Music has played across China's vast landscape for all time, earthy strains of folk music that seem to come from the land itself. For a time modern life and its cacophony drowned out that sound, once so tightly woven into the fabric of everyday life. But when composer Tan Dun's folk music-laced score for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon won an Academy Award, Chinese folk music was thrust into the spotlight.

The result has been something of a revival of folk music in China, much of it inspired by Tan Dun's signature blending of Chinese folk tradition with avant-garde Western music. In fact, it is now the norm for Chinese folk music to be accompanied by a Western symphony orchestra or synthesized effects, so much so that "orchestral folk music" was established as a category in the recent Ninth National Music Composition Competition.

Not everyone thinks this development is a positive one. Last December in Shanghai, the top prize at the "TMSK Chinese Chamber Folk Music Composition Competition" went unawarded. It wasn't because the candidates weren't good enough, explained honorary president and jury chair Wu Zuqiang, who is with the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing. "We deliberately left the top prize vacant just to indicate that the development of China's folk music still has a long way to go."

Co-organized by the China Musicians' Association and the Shanghai TMSK Cultural Communication Company, the competition solicited over 180 original works from all over the country, with composers ranging from conservatory students to members of regional folk music orchestras.

But when it came to the finalists, an overwhelming 12 of the 16 were composition majors from either the Shanghai Conservatory of Music or the Central Conservatory of Music. Kudos to the conservatories, but when it transpired that the only professional composer was a Chicago-based pop music producer, the jury fairly bristled. "I had expected to see more professional composers submitting refreshing, innovative works," says jury member Yang Liqing, who is also president of the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. "Instead, we received mostly prepackaged works that were overcautious in their use of the rules of structures and styles, but failed to strike a chord with listeners."

But if the jury found the compositions too predictable, the audience in the half-empty hall found them too obtuse. Liu Jianyu, 28, paused for a moment after hearing each piece, then gave some perfunctory claps. Not exactly an enthusiastic response.

"Yes, these creations are different from the conventional image of jubilant, noisy folk music," says the real estate agent, who as a child studied the erhu (a traditional Chinese two-string bowed instrument). "But I can not fully understand what the music is about. Even some titles are obtuse," says Liu, frowning upon abstruse titles like "Wei Rui" ("Luxuriant") and "Shuo" ("Shining"), hardly convey any information about the composition's theme of style.

That's because some of the musicians, like Shanghai Traditional Music Orchestra flutist Liu Yi, are, in the grand tradition of artists everywhere, writing not for an audience, but for themselves.

"The function of music is not merely to entertain, but also to express a composer's understanding of life," says the 26-year-old, whose "Farewell, Shadow" won second prize.

"It's only natural that these innovations are difficult for some to understand at the beginning, but that is the way folk music develops," Liu adds, with all the condescension of a prizewinner.

Yang, the Shanghai Conservatory president, gently disagrees.

"It's admirable that these young composers, just starting out, are eager to develop new ideas," Yang notes. "But these ideas should be carried out in a more audience-friendly way. We are composing folk music which is meant to entertain the public -- not confuse them."

Well said. After all, it seems axiomatic that music from the people should be accessible to the people.

(Shanghai Daily January 17, 2004)