The Women of Quyi

The Women of Quyi Why has the female voice—as the resonant incarnation of the female body— inspired both fascination and ambivalence? Why were women restricted from performing on the Chinese public stage? How have female roles and voices been appropriated by men throughout much of the history of Chinese theatre? Why were the women of quyi—a community of Chinese female singers in Republican Tianjin—able to become successful, respected artists when other female singers and actors in competing performance traditions struggled for acceptance? Drawing substantially on original ethnographic fieldwork conducted in the 1980s and 1990s, Francesca R. Sborgi Lawson offers answers to these questions and demonstrates how the women of quyi successfully negotiated their sexuality and vocality in performance. Owing to their role as third-person narrators, the women of quyi bridged the gender gap, creat- ing an androgynous persona that de-emphasized their feminine appearance and, at the same time, allowed them to showcase their female voices on public stages—places that had been previously unwelcoming to female artists. This is a story about female storytellers who sang their way to respectability and social change in the early decades of the twentieth century by minimizing their bodies in order to allow their voices to be heard. Francesca R. Sborgi Lawson received an undergraduate degree in harp performance from Brigham Young University, USA, a Master’s degree in ethnomusicology from University of California, Los Angeles, and a Ph.D. in ethnomusicology from the University of Washington. She conducted research on the inter-relationships of language and music in the narrative arts of Tianjin, China as a Fulbright-Hays and National Academy of Sciences Research Fellow. She also worked as a President’s Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and at the University of California at Berkeley and taught courses in the Asian humanities and in gender-music relationships at Columbia University in New York City. She is currently the Humanities Professor of Ethnomusicology in the Department of Comparative Arts and Letters at Brigham Young University and the 2015 winner of the Jaap Kunst prize for the most significant article published in the field of ethnomusicology. Her first book, The Narrative Arts of Tianjin: Between Music and Language, was published by Ashgate in 2011 as part of the SOAS ethnomusicology series. SOAS Musicology Series Series Editor: Keith Howard, SOAS, University of London, UK The study of the world’s many and diverse music cultures has become an important part of the discipline of musicology. Often termed ‘ethnomusicology’, the resulting studies share the fundamental recognition that music is cherished by every society in the world. Like language, music is a universal means of individual and cultural expression. It is also infinitely varied. Music in any society has intrinsic value in its own right, and can tell us much about the culture in which it developed. The core of the SOAS Musicology Series comprises studies of different musics, analysed in the contexts of the socie- ties of which they are part, and exploring repertories, performance practice, musical instruments, and the roles and impacts of individual composers and performers. Studies which integrate music with dance, theatre or the visual arts are encouraged, and contextualised studies of music within the Western art canon are not excluded. Reflecting current ethnomusicological theory and practice, the editors recognize the value of interdisciplinary and collaborative research. Volumes may utilize methodologies developed in anthropology, sociology, linguistics and psychology to explore music; they may seek to create a dialogue between scholars and musicians; or they may primarily be concerned with the evalu- ation of historical documentation. Monographs that explore contemporary and popular musics, the effect of globalization on musical production, or the comparison of different music cultures are also welcomed. Recent titles in the series: Flamenco, Regionalism and Musical Heritage in Southern Spain Matthew Machin-Autenrieth Sounding the Dance, Moving the Music: Choreomusicological Perspectives on Maritime Southeast Asian Performing Arts Mohd Anis Md Nor and Kendra Stepputat Greek Rebetiko from a Psychocultural Perspective: Same Songs Changing Minds Daniel Koglin The Jews-Harp in Britain and Ireland Michael Wright Bulgarian Harmony: In Village, Wedding, and Choral Music of the Last Century Kalin S. Kirilov SamulNori: Korean Percussion for a Contemporary World Keith Howard The Women of Quyi Liminal Voices and Androgynous Bodies Francesca R. Sborgi Lawson First published 2017 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2017 Francesca R. Sborgi Lawson The right of Francesca R. Sborgi Lawson to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him/her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-1-138-23413-0 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-30787-9 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire Contents List of Figures vi List of Musical Examples vii Acknowledgements viii Note on the Text ix Prologue 1 Introduction 7 1 The Female Voice and Body Problem 19 2 Literary Voices: Metaphysical Heroines 46 3 Musical Voices: Balancing Text and Tune 71 4 Liminal Voices: Transferring Artistry from Master to Disciple 88 Conclusion: Masters of Liminal Space 107 Epilogue 113 Appendices 119 References 170 Index 181 List of Figures 1.1 Female narrator singing with ensemble 39 4.1 A subordinate position implies hidden power and a base from which to negotiate that power 90 4.2 Comic Routines typically feature a comedian (dougende) and a straight man (penggende) 92 4.3 In the yitouchen (heavy on one end) style, the dougende is seemingly superior to the penggende 92 4.4 In the zimugen (two sides of a snap) style, the dougende and penggende are equal 93 4.5 An yitouchen relationship often evolves into a zimugen relationship 94 List of Music Examples 3.1 Comparison of T-1 74 3.2 Comparison of vocal styles in T-3, T-5, T-7 74 3.3 Comparison of the tonic vs. the supertonic 75 3.4 Comparison of melodic rendering 76 3.5 Lu’s four-beat vs. Xiao’s two-beat measures 77 3.6 Lu’s four-beat vs. Xiao’s five-beat measures 78 3.7 Comparison of the final cadential formula 79 3.8 Musical transcription of the first couplet of “Listening” in the lyrical melody 82 3.9 Couplets 36 and 37 of “Listening” in the narrative melody (akin to speech) 83 3.10 A musical sigh at the end of T-10 85 3.11 T-13 and B-13: Splitting syllables with post-lexical elongations 85 Acknowledgments I would like to thank many people for their substantial assistance in support- ing my work on this book. Particular thanks go to the Humanities Center at BYU for a generous grant to workshop the manuscript. In particular, I would like to thank Margaret Wan from the University of Utah, Brandie Siegfried, my colleague at Brigham Young University, and Matt Wickman, my colleague and the Director of the Humanities Center at BYU, for their careful reading of this work. Their comments and suggestions have been invaluable. The Department of Comparative Arts and Letters, the community of scholars in Women’s Studies, and the College of Humanities at Brigham Young University also provided support and encouragement during the writing and editing process, which I humbly and gratefully acknowledge. Nate Thatcher painstakingly transferred all my musical transcriptions to a digital format, and Lin Guo digitized the Chinese texts in Appendices 1–3; I thank them both for their skills. Michael Needham provided invaluable assistance in reviewing this manuscript, and I am sincerely grateful to him and his staff at Humanities First for their meticulous work. The editorial staff at Routledge has been generous and especially helpful in preparing this manuscript for publication. In particular, I wish to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their astute observations and suggestions that have dramatically improved this manuscript. I am especially grateful to Emma Gallon and her editorial staff for their expertise, professionalism, and goodwill as they have guided me throughout the process of publication. Finally, I wish to recognize Professor Xue Baokun, my former mentor at Nankai University, my two teachers, Ms. Wang Yubao and Ms. Lu Yiqin, and my selfless research assistant, Ms. Bao Zhenpei. These individuals have been committed to assisting me with my research since the first day I met them, and I am deeply grateful for their help and friendship over the past several decades. Most importantly, I want to recognize all the women of quyi whose stories have been the inspiration for this work; I humbly dedicate this book to them. My husband, John Lawson, ultimately helped everything to come together, and to him I owe the greatest thanks. Note on the Text Chinese vocabulary used in this book is Romanized according to the pinyin system without tone marks.

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