ABSTRACT
My first experience with the narrative arts came unexpectedly as a student of Professor Lui Tsun-yuen at the University of California at Los Angeles. Professor Lui was a renowned master of the pίpά, a four-stringed, pear-shaped lute that is held vertically and played with the backs of the fingernails. On one occasion, he brought his instrument to class in order to demonstrate some of the great masterworks of the pίpά repertoire. After performing several pieces, he picked up his instrument once again, almost as an afterthought, and began to accompany himself while singing lyrics in his native Sùzhoū dialect. I remember that when one of the students asked him to explain something about this last piece of music, he responded emphatically that what he had just played was not music. When asked why it was not considered music, he laughed and explained that it was a folk form, a kind of storytelling, but definitely not music. From my limited background at that point in time, it sounded like other kinds of Chinese vocal music I had heard, so I was genuinely confused. It was not until many years later that I began to understand how and why these sounds constituted a separate art form that was not music, but something entirely different.
