Xu Jianye

03-0893Buddhist MusicTraditional MusicPingluo, NingxiaBatch 3 (2009)

Lineage & School of Heritage

He is the twenty-fifth-generation transmitter of the Cha branch of the Linji school of Buddhism and took refuge in Buddhism in 1953.

Mastery, Signature Works & Repertoire

Dharma name Xuxi; male, Han ethnicity, born in November 1942, a native of the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region. In order to rescue and preserve Buddhist music, in 1972 the Ningxia Buddhist elder Master Shi Xuzhao and Xu Jianye went together to Helan County in Ningxia to seek out Master Jinian, and recorded in numbered musical notation more than two hundred pieces that the master recalled. He supplied and contributed material on the music of northern Ningxia for the Ningxia volume of the Collection of Chinese Folk Music. Most of the temple music sung, recited, praised and played instrumentally that is transmitted today at Beiwudang Temple has come down through his notation and his transmission. He has classified and compared the surviving Buddhist music with modern music - for instance in respect of modal patterns and rhythmic features, and of whether a piece is newly composed or is a circulating and popular one - in the hope of summing it up at the theoretical level.

Honors & Recognition

A national representative bearer of Buddhist Music (Beiwudang Temple Music), a third-batch national intangible cultural heritage project.

References & Archival Sources

Xu Jianye · National Representative Bearer Archive

Representative Items of This Bearer

Profile

Representative item: Buddhist Music
Item code: Ⅱ-138
Category: Traditional Music
Region: Pingluo, Ningxia
Born: 1942
Batch: Batch 3 (2009)

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