Music of China
Chinese guqin and Beijing opera, Japanese gagaku, shakuhachi and min'yō, Korean pansori and samul nori, Taiwanese gezaixi opera, nanguan chamber music and Bunun pasibutbut, Mongolian khöömei throat singing and morin khuur.
Sung and searched in Chinese (Traditional). The YouTube button above can run your search in that language.
A brief history
History
According to legends, the founder of music in Chinese mythology was Ling Lun who, at the request of the Yellow Emperor to create a system of music, made bamboo pipes tuned to the sounds of birds including the phoenix. A twelve-tone musical system was created based on the pitches of the bamboo pipes, the first of these pipes produced the 'yellow bell' (黃鐘) pitch, and a set of tuned bells were then created from the pipes.
Archaeological evidence indicates that music culture developed in China from a very early period. Excavations in Jiahu Village in Wuyang County, Henan found bone flutes dated to 9,000 years ago, and clay music instruments called Xun thought to be 7,000 years old have been found in the Hemudu sites in Zhejiang and Banpo in Xi'an.
Popular music
Modern changes
In the early 20th century after the end of Imperial China, there were major changes to traditional Chinese music as part of the New Culture Movement. Much of what Westerners and even Chinese now consider to be music in the traditional Chinese style can be dated to this period and is in fact less than 100 years old. The modernization of Chinese music involved the adoption of some aspects of Western forms and values, such as the use of Western conservatory system of teaching, and changes to the instruments and their tuning, the composition, the orchestration of music, the notation system and performance style. Some forms of Chinese music however remained traditional and are little changed.
Read the full article: Music of China Text under CC BY-SA 4.0
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