The Disappearing Shamans research kicks off in Xinjiang
December 23, 2008-January 25, 2009
The group of researchers and artists are finally back from Xinjiang, with pictures and a film which they are editing now. In Xinjiang, almost all unofficial religious activities are forbidden, which makes it very hard to record authentic religious rituals. However, the participants involved managed to film and record some dervish and buwi (a female religious singer and dancer), which blends Islamic and Shamanistic elements. These rites made for excellent materials for a film and CD recording. To protect the identity of the performers the pictures attached won’t show their faces.
Introduction
The Disappearing Shamans is a project to document the disappearing traditions of Shamanism in different regions of China and to question their meanings from contemporary perspectives by a group of artists in the fields of visual arts and music. The project will help us to not only know more about our ancestors’ religion, arts and philosophy, but also ponder the relationship between Man and Nature, as well as Man’s ultimate destination.
The project will be divided into three phases, in regard to the Shamanistic traditions in the Northwest, Northeast, and Southwest areas of China respectively.
The first phase has already begun! The participating researchers and artists set off for Xinjiang on Decmber 26. The first part of the project will last a month.
The team will consist of four people: creator/researcher Mu Qian; filmmaker Yang Wenliang; visual artist Li Peifeng; musician/recording engineer Song Yuzhe. In the first phase, the team will spend 20 days driving all over Xinjiang to interview and document Shamans and Shamanistic rituals of the Uygur, Kazakh, Tajik and Xibe peoples. The team members will return to their cities of residence to create works with the materials they collected on the trip.
Participants
Mu Qian
Mu Qian is a senior culture and arts writer. His work include articles about the lives of Catholic Tibetans (China Journalism Awards, Second Prize, August 2007), and Chinese Muslims’ Haj pilgrimage (China Journalism Awards, Third Prize, July 2008).
He is the co-founder and Director of Pentatonic Workshop, an independent NPO working in the areas of art, culture, education and community. Accomplishments include producing over 10 programs of folk music and dance, such as Kazakh Diaspora Tales and Soul of Dolan. He received his masters in arts and ethnomusicology from the China Conservatory of Music in 2005 in Beijing.
Yang Wenliang
Yang is an independent documentary filmmaker with a focus on endangered folk cultures. The artists has traveled extensively in China’s remote areas and shot over 1,000 hours of documentary films about folklore, religion, ethnic culture and traditional music, including recent films about Shamanistic rituals in Shaanxi and Sufi Muslims’ rituals in Xinjiang. Films by Yang about Northern Shaanxi province singer Wang Xiangrong and a private art school in Inner Mongolia were aired on the CCTV. Yang is the co-founder of Folksongs, one of the most influential websites about Chinese folk music with over 1,500 registered members. Special curator of China Record Company. Works include serial CDs of masters of traditional Chinese folk songs like Wang Xiangrong, Zhu Zhonglu and Zhagdasrong.
Li Peifeng
Li Peifeng is a visual artist, Director of Fairytale, the documentary film part of Ai Weiwei’s work of the same title, which was featured at the Documenta 12 in Kassel, Germany, 2007. Video works include Ink·Smoke (in collaboration with Taiwan artist Cindy Ng Sio Ieng), Farm to Factory (in collaboration with Chen Mu) and Economic Growth (in collaboration with Xue Liming).
Since 2004, Li has been focusing on the humanistic and social conditions of Northwestern China, where he is originally from. His latest works, Silver Age (about a town in Gansu Province called Baiyin or “Silver”) and Qinqiang Opera (about the destiny of a traditional opera popular in Northwestern China), will participate the Yamagata International Documentary film Festival in Japan and Cinéma du Réel International Film Festival in France in 2009.
Song Yuzhe
From 1998 to 2002, Song was the soul person of the Wood Pushing Melon, one of China’s most acclaimed alternative rock bands. Works include CD albums Wood Pushing Melon and Ma Music. After Wood Pushing Melon disbanded in 2002, Song has been making two series of musical works: Huang Qiang, theme albums of creative editing and mixing of the music and ambient sounds that he recorded in China’s minority areas (for example, The Mandala’s Mandolin, an album of mandolin music in Tibet); and Zou Ban, his own rendition of traditional folk ballads with new arrangements.
At the same time, Song was collaborating with avant-garde folk musician Xiao He to compose Two Big Men, a work that blends folk music and theater. As a recording engineer and sound designer, his works include The Music of China’s Kazakhs and Kyrgyz (an audio documentary commissioned by EuroasiaNet.org), Wen Pulin’s films Looking for Wogyan Beylung and Shoba Lhamo, Zhang Yuedong’s Midafternoon Barks, TV5 France’s Nanjing, and Olivier Meys’s quatre saisons sous la terre.