Chai Found Revisited

We learned of this year's Chai Found Music Workshop at USF from a local monthly magazine catering to the local Asian community, The Asia Trend Magazine. Since we were nicely serenaded by the same group a year ago (having made the trip from South Tampa then), we filled the event on our working calendar and waited for the day to arrive. And it did, on Tuesday. This time it was a short drive from our home just across USF, and the party, augmented by one, CE (a pleasant surprise indeed).

Before the evening, I got caught in a traffic snarl, the gridlock along the Interstate precipitated by the evening downpour. I was debating whether to take the local road but decided to stick to my usual route. But I would not be so sure the next time around when it pours.

Anyway, I still had time for dinner, a home-cooked one, and arrived at the venue, Music Recital Hall in USF, with some minutes to spare. I actually spent about 15 minutes before that searching for the location on the Internet because the USF campus map that I have does not indicate the venue; perhaps the map only shows buildings and this Music Recital Hall is a facility in one of the buildings.

I remember last year it was held at the Fine Arts Building but could not recall whether the theater that we were in was called the Music Recital Hall. Googling it only yielded the USF address along Fowler. I told wify that we just had to try our luck at the same place and hope for the best. Then drilling deeper while Internet sleuthing, I found a reference to a room, FAH101, FAH being the acronym for Fines Arts. So, it is the same place as last year. Wonder why the organizer did not bother to put FAH101 in parentheses after the venue, which would have saved me some anxious moments.

I brought my pocket-sized camera along, but heeded the answer from the lady in the ticket booth when I sought confirmation that there was to be no photography . It was a nearly packed house, and the same troupe as last year marched on to the stage, all six of them, resplendent in traditional Chinese garb. Each played on one different traditional Chinese instrument: erhu (spike fiddle), dizi (bamboo flutes), pipa (Chinese lute), yangqin (hammered dulcimer), guzheng (zither), except for one lady who played two: daruan (bass banjo) and liugin (piccolo lute).

The group consists of two gentlemen and four ladies, shown here in a picture scanned from the program book. The man on the right is Mr. Huang Chen-Ming, the director who plays the erhu with gay abandon. And Mr. Wu Chung-Hsien, the flute player, comes equipped with a bagful of flutes by his side on stage. The lady sitting on the left is Ms. Liang Yen-Ping on double duty with the Daruan (shown here) and liuqin. The lady next to her is Ms. Lin Hui-Kuan, who plays the pipa. The two ladies standing from left are Ms. Lin I-Hsien, holding the guzheng, easily the largest piece of the instrument, and Ms. Lee Shu-Fen, her hands resting on the yangqin.

Themed A Merger of Tradition and Modernism, two of the ten performances also featured a mix with western instruments, a bass clarinet paired with liuqin, and another featuring a family of percussion instruments: drums, cymbal, and vibraphone (I actually looked this up after the fact) with pipa. These two “merged” compositions are the works of USF Music faculties. I can only describe them to be bold attempts that sounded contrived, lacking harmony, to my untrained ears.

If you click on the image, you would be able to see the two
merged" compositions, being the last two before the intermission. I think it's easy to tell which one refers to the earthquake-inspired composition as described next.

Perhaps it is understandable, I mean the apparent lack of harmony, for the second composition, which according to the preamble given by the faculty member concerned, was to capture the chaotic moment, shattered peace, and the subsequent reconstruction effort in the aftermath of the 1999 earthquake in Taiwan. The pipa rendition certainly played to the gallery, emitting discordant notes of urgency and pending disaster, reminiscent of similar moments of music accompaniment in Chinese movies portending and symbolizing looming danger. But the percussionist deserves credit too for his spontaneous display of juggling different sticks and striking different surfaces seemingly at random to the extent that papers (his music score notes actually) were sent airborne. I'm sure some in the audience must have found it hard to suppress a chuckle or two in what was supposed to be a serious music appreciation session.

The remaining eight performances were by the troupe themselves, comprising Taiwanese folk songs and sizhu (literally silk and bamboo) music. I have to admit that they are all beyond my repertoire of Chinese music, which is admittedly a rather narrow one. Somehow it's that much harder to be enthused by music that one is unfamiliar with. Put in others words, one needs to grow into a song by listening to it a couple of times. Then immersion will truly be the case.

