He Yi'an's ninety musical years: Biography, history, and experience in Southwest China

He Yi'an (1908-93) was a major figure in the Dongjing music tradition of Li jiang, a remote, mountainous county in southwest China's Yunnan Province. T his amateur ritual music tradition flourished before the Communist victory of 1949, continuing for several years thereafter as a purely secular instru mental genre. Revived in its secular format in the late 1970s, since 1988 t he music has been spectacularly popular in concerts to entertain foreign an d domestic tourists. He Yi'an was a leading light in the maintenance and tr ansmission of the ritual music tradition before 1949, and a prominent playe r in its commercial transformation forty years later. His negotiation of th e complex and conflicting meanings attached to these different contexts spe aks to an intricate intertwining of personal experience with social history ; and his life story illustrates the importance of outstanding individuals in the maintenance and development of regional music traditions.