San Francisco Classical Voice

Is there Chinese music in the San Francisco Bay Area? Believe it or not, Chinese people, wherever they are, love their music. This is not to say that most of them will pay big bucks to sit still for hours in a concert hall or opera house. Mostly, whether singing opera or playing instruments, Chinese people like to play music among friends and kindred spirits in the relative privacy of homes, one-room clubs, or a borrowed community room. Technical excellence is not required; willingness to participate is prized. At first sight, no one appears to be paying attention, what with mahjong tiles clattering in the next (or same) room, refreshments being passed back and forth, children prancing about. Nevertheless, a performance will always be received with a round of encouraging applause. Despite appearances of inattentiveness, a few aficionados will have a critical ear cocked and offer some pointed criticisms discreetly in some corner. Worse though, some will lambaste a bad performance behind a performer's back.

The great thing about this situation is that no one needs to feel self-conscious and everyone has a good time, except the professional and semi-professional musicians! The composer Lou Harrison said that if he wanted to play in the key of D he had to go to one club; another club plays only in the key of F! This is because some fixed-pitch instruments, such as bamboo flutes and oboes with natural bore, are not tunable to standard concert pitch, and so the string players must adjust to them. I too have been urged, even forced, to play my own slightly off-pitch transverse flute with another which is off-pitch from mine. My ears hurt, but no one else seemed to mind.

While we Chinese like to play for pleasure, we (but not I) are less interested in listening to professionals play. Perhaps this is a carry-over from pre-modern prejudices against professional musicians, who as a group are considered declassé. One consequence of this prejudice is the reluctance to spend money advertising. For example, one of the major Kun opera troupes, the Northern Kunju Theatre from Beijing, is performing on Sunday, January 16 (2:30 & 7:30 p.m. with Chinese and English subtitles), and at the San Francisco Palace of Fine Arts and on Monday, January 17 at Foothill College's Smithwick Theatre (at 7:30 p.m.). But outside of Chinese language press, there is no publicity in the English language press. Only readers of the half-dozen Chinese newspapers would know about this. But now, dear readers, you know.

The second consequence of the prejudice is a long time tradition of amateur music groups, which sometimes rival professional troupes. The Bay Area is host to the second largest Chinese population in North America, and San Francisco's Chinatown houses a dozen Cantonese opera clubs and instrumental ensembles hidden in single upstairs rooms or basement storerooms. No one would know such clubs exist unless one read the small wooden signs in Chinese. After work hours and on weekends, players gather to play music and mahjong. Chinese New Years this year comes on Saturday, February 5, and the celebration begins on February 3 and continues through February 19. Chinese music wafts from windows and doors into Chinatown streets as various family associations celebrate the coming Year of the Dragon.

In suburbs, where most of the immigrant elite live, there are numerous formal and informal Peking opera groups that meet regularly to sing, practice, eat and socialize (including one Kun opera group at this writer's house.) Every year each Peking opera group will also put on one or two public performances, usually at Gunn High School auditorium in Palo Alto, the San Francisco State University auditorium, or the Senior Center in San Mateo. These amount to four or five performances a year. One or twice a year, or perhaps performances of three, professional Cantonese or Peking opera troupes will be sponsored in the Bay area. Attendance at such performances is adequate but far from ideal, and there are almost no non-Chinese or American-born Chinese to be found in the audience.

There are several reasons for this situation:the first is the lack of publicity (for the economic reason mentioned above); second, the lack of meaningful explanations. Sometimes the program notes, oral or written are embarrassingly simplistic, or sometimes, plain wrong. The Chinese assume that anyone who comes to a performance knows all about it anyway, so there is no need for explanation. Third is a lack of bilingual and bi-musical consultants. Translating Chinese musical concepts and program notes into English equivalences is not easy. Translating opera is especially difficult. Chinese opera is sung literature, and even some who read Chinese very well may not understand the lyrics, sung in dialect. Conveying the literary sentiment succinctly is a delicate task. Alas, there are too few who can render it as Cyril Birch has done for the Peony Pavilion.

The San Francisco Bay Area Chinese have some catching up to do. In Los Angeles, where Peter Sellars first made the acquaintance of Mme. Hua Wenyi, and in New York City, Chinese opera groups and instrumental ensembles have made their voices heard in the press, including the New York Times arts section and the New Yorker's Current Events columns. With some support from grants, they have also helped the performances succeed by offering public lectures, and by using English and Chinese supertitles, or more properly, "sidetitles."

Happy Year of the Dragon!

(Lindy Li Mark, Ph.D., is professor of anthropology and department chair at California State University, Hayward. She also studied ethnomusicology for her M.A. degree.)

©1999 Lindy Li Mark, all rights reserved