The highlight of the event, to me, was the encore performance, which came after the audience were up on their feet accompanied by thunderous applause. Why? Because I know the song. It's an oldie that I have heard numerous times growing up. My English translation of the name of the Chinese song is The Night Brings the Fragrance, but it is really a name of a flower that emits scent at night.

That was our second attendance at the Chai Found Music Workshop, which was every bit as enjoyable as the first one, our non-familiarity with the music of the night notwithstanding. And we await the opportunity for a three-peat come next year.
Since I was mindful of the dispensation against photography, I did the next best thing: getting one from the website of Chai Found Music Workshop, surely of much better quality than my amaterish work would have been should it be the case.

Chai Found Music Workshop

I enjoy listening to music, and have a particularly liking for instrumentals. My early favorites were the Shadows, who provided music accompaniment to many a Cliff Richard song, and the Ventures. Later on I caught on to symphony music performed by the likes of Mantovani and James Last. Then I migrated to the more contemporary music of Richard Clayderman and Kenny G. But I’ve never cultivated a ear for classical music and the most I did was to hum along to the tune of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.

My liking for Chinese music started actually earlier. Back then my favorite group was the Stylers from Singapore who has a wide range of repertoire: from traditional to popular tunes, coupled with some English hits in between. Through the years I have also collected tens of CDs on Chinese traditional music, some solo performances based on yangqin (hammered dulcimer), erhu (spike fiddle), pipa (Chinese lute), and guzheng (zither) [ I never knew the English terms for these Chinese music instruments until last night] and others, chamber music.

Also, I prefer the warm comfort of home to listen to audio CDs and have almost never attended a live performance of instrumental music. Of course those trips to DisneyWorld and Splendid China where live performance is part of the admission deal do not count.

So last weekend I came to know about a performance by a Chinese music group at USF. That was followed by announcements in this week’s newspaper where we learned that it was going to be an instrument group from Taiwan, Chai Found Music Workshop.

At first we thought Chai Found is short for Chai Foundation since Chai is a popular Chinese last name. It was when we were at the venue, the Music Recital Hall at USF, and read the program sheet (partly shown above) last night that we realized they are actually phonetic translations of two Chinese words that have nothing to do with a typical Chinese last name nor foundation.

It was a six-person performance divided into two halves of five performances each separated by a 10-minute intermission.

Of the ten, I’ve only heard of one of them (Black clouds in the Sky) before last night. Two were composed by USF faculty. The audience was varied, about half comprising student-age patrons (a good guess would be USF students, seeing that the admission only cost $4/= a head for students). I would say close to half (my wife estimated the total turnout to be more than a hundred) were non-Asians as far as I can tell, which perhaps says quite a lot about the appeal of Chinese music, or maybe just any good music regardless of the ethnic qualifier.

That precisely fulfilled the aim of the Chai Foundation Music Workshop, it being “to perform and promote Chinese Music within and beyond the Chinese part of the world". In that regard, the group has quite a credential, having “played numerous concerts of Contemporary Music at festivals in the US, Europe and Asia. [The phrases in quotation marks are taken verbatim from the Program sheet.]

The spontaneous applause after each performance bore testimony to the fine performance by the group of music talents, each handling a different instrument that in combination produced a well-orchestrated ensemble of sound and melody.

However, from my personal perspective, I did not seem to be able to be “in tune” with most of the performances, primarily because I don’t know the tunes. I’m one who needs to know the tune and be able to hum along before I can appreciate the performance. So “falling in love at first listening” does not apply to me as far as music goes.

Frankly, a couple of the performances sounded like discrete notes strung haphazardly to my untrained ear. It just goes to show that music appreciation, of the serious kind as opposed to the popular genre, does require some level of understanding of the fundamentals of music on the part of the listener to enjoy the concord rather than be distracted by the apparent discord.

Fortunately, it was a live music performance, which afforded the opportunity for visual appreciation of the total immersion by the performers, each with his/her own manifestation of blending in body and soul with the music: eyes half-closed, head shaking in unison, hand motion, foot tapping, etc.

For me, seeing these performers so absorbed, seemingly lost, in delivering the maestro-like rendition of the auditory delight made last night a night well-spent.