{"id":17196,"date":"2025-10-30T17:51:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-30T21:51:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/?p=17196"},"modified":"2025-11-05T17:55:27","modified_gmt":"2025-11-05T22:55:27","slug":"wu-man-silk-string-stories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/wu-man-silk-string-stories\/","title":{"rendered":"PROFILE Wu Man: Silk String Stories"},"content":{"rendered":"

From Songlines<\/a><\/p>\n

By Simon Broughton<\/p>\n

Widely considered the world\u2019s leading pipa player, Wu Man tells Simon Broughton about new works excavating the history of her beloved instrument<\/p>\n

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 \u2013 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 \u2018Dance of the Yi People\u2019, 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\u2019s special to hear every note of Wu Man\u2019s pipa. The concert won a deserved standing ovation.<\/p>\n

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. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t my choice,\u201d she says. \u201cI was just told by my parents, who are music lovers.\u201d After two years, she had already mastered the instrument. \u201cMy liuqin teacher said, \u2018I don\u2019t have anything to teach you now. You can switch to a bigger one, which is called pipa.\u2019\u201d 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\u2019s degree in pipa.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s Silk Road Ensemble, and she regularly collaborates with eminent groups like the Kronos Quartet.<\/p>\n

Since leaving China for the US, Wu Man has often returned to perform, teach and record, but recently she has started going more regularly. \u201cIt\u2019s probably my age,\u201d she chuckles, \u201cit\u2019s time to look back. And I do feel that the younger generation [in China] has lost the tradition. I\u2019ve seen young players with great technique, but somehow they\u2019ve lost the language of the instrument. I do feel this is the time, in a humble way, that I can be an example.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last year, Wu Man released two solo pipa releases that emphasised the instrument\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn 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\u2019t understand at all.\u201d<\/p>\n

To decipher the notes, she used four different scholarly transcriptions of the ancient pipa scores, finding Chen Yingshi\u2019s 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. \u201cI 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Each pipa has its own personality, and Wu Man took time to acquaint herself with each of them. \u201cOne 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.\u201d Some of the pipas belonged to celebrated masters, and often she\u2019d select a piece associated with that master. The opening piece, \u2018Big Waves Washing the Sand\u2019, is one she was taught by Jin Zuli (1906\u20132000), the original owner of the instrument. And \u2018White Snow in Sunny Spring\u2019 was recorded by Wei Zhongle (1909\u20131997) at Shanghai Radio on his pipa.<\/p>\n

\u201cI 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.\u201d She\u2019d 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 \u2013 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 \u2018military\u2019 pieces like \u2018Ambush from Ten Sides\u2019 are thrilling. Still, it\u2019s the more poetic \u2018literary\u2019 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\u2026 has caused a stir in China \u2013 Beijing Music Weekly deemed it one of their ten best albums of 2024 \u2013 and it would be little surprise to hear it regarded as one of the greatest ever pipa recordings in the years to come.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like I\u2019ve started a wave, particularly in the academic area,\u201d she says. \u201cConservatoires have started teaching old instruments, and private families are using their old instruments to play in public. It\u2019s changed people\u2019s conceptions.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u2019s 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\u2019s roots in Central Asia and the Silk Road.<\/p>\n

Read the full story.<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From Songlines By Simon Broughton Widely considered the world\u2019s 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, … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16372,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[7185,5734,4195,7449,5735],"class_list":["post-17196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-global-music","tag-pipa","tag-profile","tag-songlines","tag-wu-man"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17196"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17196\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17197,"href":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17196\/revisions\/17197"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/media\/16372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}