10-08-2007

Show Your Own Beauty and Share the Beauty:

Inspiration from the Cross-Cultural Appreciation

They are different countries, ethnic groups and music and arts, but they set each other off wonderfully on the same stage!

At the 7th China International Folk Art Festival, the music and arts from different countries and ethnic groups were indeed quite different from each other, and each program represented their unique cultural features and musical systems. Temperament, tone, rhythm, melody, style, type, instruments, bands, timbre, singing, performing style, music function---these special marks constantly show the audience the soul of a nation. The playing of drum presented the philosophy and thinking of Indian people; the shift of true voice and falsetto conveyed the grandeur of Alps Mountains; a quartet expressed the peace and tranquility of Swiss rural life……however, the more different they were, the more shock they brought to our heart. This feeling is just like taking an international express which led us to a real cultural trip. As for these differences, the value of “music and cultural relativism” has been increasingly recognized by the academic circles and the society; especially in recent years there emerged a well-known saying---“music is culture”, which has been comprehended as the footnote of the “theory of relativity” and let every nation’s music stand on the same platform. China International Folk Art Festival just opened such a window for us and therefore showed us a profound world of meaning. When we connected together the music and cultures of all the countries and let them collide and blend with each other in our eyes and heart, surprisingly, we found that they did not exist in isolation or irrelevantly; although they were still in different languages and cultures, at such a given time and space, they presented the deep compatibility of theme with thinking.

This compatibility should definitely evoke our more rational introspection: culture at all times is a dynamic, open and constantly changing system, and its development and expansion could never be separated from the exchange, communication and transmission with the other cultures. For every nation, its existing culture includes the elements of identity and diversity, and it is in the process of selecting, absorbing and assimilating other cultures’ beneficial elements so as to make them its own elements. Taking a sweeping view of the history, such examples could be found everywhere: Shamisen, originally the three strings of China, was spread to Ryukyu at the beginning of Ming Dynasty, then from Ryukyu to Japan, and gradually formed the Shamisen music that took Shamisen as its main part; the three strings of China absorbed the system of Persian musical instruments and becomes today’s form through innovation, and the instruments of this kind were even dated back to Egypt by some Japanese scholars; the harp was not a Burma musical instrument, it was originated from ancient Egypt and spread to Burma via such areas as Arab and Iran, but in other places this instrument has disappeared and only in Burma could it be preserved and get developed. It is a miracle and a living fossil of ancient instruments; European instruments such as violin, mandolin, clarinet, saxophone and guitar underwent great changes after they were brought into India; although their shapes are the same as the original, the meaning they express, the techniques and the styles they employ have been completely assimilated in India……

All facts prove that the idea that sticks to the closed-door policy for fear of globalization is groundless and could not be fulfilled. In other words, the world cultures are actually an interactive integrity, which requires that our ways of behavior and thinking get rid of the one-or-the-other fighting mode and work for the win-win results. Perhaps, facing the colorful canvas of the world cultures, we should climb up to a higher level to enjoy the full view and obtain a new perspective, because only from this perspective could we transcend the narrow limits and widen our knowledge.

To this point, it reminds me of view of Fei Xiaotong on the development of culture in the future---“everyone shows their beauty and appreciates each other’s beauty, they share the beauty and the world would become a harmonious society”, which is just the profound inspiration that this cross-cultural appreciation has brought to us!