守望者们的情怀——“屈家营音乐会”纪事

The Watchkeepers Do Care: A Story of the Qujiaying Music Society

欣闻《古乐奇葩》将付梓出版，不胜感慨! 遥想当初，1986年3月28日，春光灿烂，百鸟声喧，我与音乐研究所多位同仁共乘一辆状况颇差的面包车，一路穿越国道、省道、县道、村道，颠颠簸簸，最终进入固安屈家营村，对“音乐会”作首次采访。在我们翻检“民国三十七年”的手抄谱、观赏古老的玉制管、双架云锣、传统笙，特别是聆听农民乐手们奏出大曲《普安咒》的一刹那，惊奇、震撼、兴奋之情充溢于每个人的心间。

It has been a great pleasure and relief as well to learn that the book The Miraculous Treasures of Ancient Music will be published soon This reminds me of the date of March 28, 1986, a sunny day when my colleagues from the Music Research Institute and I traveled on a shabby minibus through the national highway, provincial and county roads and finally village path, and arrived at last at the Village of Qujiaying in Gu'an County, for out first visit to the Qujiaying Music Society. We were so shocked, amazed and even delighted to check the manuscripts from the year of 1948, appreciate the age-old jade Guanzi (vertical flute), Yunluo (Chinese gong chimes) and traditional Sheng (reed pipe instrument), and in particular, listening to the music of ″ Pu'an Mantra″ performed by local peasant musicians. Surprisingly enough, the hundreds-year-old folk music has been preserved in such perfect condition by this peasants' music society of an ordinary village that is not so secluded to the outside world. Delightfully, the national treasures remained intact with the folk music still living among the local people. Inspired by the exciting findings, I wrote a poem many years later with footnotes as such: ″in 1985, the Music Society of Qujiaying Village in Lirangdian Township, Gu'an County revived. However, many villagers still had the lingering fear that the music would be defined as vulgar and decadent. Because of this, the village head Mr. Lin Zhongshu paid visits to Beijing for several times and consulted many institutions but with no results. Finally, he came to the China Music Research Institute at Zhuojiazhuang, Beijing and after I heard his detailed report, I asked him to feel relieved and then in the second year, I, together with nine colleagues of the Institute, made an inspection visit to the village. A dozen years or so later, the Qujiaying Village Music Society made a big name in and outside the country and received numerous reputations and honours. This has triggered the great project of investigating over a hundred music societies in the Central Hebei Plain with many of my colleagues involved. Since our first visit to Qujiaying Village, historic changes have taken place in the music life and academic research of China. However, the Qujiaying Music Society remains as a long-standing cultural phenomenon with liveliness, peculiarity and modernity. This phenomenon, which I'd like to call the Qujiaying Music Society Phenomenon of the 1980's, is of great influence to the change of our values for folk music, the expansion of our academic vision and the exploration into new research domains. The first implication of the so-called Qujiaying Music Society Phenomenon is that the peasants, in order to protect themselves, very much expect more people to understand their music and to appraise its values. Because of this, a concert of their music was organized in Beijing on May 26, 1987, and it turned out to be a big sensation. Later after the concert, I remarked in a critical essay that ″when for the first time this kind of ancient and exquisite music entered the modern concert hall, and when the audience of various nationalities and professions expressed their appreciation and understanding of the music with loud applause, I, as one of the listeners, was suddenly aware of the strong argument that genuine art, with its unique beauty and inspiring sense of history, can always arouse resonance of some kind, and can bridge over the gap between the tradition and modernity, and between the East and the West.″ The second implication of the Qujiaying Music Society Phenomenon is that it has aroused the self-consciouseness of more music societies of the same kind to protect themselves with the help of mass media for promotion and publicity.