Nanguan (南管), an ancient style of Chinese music that has seen a gradual revival over the last couple of decades, is about simplicity — the kind of simplicity that can only be achieved by a lifetime of dedication. Wang Xinxin (王心心), the founder of the Xinxin Nanguan Ensemble (心心南管樂坊), has established herself as one of the foremost exponents of nanguan music on the contemporary scene, and her achievements are being given international scholarly recognition in a concert and lecture tour to Paris, Lisbon and Heidelberg later this week.
The origins of nanguan are lost in the mists of time, but by the end of the first millennium, it was already associated with China’s southern province of Fujian, particularly to the then prosperous port of Quanzhou (泉州). The word nanguan translates as “southern pipes,” and its primary development has been in the form of chamber music, usually a quartet, sometimes with vocal accompaniment. It is particularly known for its extremely slow thematic exposition, a feature that has made it a hard sell to contemporary audiences.
Wang’s love of nanguan’s almost meditative simplicity is at odds with her role as a performing artist in contemporary Taiwan. Nanguan’s roots in amateur musical associations in which musicians performed primarily for their own pleasure have created obstacles for its development as a public entertainment. Taiwan’s Han Tang Yuefu (漢唐樂府), one of the first groups to develop nanguan as a theater event, derives much of its impact from creating lavish visual settings that provide a feast for the eyes when the slow pace of the music leaves audiences floundering.
Photo Courtesy of Xinxin Nanguan Ensemble
Wang, a Quanzhou native and former member of Han Tang Yuefu, established her own company in 2002 to pursue a different vision. Her productions are not without theatrical elements, for as she admitted — with regret — this is the only way nanguan can survive as a performance art in the modern world.
Speaking of the art of nanguan singing, Wang said “the performer should not respond to any of the emotions expressed in the lyrics. Everything is expressed through tone, timbre, and other aspects of musical expression. Every hint of theatricality should be banished. In nanguan, we talk about going to ‘hear’ a show, not to ‘see’ a show. Many people at a nanguan performance may even sit there with their eyes closed, their bodies moving trancelike with the music.”
The stage effects and narrative links in Wang’s shows are intended to provide a doorway into the music.
Photo Courtesy of Xinxin Nanguan Ensemble
“We try to create a meditative atmosphere through our stage settings. In some respects, you might almost say it adds to a performance. It sets the mood for the audience; the visual elements aim to sooth and calm their emotions before the music begins. If they had to get straight into the music, for modern audiences, this would be very difficult,” Wang said.
Wang’s main interests are in fusing nanguan with classic Chinese poetry, adding to the music’s already heavily literary associations, especially with the great romantic tales of Chinese literature (which almost invariably end in tragedy). She is also interested in exploring musical possibilities in combination with other instruments. In the case of her current tour, she has joined together with guqin (古琴) master Huang Chin-hsin (黃勤心). The combination of nanguan music and guqin is a radical departure from tradition, though perhaps not particularly obvious to outsiders.
Wang sees herself very much as an innovator, and sees plenty of potential for innovation from within the Chinese tradition, a refreshing change from the monotonous refrain about East-West fusion that dominates Taiwan’s arts establishment and seems to be the key to government funding.
Still, Wang has not completely escaped the need to conform to contemporary cultural dogma, and has ventured into collaborations with multimedia. As a professional company, the demand for visual stimulation is ineluctable. Costumes, projected backgrounds, stage sets and narrative links have all been included in some of Wang’s shows. “What people don’t always understand is that things that seem simple, such as a group of musicians playing music in a bare performance space, takes years of dedication and also costs money,” she said.
Although Wang has proved reasonably successful in accessing the limited government funds and somewhat more generous corporate sponsorship available, there is a sense of regret that nanguan needs to become such a circus. Wang has established monthly small venue performances at her studio and at the Taipei’s Dadaocheng Theater (大稻埕戲苑), where her stripped down style of nanguan is given a regular airing.
Wang’s unwavering focus on the more abstruse appeal of music over showy oriental exoticism has kept the Xinxin Nanguan Ensemble small, but it has won considerable respect from curators of international arts festivals, particularly in Europe. On her current tour, Wang will speak at the Sorbonne in Paris (Sept. 14) and at the Maison des Cultures du Monde (Sept. 15) about preserving cultural traditions in a contemporary context, and perform at the Orient Museum in Lisbon (Sept. 17), the Musee Guimet in Paris(Sept. 25) and the French Senate House in Paris (Sept. 26).
A few weeks ago I found myself at a Family Mart talking with the morning shift worker there, who has become my coffee guy. Both of us were in a funk over the “unseasonable” warm weather, a state of mind known as “solastalgia” — distress produced by environmental change. In fact, the weather was not that out of the ordinary in boiling Central Taiwan, and likely cooler than the temperatures we will experience in the near-future. According to the Taiwan Adaptation Platform, between 1957 and 2006, summer lengthened by 27.8 days, while winter shrunk by 29.7 days. Winter is not
Taiwan’s post-World War II architecture, “practical, cheap and temporary,” not to mention “rather forgettable.” This was a characterization recently given by Taiwan-based historian John Ross on his Formosa Files podcast. Yet the 1960s and 1970s were, in fact, the period of Taiwan’s foundational building boom, which, to a great extent, defined the look of Taiwan’s cities, determining the way denizens live today. During this period, functionalist concrete blocks and Chinese nostalgia gave way to new interpretations of modernism, large planned communities and high-rise skyscrapers. It is currently the subject of a new exhibition at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Modern
March 25 to March 31 A 56-year-old Wu Li Yu-ke (吳李玉哥) was straightening out her artist son’s piles of drawings when she inadvertently flipped one over, revealing the blank backside of the paper. Absent-mindedly, she picked up a pencil and recalled how she used to sketch embroidery designs for her clothing business. Without clients and budget or labor constraints to worry about, Wu Li drew freely whatever image came to her mind. With much more free time now that her son had found a job, she found herself missing her home village in China, where she
In recent years, Slovakia has been seen as a highly democratic and Western-oriented Central European country. This image was reinforced by the election of the country’s first female president in 2019, efforts to provide extensive assistance to Ukraine and the strengthening of relations with Taiwan, all of which strengthened Slovakia’s position within the European Union. However, the latest developments in the country suggest that the situation is changing rapidly. As such, the presidential elections to be held on March 23 will be an indicator of whether Slovakia remains in the Western sphere of influence or moves eastward, notably towards Russia and