble on Naxi music and society, in Chinese or Western languages, unturned. In the field she has observed and attended performances in various locations in Lijiang; interviewed musicians at length; recorded, transcribed, and analyzed the music; and participated in performances (although she does not say what instruments she has played). The amount of archival research and fieldwork (conducted in 1991-1992, with return visits in 1993, 1996, and 1998) that went into the writing of this book is mind boggling.

The reader is led into the complex historical and political space of Dongjing music, as the author was, through a tourist concert described in the opening chapter. Unlike the usual glitzy folklorico-type shows in tourist restaurants, with beautiful maidens and prancing young men, this deliberately low-key instrumental and vocal performance took place in the courtyard of an old-style mansion. The elder musicians wore long gowns and jackets in the "retrograde" pre-Liberation style of Han dynasty literati. It was immediately obvious to the trained ear of the author that the "Naxi ancient music" of these musicians was akin to the that of the silk and bamboo (string and woodwind) ensembles of southeastern China. The master of ceremonies also made no apologies for the fact that this Naxi music had been borrowed from the music of Chinese ritual, albeit played in Naxi performance style with indigenous instruments. The author was intrigued by a "double anomaly": this was a musical genre with contradictory ethnic affiliations, and it had been adapted from its original, traditional religious purpose to that of secular entertainment in the booming tourist industry of Lijiang (p. 6).

Chapter 2 reprises the history of the uneasy relationship between the Chinese state and ethnic minorities from the time of the Qing dynasty, and perhaps before, to the present. Chapter 3 describes the peoples of Lijiang and their complex shifting ethnic boundaries. Centuries of constant resettlement, cultural borrowing, and intermarriage have blurred ethnic lines. The present government has gone to great lengths to define minority populations using a combination of linguistic, cultural, and territorial criteria, and cultural anthropologists may have found such definitions analytically convenient. Like other ethnic minorities, however, the Naxi themselves deny such simplistic unity. Some point to their Han ancestry with pride, while others intentionally manipulate ethnic designations to suit their own purposes, especially when trying to surmount political pressure from the government. Such manipulation is not unique to the Naxi. Western-trained researchers, consciously or unconsciously steeped in the value of unitary identity, have found this phenomenon worthy of scholarly analysis.¹

Chapters 4 and 5 lay out the musical landscape of Lijiang and the place of Dongjing music within it, primarily as it existed before Liberation, when government interference in local cultural activities was minimal. Indigenous Naxi music was and still is a rich mix of genres ranging from individualistic improvisational folk tunes, participatory dance music, group antiphony, and borrowings from...