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ACTA Meets with Bay Area Artists

An Apprenticeship in Traditional Chinese Music

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Between Two Worlds: An Apprenticeship in Green Hmong Funeral Music

 Amy Kitchener and Vungping Yang

Shong Keng Her and Boua Sou Her are brothers who came to the United States as Hmong refugees, as a result of U.S. Government policy and the CIA’s “Secret War” in Laos fought by Hmong soldiers during the Vietnam War. The Her brothers come from Xieng Khouang province in central Laos, and are Green Hmong. There are two dialects of Hmong language, White and Green, each group carrying distinctive cultural practices. Beginning in July 2004, the Her brothers began working as master artist and apprentice in the Alliance for California Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program in Green Hmong qeej (pronounced “gheng”) music – the sacred funeral repertoire played on bamboo-reeded mouth organ, a musical ancestor of the harmonica. The Green Hmong qeej funeral repertoire has relatively fewer practitioners in the U.S. than the White Hmong.

Shong Keng Her is known as a master qeej player in the Green Hmong communities of California, and is often called on to perform the sacred music during funerals from San Diego to Sacramento. Near the end of the intensive six-month apprenticeship period, Shong Keng Her suffered two strokes, which have left him unable to speak, or to perform during funerals. His apprentice, Boua Sou Her, still consults his brother and musical mentor about his playing, and they can communicate without words. During the precious several months of intensive learning before master Shong Keng’s stroke, he prepared his younger brother well, as evidenced by the fact that his apprentice is clearly ready to perform on his own at funerals.

There are four distinct musical cycles during the traditional three-day Green Hmong funeral – each lasting several hours, with the purpose of guiding the deceased’s spirit to the ancestral world. Boua Sou Her worked intensively several days per week over six months to learn the first cycle, or Tu siav (loosing breath) segment. On July 15, 2005, the apprentice invited ACTA staff to observe a funeral where he was asked to perform this cycle. Vungping Yang, a Hmong cultural consultant, and Amy Kitchener, ACTA Executive Director, attended.

Before a Hmong funeral begins, the relatives of the deceased dress the corpse in funeral attire that has been given by his children and extended family during his lifetime. The clothing plays a vital role in the transformation after death, since it is believed that relatives will recognize each other by the clothing they made and gave to each other during their lives on earth. The corpse is laid out on a table and relatives grieve close by during intervals between the qeej ceremonial music.

During the “loosing breath” qeej cycle which lasts between 5-6 hours, the qeej player leads the deceased’s spirit to the place of the ancestors. According to Vungping Yang, “the song is like an inventory of his life. The qeej player speaks directly to the spirit through his music.” The musical notes correspond to the tones of Hmong language to convey a literal meaning. Some of the phrases in the first cycle include questions, such as “Are you really dead?” and “Why did you die?” Then the qeej player tells the spirit he will guide him to help him find his ancestors. Once the player facilitates this connection, the first cycle is complete. The musician must mediate between the human world and the ancestor spirit world, and therefore requires a strong emotional and spiritual character.

Apprentice Boua Sou Her explained that for him, this mediation is an emotional experience because he was orphaned as a child, and each time he leads a spirit to the ancestral world, he comes in close proximity with his deceased parents, but he can not enter the realm to be reunited with them. He must return to the world of the living.

Vungping Yang explained that many qeej players do not want to learn or practice this first cycle, because there is a high personal spiritual risk involved in facilitating the journey between the two worlds. Becoming a funeral qeej player takes a high level of commitment, as well as the physical endurance to play many hours at a time over several days. Boua Sou Her shared that by the end of this cycle his teeth hurt from clenching the brass mouthpiece. Rather than financial gain, the qeej players command high respect by the community, and payment comes in the form of the choicest pieces of meat from the cows sacrificed in honor of the deceased. Apprentice Boua Sou Her is already in demand to play the “loosing breath” cycle at Green Hmong funerals, and has taken this primary role at four funerals to date.

The Alliance for California Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program is supported by the James Irvine Foundation, the San Francisco Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Visit ACTA’s website to learn more about ACTA’s Apprenticeship Program.

Read an article on ACTA’s website to learn more about Hmong funeral traditions.

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ACTA Meets with Bay Area Artists

On July 24, ACTA’s Board of Directors and staff had the opportunity to meet with several artists who had participated in the Apprenticeship Program, Traditional Arts Development Program and Folk and Traditional Art Mentorship Initiative. The board invited the guests to their San Francisco meeting as a way to connect with some of the artists in the Bay Area. ACTA’s board meets twice a year in different locations throughout California and tries to connect with the field by meeting with local partners, organizations, and artists.

