He Yi'an's ninety musical years: Biography, history, and experience in Southwest China

He Yi'an (1908-93) was a major figure in the Dongjing music tradition of Lijiang, a remote, mountainous county in southwest China's Yunnan Province. This amateur ritual music tradition flourished before the Communist victory of 1949, continuing for several years thereafter as a purely secular instrumental genre. Revived in its secular format in the late 1970s, since 1988 the music has been spectacularly popular in concerts to entertain foreign and domestic tourists. He Yi'an was a leading light in the maintenance and transmission of the ritual music tradition before 1949, and a prominent player in its commercial transformation forty years later. His negotiation of the complex and conflicting meanings attached to these different contexts speaks to an intricate intertwining of personal experience with social history; and his life story illustrates the importance of outstanding individuals in the maintenance and development of regional music traditions.