He Kening

01 · Lineage & Regional School

He loved music from childhood and at the age of thirteen began studying under veteran artists. At fourteen he was admitted to the Guangdong Music and Quyi Troupe and joined the arts training class of the Guangzhou cultural system, specializing in stringed and percussion instruments. He studied under the gaohu master Liu Tianyi and also received careful instruction from such noted teachers as Zhu Hai, Su Wenbing and Ye Kongzhao, acquiring a knowledge of Guangdong music and its performance techniques. Within the regional tradition and school record of Guangdong Music in Guangzhou, Guangdong: Guangdong music is a traditional sizhu genre current in the Pearl River delta centred on Guangzhou and in the Guangfu dialect area, and is a treasure of the traditional folk culture of Lingnan. Guangdong music has a history of more than four hundred years; since the Ming and Qing dynasties it has passed through stages of germination, development and maturity, and there are now more than five hundred pieces whose titles and scores can be traced. Its ensembles take a number of forms; the most typical are the “five-head” group of the 1920s and 1930s (also called the “hard-bow group”, namely the erxian, the tiqin, the sanxian, the yueqin and the transverse flute) and the “three-head” group (the yuehu, the yangqin and the qinqin), the sizhu instruments matching one another in perfect accord and enhancing each other, fully displaying the subtlety and the beauty of Lingnan sizhu music. In the Ming and Qing periods the bayin bands mainly played Buddhist music and folk ditties. After 1949 the Guangdong music activities of Taishan city were brought into the cultural centres of town and village and became activity items of those centres.

02 · Mastery & Signature Works

Male, Han ethnicity, born in February 1950 in Guangzhou, Guangdong Province. He is a national first-class performer. Since graduating he has been engaged in the performance and composition of Guangdong music, has also designed the vocal music of Cantonese opera, and has served as concertmaster of the orchestra, giving outstanding performances in gaohu solos, duets and small-ensemble pieces. He took part in the work organized by the relevant government departments to rescue, collate and record the "Eight Great Songbooks". His compositions Chun Man Yangcheng (Spring Fills Guangzhou) and Liwan Qin Qu (Melody of Liwan) have won honours in successive Guangdong Music Composition Competitions. Within the documented technical tradition of Guangdong Music in Guangzhou, Guangdong: With its light, gentle, ornate, fine and rich character and its fresh, flowing and melodious Lingnan style, it is dearly loved by the people; its influence reaches everywhere north of the Yangtze and it is current in the Chinese communities of every part of the world. Representative pieces include Rain Striking the Banana Leaves, Thunder on a Dry Day, The Lament of Two Voices, The Three Jewels of Buddha, Rising Step by Step, Autumn Moon on the Calm Lake, Amusement in Times of Peace and Boats Racing for the Brocade. In long practice of composition and performance, Guangdong music has openly chosen and absorbed the useful elements of foreign music and of other Chinese folk arts, transformed them and made them serve its own purposes, forming a distinctive folk musical genre. It has a group of outstanding composers, performers and representative instruments, and is ranked with Cantonese opera and the Lingnan school of painting as one of the “three great treasures of Lingnan art”. Overseas, wherever there are Chinese people there is Guangdong music. Taishan city lies in the south-west of the Pearl River delta and is a famous home of overseas Chinese for the whole country. The “bayin band” of Taishan is one of the forms of activity of Guangdong music, with distinctive local colour and a long history. After the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom movement the bayin bands were reformed, combining the playing of pieces with the singing of operatic arias and gradually reaching maturity. At present the city has more than one hundred and twenty Guangdong music activity organizations, distributed throughout town and countryside. Representative repertoire, works and technical entries recorded for the project include: "Rain Striking the Banana Leaves": Representative pieces of Guangdong music include Rain Striking the Banana Leaves, Thunder on a Dry Day, The Lament of Two Voices, The Three Jewels of Buddha, Rising Step by Step, Autumn Moon on the Calm Lake, Amusement in Times of Peace and Boats Racing for the Brocade. "Thunder on a Dry Day": Representative pieces of Guangdong music include Rain Striking the Banana Leaves, Thunder on a Dry Day, The Lament of Two Voices, The Three Jewels of Buddha, Rising Step by Step, Autumn Moon on the Calm Lake, Amusement in Times of Peace and Boats Racing for the Brocade. "The Lament of Two Voices": Representative pieces of Guangdong music include Rain Striking the Banana Leaves, Thunder on a Dry Day, The Lament of Two Voices, The Three Jewels of Buddha, Rising Step by Step, Autumn Moon on the Calm Lake, Amusement in Times of Peace and Boats Racing for the Brocade. "The Three Jewels of Buddha": Representative pieces of Guangdong music include Rain Striking the Banana Leaves, Thunder on a Dry Day, The Lament of Two Voices, The Three Jewels of Buddha, Rising Step by Step, Autumn Moon on the Calm Lake, Amusement in Times of Peace and Boats Racing for the Brocade.

03 · Transmission & Safeguarding Status

Representative bearer of Guangdong Music, a fifth-batch national intangible cultural heritage project.

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. He Kening · National Representative Bearer Archive