A new musical blend has developed in New York and it is not the kind you can get for twenty dollars at an in the West Village. For the many a large number of Chinese immigrants attempting to stay afloat in a new world and for those westerners who have always wished to understand the Chinese but have shied away for lack of a means in–for anyone who has wondered where the 2 societies join, the solution may lie maybe not in words, but in music.
Lisa Li is a graduate of the Chinese Conservatory of China and a grasp of the pipa (Chinese lute). She’s created and conducted across Europe, Asia and the United States, and her playing was highlighted in the Academy Award-winning movie The Past Emperor. Today, as one of the cause composers for New Tang Dynasty Television’s Chinese New Year Spectacular, a great scale performance of traditional Chinese dance and song, Lisa has established what she feels to become a new kind of sound–based on ancient Chinese folk and religious music, but going beyond either of these.
Because in the view of the Chinese ancients, each subject on earth has life, music is alive. In fact, in Chinese, when we refer to a note we call it a note, she describes. But in accordance with Lisa, it must certanly be composed and played from the heartsometimes in ways that sound foreign to the western ear.
However the songs are definately not random. Lisas music, like all typically composed Chinese music, is dependant on a number of pentatonic (5-note) scales. This method has its roots in Taoism, which teaches that all matter is formed from the five basic elements of metal, earth, wood, fire, and water. It shows that in order for a being to be healthy, it will need to have all of these factors in balance. Therefore, from the Chinese perception, a song or piece of music must also contain an uniquely constructed balance of the things. There’s also eight note scales that relate to the Taoist image called the bagua, which is most commonly known in the West as part of the practice of fengshui, or geomancy.
An example of this is the part she wrote for the party A Dunhuang Dream. The dance is placed against a background of thousands of caves as they are in the Moago Grottoes in the Dunhuang area of China carved into the sides of cliffs. Seated at the mouth of each cave is just a Buddhist or Taoist deity. It’s possible to hear from the orchestra pit the sounds of the erhu (Chinese violin) and guzhen (zither), since the dancers emerge, but they are quickly joined by the more identifiable resonance of cello, bass, oboe, and steel. The result strikes the ear as achingly otherworldly and yet also well common.
In fact, the particular ya yue used in the score is the identical to that found in the old pipa music published on scrolls that were discovered by archeologists in the actual Dunhuang caves years ago.
I feel very deeply that music is just a heavenly language, a language, Lisa says. It is able to uplift peoples hearts and minds. It’s advantageous to the heart.
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