Jin Lihao

01 · Lineage & Regional School

Jin Lihao, Male, Korean, from Tieling, Liaoning, is a fifth-batch national representative bearer of Pansuoli (Ⅴ-102). The tradition is documented in Tieling, Liaoning. Within the regional tradition and school record of Pansuoli in Tieling, Liaoning: Pansori circulates in the three northeastern provinces, and the Korean settlements of Tieling, Kaiyuan, Changtu and other places are the main areas of transmission; the Tieling Municipal Korean Ethnic Culture and Art Hall is the protecting unit. In Tieling the arias have been carried on through master-to-disciple transmission: the folk artist Li Zhufeng passed the principal Pansori arias and singing methods in his possession on to Zheng Lerui of the village and others; Zheng Lerui then taught Hong Huafeng, who, while serving as a music guidance cadre in the Tieling County Cultural Centre, trained further disciples including Hong Yongji and Jin Lihao. Early Pansori comprised twelve great scenes, but today only the principal arias of five of them — “Chunxiang Song”, “Shenqing Song”, “Xingfu Song”, “Shuigong Song” and “Chibi Song” — have been handed down; the other arias have been lost. Pansori (Pansuoli) is the narrative singing music of the Korean ethnic group and came into being in the 18th century. There are two accounts of its origin: one holds that it was created by itinerant artists on the basis of a certain kind of drama, while the other holds that it derives from songs in shamanic ritual. The term Pansori is a literal transliteration from Korean, and simply means a song sung before a large audience. The “Guanghanlou Yuepu” (Guanghan Tower Music Score) of the early 19th century records: “In the theatre of the singing actors, one person stands and one person sits; the one standing sings, and the one sitting marks the rhythm with a drum. Among the miscellaneous songs there are twelve arias, and the Xiangniang Song is one of them.” Korean Pansori circulates in the three northeastern provinces and is transmitted chiefly in the Korean settlements of Tieling, Kaiyuan, Changtu and other places. Because Pansori is rich in narrative and makes it easy to express a character's inner feelings, it gradually became a musical form deeply cherished by the Korean masses.

02 · Mastery & Signature Works

Born in February 1954 in Tieling, Liaoning Province, he is of Korean ethnicity. At seventeen he became a pupil of Hong Huafeng to study pansori, learning its methods and techniques of singing and mastering its principal narrative passages: the Song of Chunhyang (Chunxiang Ge), the Song of Sim Cheong (Shenqing Ge), the Song of Heungbu (Xingfu Ge), the Song of the Water Palace (Shuigong Ge) and the Song of the Red Cliff (Chibi Ge). He has devoted himself to transmitting pansori for nearly ten years, collecting and collating nineteen pansori song texts, thirteen scores and seventeen physical items including costumes and props. Within the documented technical tradition of Pansuoli in Tieling, Liaoning: Pansori features one performer playing many roles, “entering into and coming out of” the characters; song predominates, speech is interwoven with singing and singing with speech. A high-level Pansori performance is a synthesis of many arts: the single performer, in coordination with the drummer, uses only her own singing voice, spoken passages, bodily movements and a single fan as a prop to depict the relations of conflict and reconciliation, of good and evil, and of beauty and ugliness among all things in the world. Pansori integrates music, literature and performance into one whole. Representative repertoire, works and technical entries recorded for the project include: "The five surviving song cycles": Of the original twelve cycles only the main passages of the Song of Chunhyang, Sim Cheong, Heungbu, the Underwater Palace and the Red Cliff survive in Tieling. "One performer, many roles": A single singer slips in and out of many roles, blending song and speech with gesture and one fan to portray conflict, good and evil, beauty and ugliness. "The drummer and the fan": The staging is minimal: the singer stands with a fan as prop and gesture aid while a seated drummer follows the turns of the plot. "The Tieling transmission line": The Tieling line runs from the folk artist Li Zhufeng through Zheng Lerui and Hong Huafeng to Hong Yongji and Jin Lihao.

03 · Transmission & Safeguarding Status

He is a national representative bearer of Pansuoli, a fifth-batch national intangible cultural heritage project. In 2010 he established pansori teaching bases in a number of primary and secondary schools in Kaiyuan, Liaoning Province, and has since trained more than six hundred students from Shenyang, Anshan, Panjin, Yanbian and other areas.

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. Jin Lihao · National Representative Bearer Archive