Wu Man
PROFILE Wu Man: Silk String Stories
By Simon Broughton
Widely considered the world’s leading pipa player, Wu Man tells Simon Broughton about new works excavating the history of her beloved instrument
With the pipa upright on her lap, Wu Man instantly summons attention by forcefully striking an introductory chord. She then repeats the phrase, gaining tempo with each note, before launching into a bright articulated melody – her acrylic nails adding a percussive rasp. Vincent Peirani on button accordion, accompanies with incisive chords until the pace relaxes, allowing him to lead with a melody of his own in the same pentatonic idiom. They are playing ‘Dance of the Yi People’, a popular piece written in 1960 by a pipa player called Wang Huiran, and here arranged for pipa and accordion for a concert by Aga Khan Master Musicians and Friends at the Edinburgh International Festival. The Aga Khan ensemble are usually comprised of six musicians, but here, as just a duo, it’s special to hear every note of Wu Man’s pipa. The concert won a deserved standing ovation.
Wu Man was born in Hangzhou, near Shanghai, and started playing a small instrument called a liuqin, a Chinese mandolin, at the age of nine. “It wasn’t my choice,” she says. “I was just told by my parents, who are music lovers.” After two years, she had already mastered the instrument. “My liuqin teacher said, ‘I don’t have anything to teach you now. You can switch to a bigger one, which is called pipa.’” A plucked, pear-shaped instrument with four strings and up to 31 frets, the pipa is often referred to as the Chinese lute. By 12, she was playing the instrument, which led her to study at the Central Conservatoire of Music in Beijing in 1977 (which was only reopened after the Cultural Revolution ended in 1976). In 1987, she received the first master’s degree in pipa.
She emigrated to the US in 1990 to pursue a career in pipa beyond Chinese traditional music. There, she performed premieres of pieces by Tan Dun, Lou Harrison, Philip Glass, Terry Riley and many others. In 2000, she became a founding member of Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble, and she regularly collaborates with eminent groups like the Kronos Quartet.
Since leaving China for the US, Wu Man has often returned to perform, teach and record, but recently she has started going more regularly. “It’s probably my age,” she chuckles, “it’s time to look back. And I do feel that the younger generation [in China] has lost the tradition. I’ve seen young players with great technique, but somehow they’ve lost the language of the instrument. I do feel this is the time, in a humble way, that I can be an example.”
Last year, Wu Man released two solo pipa releases that emphasised the instrument’s history and legacy (both reviewed in Songlines #210). Music from the Dunhuang Caves is an interpretation of 25 historic pipa manuscripts discovered in the Mogao Caves in Dunhuang in 1900. The caves contain some of the most beautiful Buddhist paintings in China, including depictions of celestial beings playing the pipa. Cave 17 (the Library Cave) contained manuscripts in an archaic notation dating to the 10th-century Tang Dynasty.
“In 2021, I got a chance to travel to Dunhuang when there were no tourists [due to COVID]. I worked with the Museum of Dunhuang, and they opened a few caves that were previously kept only for scholars. I got a chance to look at the pipa [paintings], both five-string and four-string, side by side. And then scholars showed me the manuscripts of the 25 pieces, which I didn’t understand at all.”
To decipher the notes, she used four different scholarly transcriptions of the ancient pipa scores, finding Chen Yingshi’s work to be particularly helpful. The melodies are composed of only single lines and are in just three modes, none of which are pentatonic, hence sounding more Central Asian. “I was guided by my own experience. I work with a lot of Central Asian musicians, so I felt this was the time to do the recording. I wanted to have my own interpretation to share, to say these are 1000-year-old melodies from China.”
The second album she released was arguably even more ambitious. Seeking the Tao of Strings was played with 11 historic pipas dating from the 17th to mid-20th centuries. She worked with Shen Zhengguo, a traditional instrument maker at Dahetang Studio in Shanghai, to restore and re-string (with silk strings) these ancient instruments, and then she recorded specially selected pieces on each of them.
Each pipa has its own personality, and Wu Man took time to acquaint herself with each of them. “One day before, in my hotel room, I locked myself in and ordered take-out food. I spent the whole day to meet each instrument, to talk to them and choose a piece to suit them.” Some of the pipas belonged to celebrated masters, and often she’d select a piece associated with that master. The opening piece, ‘Big Waves Washing the Sand’, is one she was taught by Jin Zuli (1906–2000), the original owner of the instrument. And ‘White Snow in Sunny Spring’ was recorded by Wei Zhongle (1909–1997) at Shanghai Radio on his pipa.
“I sat by myself in the centre of the studio with the instruments laid out, everything dark and spotlights on me with five different microphones. I felt like I was being watched by those masters.” She’d never played with silk strings before because they stopped using them in China around a century ago, preferring the durability of nylon-wrapped steel strings. In Japan, silk strings are still used for instruments like the koto and shamisen, so they sourced the strings from there. It was a positive experience for Wu – she was impressed by the subtle nuances in their sound, the stability in tuning and, given their delicate nature, she was able to play without acrylic nails. The recordings of ‘military’ pieces like ‘Ambush from Ten Sides’ are thrilling. Still, it’s the more poetic ‘literary’ pieces that are possibly more interesting, with delicate slides and subtle effects like a deadened pizzicato technique called zhai yin, with the fingernail pressing as the string is plucked. Seeking the Tao… has caused a stir in China – Beijing Music Weekly deemed it one of their ten best albums of 2024 – and it would be little surprise to hear it regarded as one of the greatest ever pipa recordings in the years to come.
“I feel like I’ve started a wave, particularly in the academic area,” she says. “Conservatoires have started teaching old instruments, and private families are using their old instruments to play in public. It’s changed people’s conceptions.”
Next up for Wu Man is to perform with the Aga Khan Master Musicians, with whom she was performing in Edinburgh, as part of the Aga Khan Music Programme (AKMP). She has been involved with AKMP since 2011; it’s an initiative that supports the preservation, teaching and contemporary development of mainly musical traditions across the Middle East, Central Asia and South Asia. With the programme, Wu Man recorded Borderlands (2012) with Uyghur and Tajik musicians exploring the pipa’s roots in Central Asia and the Silk Road.