A Report on the 2014 Chime Workshop “Storysinging and Storytelling in China”

Abstract

From Thursday, October 16, to Sunday, October 19, 2014, the Fondazione Giorgio Cini on the island of San Giorgio in Venice, Italy, was the venue for an international workshop on “Storysinging and Storytelling in China.” It was hosted by CHIME, the European Foundation for Chinese Music Research. Founded early in 1990 and based in Leiden, The Netherlands, CHIME has grown into an independent nonprofit platform for international scholars and students of Chinese ethnomusicology, sinology, and anthropology as well as for journalists, musicians, and teachers. The Venice workshop was jointly coordinated by Frank Kouwenhoven (CHIME) and Dr. Vibeke Bordahl (Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, Copenhagen), and was co-organized and sponsored by the “Istituto Interculturale di Studi Musicali Comparati” of the Fondazione Cini, the University of Roma La Sapienza (Dr. Giovanni Giuriati), the Department of Asian and North African Studies of the Universita Ca’Foscari Venezia (Dr. Nicoletta Pesaro), and the local Confucius Institute. For the occasion, CHIME brought together more than two dozen scholars and performers for an informalmeeting.All activities, including a number of special performances by invited storytellers and storysingers, took place inside the former monastery complex of FondazioneCini, with the exception of a free concertwith storytelling and storysinging performances at theUniversity’sAuditoriumSantaMargherita on Saturday evening. Papers were in English, performances in Chinese, and discussions in English and Chinese. The workshop was also designed to celebrate the lifelong achievements of the prominent scholar and pioneer sinologist in the study of Chinese oral and performing literature, Dr. Ve na Hrdlic kova, from the Czech Republic, who unfortunately was not able to attend the event because of ill health. The organizers also commemorated the inspiring research of Dr. Antoinet Schimmelpennick (1962–2012), co-founder of CHIME, on Chinese folk songs. The presentations addressed a great variety of Chinese performative practices. I list them below under six headings. Ming andQing storytelling and storysinging: Papers under this topic included “Wu Weiye and his ‘Long-poem on Two Masters from Chu’ (Chu liang sheng xing” 楚兩 生行)” (Rudiger Breuer, Ruhr-Universitat Bochum; the two “masters” are Liu Jingting 柳敬亭 and Su Kunsheng 蘇崑生), “Going Abroad in Verse: Hakka and Minnanese Narrative Ballads on Migration and Emigration (guofange 過番歌) of the Late-Imperial and Early-Republican Periods” (Wilt Idema, Harvard University), “Recital of The Precious Scroll of Incense Mountain in the Greater Suzhou Area” CHINOPERL: Journal of Chinese Oral and Performing Literature 34. 2 (December 2015): 166–168