The Shaanxi Qinpai-Erhu tradition. Re-invention and re-invigoration of a folk tradition

This paper outlines the main distinguishing features of the Qinpai school o f erhu playing of the Chinese province of Shaanxi, shows how this style of erhu playing arose as a response to a particular set of political, musical and social conditions as generated in post-1949 Communist China and discuss es how these conditions and the music they have produced are related to a p rocess of 'globalisation' or 'Westernisation'; in other words: to what exte nt is the Qinpai erhu music intrinsically native, that is the music of the Chinese Province of Shaanxi, and to what extent is it a product of outside influences. The author is himself a member of the Qinpai erhu school and ha s spent four years at the Xian Music College of Xian in Shaanxi Province as an erhu pupil of Jin Wei, the leading exponent of the Qinpai school of erh u playing.