I bought this in a tiny record shop on Cheapside in the summer of 1985, when I was doing a holiday job nearby. As with John Arlott, it's not as though I was looking for this album, or anything particularly like it. I was just browsing, and was impressed that the shop would stock something so apparently obscure. If they're bold enough to set that agenda, someone should follow.
These are the kind of recordings that are made less for entertainment and more as part of ethnographic research. The record comes in a gatefold sleeve with notes in French and English by George Wên, explaining that Side A is nan-kuan music and Side B is chao-chou. The notes explain that both traditions developed in the south-eastern Chinese province of Fujian. Chao-chou mainly originated in Swatow (which appears not to be in Fujian, but in the next-door province of Guangdong, but never mind): "little work has been done to understand this music and this is the first time a recording of such music has been published in the West."
I confess I am kind of proud to have acquired such rarities when I was 20. It's now hard to find any details of the record on the web: it's on Playa Sound, catalogue number PS 33524, distributed by Auvidis, 47/49 rue Polonceau, 75018 Paris. And searching Wikipedia or Google for nan-kuan or chao-chou turns up little that relates to these music styles (though you can never be quite sure if that's because others have translated the characters differently).
These performances are beautifully recorded too. I know many people find it difficult to listen to traditional Chinese music because of the different intervals between their notes. Fortunately I have the twin advantages of very poor natural talent in Western harmony and an extended exposure to lots of atonal music relatively early in life, so my ear is less easily offended by variance from European norms.
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