Board member Chike Nwoffiah, ACTA’s Vice President of External Development, led a round table discussion with Charya Burt, Naomi Diouf,and Herminia Albarrán Romero, all former master artists in ACTA’s Apprenticeship Program and participants in other programs as well. The artists talked about their training and their experiences as traditional artists in California. They noted that working with ACTA had helped them connect with other artists and arts organizations and gain greater exposure for their work. Agreeing that traditional artist gatherings with performances for the public would be a useful way to network and introduce their work to new audiences, the artists made suggestions for future program development. The board and staff considered these suggestions for future programming in their strategic planning meeting.

At the end of the evening, the artists gave demonstrations of their work. Herminia Albarrán Romero, recent winner of the NEA Heritage Fellowship for her Mexican paper arts, showed slides of her altars and papel picado creations. Naomi Diouf’s daughter and apprentice, Kine Marcella demonstrated the Klakan, a puberty dance from the Kru people of Liberia. Charya But taught everyone how to perform some traditional hand positions and basic movements before she demonstrated a classical Cambodian dance piece.

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An Apprenticeship in Traditional Chinese Music

Mari Pongkhamsing, ACTA

Last month master musician Wang Wei and his apprentice Jason Jong completed a year of work together as participants in ACTA’s Apprenticeship Program. They met every week to study traditional Chinese percussion music. Jong, a fifth generation Chinese American had been interested in studying Chinese percussion for many years before he met Wei. He played Western Jazz percussion and Taiko and was interested in learning more about Chinese percussion but he couldn’t find anyone to teach him. Traditional Chinese percussion is not widely practiced in California. When he finally met Wang Wei, Jason Jong discovered a valuable resource, a teacher who could help him connect with his own cultural traditions.

As a teacher, Wang Wei emphasizes that musical techniques are interconnected with the Chinese belief system. Wei taught Jong how to direct his chi, or energy, to control the sound of the instrument. With each traditional warm-up exercise and piece that Wei introduced to Jong, he told a story to explain its meaning, always emphasizing the cultural context of the music. Wei remembers his own intense struggle to become a musician. As a child in China he practiced ten hours a day in order to attend one of the prestigious music conservatories. Now he shares his extensive technical training, enthusiasm, and energy with his students.

Both Jong and Wei are committed to preserving traditional Chinese music. Wei has spent the summer teaching music to youth at Hip Wah Culture Camp in Oakland. To culminate their year-long apprenticeship he and Jong performed a traditional percussion piece at Hip Wah’s public recital. Jong is also currently working with local youth as musical director of Jyung Ying, the Chinese folk percussion project of Chinatown Education Services in San Francisco. In addition to teaching at Hip Wah, Wang Wei is working on an educational CD with Door Dog Music productions, with partial funding from ACTA’s Traditional Arts Development Program. The CD will introduce listeners to traditional Chinese percussion instruments, offering information about each instrument’s origin and rhythm patterns. Wei also performs regularly with Melody of China, a San Francisco Chinese music ensemble, and he will be a featured solo performer in this month’s San Francisco World Music Festival.

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San Francisco Welcomes Māori Artists from New Zealand

At dawn on August 4, a large crowd gathered at San Francisco’s Aquatic Park to watch the ceremonial welcoming of members of the Toi Māori Aotearoa intertribal arts organization from New Zealand. In accordance with Māori tradition, the Toi Māori asked permission of the California native community to land a traditional waka (a 53-foot dugout canoe) at the San Francisco beach. A delegation of Northwestern California Indian groups, dressed in full ceremonial regalia, welcomed the Māori artists at the shore.

When the waka arrived eighteen Māori “warriors”, members of the Te Puia Kappa Haka group from Rotura, disembarked and performed a traditional song and dance. The Māori queen, Te Arikinui Dame Te Atairangikaahu, the spiritual figure of the Māori people of New Zealand, gave a cloak to Aaron Peskin, President of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, as a gift to the People of San Francisco. The delegation of California Indian groups, led by the Ohlone People (First Nations people of San Francisco), then performed dances to welcome the Māori.

This event marked the opening of a major exhibit of Māori art at San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. The exhibit features a collection of traditional and contemporary Māori cloaks, Ta Moko (body tattooing), sculpture and clay works, and jewelry. Artists from New Zealand will give demonstrations of Māori weaving, tattooing, and performing arts in the exhibit gallery and at nearby venues.

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