The Shaanxi Qinpai-Erhu tradition.: Re-invention and re-invigoration of a folk tradition

This paper outlines the main distinguishing features of the Qinpai school of erhu playing of the Chinese province of Shaanxi, shows how this style of erhu playing arose as a response to a particular set of political, musical and social conditions as generated in post-1949 Communist China and discusses how these conditions and the music they have produced are related to a process of 'globalisation' or 'Westernisation'; in other words: to what extent is the Qinpai erhu music intrinsically native, that is the music of the Chinese Province of Shaanxi, and to what extent is it a product of outside influences. The author is himself a member of the Qinpai erhu school and has spent four years at the Xian Music College of Xian in Shaanxi Province as an erhu pupil of Jin Wei, the leading exponent of the Qinpai school of erhu playing.