Liu Shifu

01 · Lineage & Regional School

At fifteen he studied Shandong qinshu under the celebrated qinshu artist Zhu Hetang; along the way he received careful guidance from Li Ruoliang and other senior performers, and he inherited the humorous, comic and strongly vernacular style of the southern route of Shandong qinshu. His representative traditional pieces include Husband and Wife Quarrel over the Lamp and Jiang Ziya Sells Noodles. Within the regional tradition and school record of Shandong Qinshu Balladry in Shandong: Shandong Qinshu Balladry circulates in three lines — southern, northern and eastern — each of which has its own representative performers and schools. The southern line was the earliest of the three, popular in southwestern Shandong; its most representative figures are Ru Xingli and the "Ru school" he founded. The singing of this line avoids florid coloratura and ornamented melodies, the vocal line is deep and resonant, the diction precise and heartfelt, and most of its pieces are works of protest against the world. The northern line is centred on Jinan and is widely popular in northwestern Shandong; its most representative figures are Deng Jiuru and the "Deng school" he founded. Its performance makes free use of local dialect and colloquial speech, revealing humour within plainness and seeking resonance within simplicity. The eastern line is centred on Guangrao and Boxing and is popular throughout the Jiaodong area; its most representative figures are the couple Shang Yexing and Guan Yunxia and the "Shang school" they founded, whose vocal style is beautiful and pleasing and rich in variety.

02 · Mastery & Signature Works

Male, Han ethnicity, born in November 1961 in Jinxiang County, Shandong Province. He has a solid command of singing and is also an accomplished creator, having written and arranged a large body of modern-themed works that are widely popular, including Rural Joys, Spring in the Farmhouse and A Mother's Bitterness and Joy. He sings in the Jining dialect; his vocal style is bright, fluent, plain and engaging, appealing to both refined and popular taste. He excels at extemporaneous performance and plays the zhuqin with great skill. He has devoted himself year after year to transmitting and promoting Shandong qinshu. Within the documented technical tradition of Shandong Qinshu Balladry in Shandong: Shandong Qinshu Balladry is an important local quyi (narrative performing art) genre of Shandong, also called "chang yangqin" ("singing to the yangqin") or "Shandong yangqin". It grew out of "zhuangjia shua", a form of amateur self-entertainment singing of folk little melodies that arose in the mid-Ming period in the Heze area (ancient Caozhou) of southwestern Shandong, also called "wanju". By the mid-Qing period, the guqin and guzheng originally used to accompany the singing had been replaced by the yangqin (also called the "butterfly zither"), the sihu, the guzheng, the pipa, the jianban clapper boards and the small cymbals; several performers each took a different instrument and accompanied themselves, sitting in a circle by role type, with singing as the main body and spoken narration or dialogue interspersed. Shandong Qinshu Balladry is performed in the Shandong regional pronunciation; because it emerged from the linked singing of folk "xiaoquzi" (little melodies), the vocal styles and melodies it uses are extremely rich, numbering more than two hundred tune patterns (qupai). After it developed into the narrative form known as qinshu shuochan, the melodies actually used gradually concentrated on the so-called "six principal old-school tunes" — Shanghe Diao, Fengyang Ge, Dieduanqiao, Hankou Duo, Duoziban and Meihualuo — of which these six were the most common. Since the late Qing and early Republican period it further developed into a musical system centred on Fengyang Ge and Duoziban, with a small amount of little melodies interspersed for narration and singing; its repertoire likewise came to be dominated by medium-form and long-form story pieces, with short passages performed as well. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, Shandong Qinshu Balladry saw new development and its range of circulation extended beyond the borders of Shandong Province. Outstanding traditional pieces that were processed and tidied up, such as "Liang Zhu Descends the Mountain" and "Water Floods Jinshan Hill", together with newly created works — the medium-form "Seizing the Seal" and the short pieces "Ten Women Praising Their Husbands", "The Girl's Wish", "Da Lin Returns Home" and "The Mended Basin" — have all exerted an important influence. Representative repertoire, works and technical entries recorded for the project include: "Peasant play and playing sessions": The genre's origin in mid-Ming amateur singing parties of southwestern Shandong, later re-instrumented with yangqin, sihu and clappers. "The six principal tunes": The six principal tunes that emerged as the linked folk songs became storytelling, later centred on Fengyang Song and Duozi Board. "The three schools": The three regional schools: Ru of the south, Deng of the north and Shang of the east, each with its own vocal character. "The instrument set": The principal instruments, which replaced the old qin and zheng in the mid-Qing: yangqin, sihu, zheng, pipa, clappers and saucer.

03 · Transmission & Safeguarding Status

National representative bearer of Shandong Qinshu balladry, a fourth-batch national intangible cultural heritage project. In 2004 he received the Third China Quyi Peony Award, conferred by the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles and the China Quyi Artists Association.

04 · Associated Heritage Item Dossier

05 · Fellow National Bearers Lineage

National representative bearers recorded under the same item code, ordered from the first to the sixth batch. Batch order is not a teacher–student relationship.

06 · Archival Sources & Bibliography

1. Liu Shifu · National Representative Bearer Archive