The Hua Family Shawm Band

• country:
  China
• style(s):
  Chinese
• label:
  Pan Records
• type:
  Band
• instrumentation:
  instrumental
• artist submitted by:
  Earth Beat Entertainment

The Hua family shawm band

Yangjiabu village, Yanggao county, Datong, Shanxi province, China


Welcome to the ear-splitting sounds of north Chinese village music, with the amazing Hua family shawm-and-percussion band from the far north of Shanxi province in north China a genuine hereditary professional peasant tradition, evoking Coltrane and Papasov

Traditionally, shawm-band musicians (here called gujiang, drum artisans, rather than the more common chuigushou, blowers-and-drummers) are virtual outcasts. Until recently they were often blind, and many smoked opium. They still perform mainly for funerals and temple fairs in the countryside within a radius of their home village, alternating with the religious ritual of yinyang lay Daoists.

Traditions are male, and largely familial; the musicians are semi-professional. This six-piece band, from Yangjiabu village in Yanggao county on the plain just below the Great Wall which divides the Han Chinese from Inner Mongolia, is led by master-musicians Hua Yinshan (shawm) and his older brother Hua Jinshan (drum), who learnt by playing in their father's band during the 1950s, relatively unaffected by political campaigns. Hua Yun and Hua Pu are from the next generation, learning just after the Cultural Revolution; talented young Li Bo is Hua Yinshan's grandson, and Xie Jian has been a disciple of Hua Yinshan for five years. They are all versatile on melodic and percussion instruments, and take turns on the shawm in village ceremonials.

The Chinese shawm (the official Chinese term suona being little used, here the local term is weirwa) has a hardwood body with seven finger-holes and one thumb-hole, a flared metal bell and pirouette, and a small reed enclosed in the mouth. Though shawms may have been played in Central Asia (whence the Chinese name suona derives) since early medieval times, they only become common among the Han Chinese since the Ming dynasty, around the 15th century, having supposedly been introduced via the armies. Since then the shawm-and-percussion band has been the most ubiquitous form of instrumental music throughout China, if the least known abroad. The common line-up is two shawms with a percussion section of drum, small cymbals, and gong.

Perhaps influenced partly by the musicians' traditional low status, we may tend to overlook the music of the lowly shawm bands in China without