You know, sometimes the struggle is simply trying to quantify how unique something is. I’ve been listening to Liu Xing’s 無所事 (To Do Nothing) for more than a while now and every time I try to find an angle to share it on the site, I backtrack and hold off (thinking I’ll do it and Liu Xing a great disservice). Lord knows, if there’s one thing that I hope Fond/Sound is fundamentally responsible for, is for treating every work/artist with the respect it deserves. And with this aspect in mind, I can respectfully say that Liu Xing’s 無所事 (To Do Nothing) merits me doing something about this.
Shanghai’s Liu Xing has always been a bit of a mystery. Just as soon as he released this, his pioneering work of “New Chinese Music”, he retreated from the spotlight and basically let the music do all the talking. His goal was to transform, and abstract, traditional Chinese monocultural music into the vibrant, multi-ethnic, forward-thinking form it always was (when created outside the finger of authority), and once doing so, perhaps, tried to move onto bridging the next chasm.
Can you blame him? When Liu Xing first began his journey into the world of music in the late ‘70s, clarinet was his instrument of choice. As with all classically-trained, it was a certain staid repertoire, that didn’t quite speak to where his ambitions lay. Once he picked up the zhongruan, that’s when it seemed the floodgates opened. It was the tone of the 4-string zhongruan, somewhere between banjo and nylon-string acoustic guitars, that lay the path towards something uniquely his.
Practicing sometimes eight hours a day, Liu, for all intents and purposes, explored the outer limits of what he could do with that traditional Chinese instrument. As he expanded that knowledge into other instruments like the yueqin, his original training in piano and composition mutated. Rather than muddle through the stuffy stuff of the past, he wanted to explore ideas that he ran into from composers like Messiaen and Schönberg. Surely the wonderful ideas he could come up with the zhongruan could be translated into the realm of other instruments.
In the mid ‘80s, Liu would begin to write the first of his own zhongruan compositions, iconic ones like “Reminiscences Of Yunnan” that would become future standards for those interested in more modern-leaning repertoire. The once maligned instrument was now revolutionizing audiences in whole concertos written for it. Some of the songs on 無所事 (To Do Nothing) like “Tuesday’s Meeting”, “Chaishi Festival” and “The Underground Forest” were written with in that first fruitful period from 1978 to 1982 when Liu realized that the “other” music he was enjoying – jazz, New Age, and world music – didn’t exactly have to leave outside his new tradition. However, by the end of that decade, Liu found himself in Beijing questioning whether he wanted to remain part of that “classist” system and strike out on his own.
The start of the ‘90s presented Liu Xing with an intriguing opportunity: why not create music that could build off the popularity of “Western” New Age music and make it distinctly of his homeland. At that moment in time, the Chinese music industry was inundated with facile, bland copies of the real thing. When the Hong Kong-based Hugo/KIIGO record label, they were able to grant him the freedom to breathe life to it (the only way he knew how), and he took that opportunity with aplomb.
To mature Chinese New Age Music, Liu chose to use a wide palette of instruments. This was New Chinese Music, after all. Rather than just stick with traditional instruments, he’d also introduce synthesizers, electroacoustic instruments, and computer-based sound design. Rather than imitate the formless, atmospheric, New Age of the West, Liu’s own ideas gravitated towards rich, harmonic, melodies that drew from forgotten folk songs.
In 1992, Chinese audiences got to hear the fruit of his labor. Songs like “Between The Earth And The Sky” in just six minutes proudly throw you into the visionary ideas Liu wanted to explore. On it, strains of hypnotic FM synthesizers blend seamlessly in with the zhongruan and guqin, appearing as pointillistic counterpoints that harmonize truly healing-sounding music. 無所事 (To Do Nothing)’s title track, showed off Liu’s spiritual side, achieving holistic balance with seemingly disparate musical colors. Modern and traditional instruments take off and mutate from new to old, each avant-garde idea dissolving into intriguing music that’s easily digestible. His greatest accomplishment was creating Chinese music that sounded, naturally, just as cutting-edge as anything elsewhere, naturally.
With the ease of grace of the most effortless things, 無所事 (To Do Nothing) – as heard in tracks like “Caprice In G Minor”, “Late Autumn Rain”, and “Yearning” – sounds as remarkable today as it did many moons ago when Chinese audiences were trying to comprehend that, yes, their music can sound just as timeless (in a different way). Who’s to say those on this side of the world can’t just catch up and be just as there for this one? Who’s to say the future is only in front of us?
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