The Narrative Arts of Tianjin: Between Music and Language ─ Cracking the Code

In her prologue Lawson (Brigham Young U.) recounts an early experience in her education in which she heard a professor at UCLA demonstrate music on the pipa, (a type of Chinese lute). He played some pieces from the repertoire and then began to accompany himself while he sang. He explained that this latter performance was not "music," but something different: it was a type of storytelling, and "definitely not music." The author had opportunities in the mid 1980s and again in the early 1990s to conduct research on these types of narrative arts in Tianjin, China. In this study she offers plenty of background as well as specific focus on a selection of narrative works. The included CD contains examples. Annotation c2011 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Francesca R. Sborgi Lawson received an undergraduate degree in harp performance from BYU, an MA degree in ethnomusicology from UCLA, and a Ph.D. in ethnomusicology from the University of Washington. She conducted research on the inter-relationships of language and music in the narrative arts of Tianjin, China as a Fulbright-Hays and National Academy of Sciences Research Fellow. She also worked as a President's Minority Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of California at Berkeley and taught interdisciplinary courses in the Asian humanities and in gender---music relationships at Columbia University in New York City. She is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Humanities, Classics and Comparative Literature at Brigham Young University, USA.