Anthology of Wax Cylinder recordings from the Late Qing Chinese Empire

Anthology of Wax Cylinder Recordings from the Late Qing (Chinese) Empire: The Berthold Laufer Collection

Berthold Laufer (1874-1934) was one of the most respected sinologists of the early 20th century. Shortly after emigrating from Germany to the United States, famed anthropologist Franz Boas recruited Laufer for the Jesup North Pacific Expedition, during which Laufer conducted ethnographic fieldwork between 1898 and 1899 on the Amur River and Sakhalin Island. Laufer was asked soon thereafter to lead the Jacob H. Schiff Chinese Expedition on behalf of the American Museum of Natural History. Laufer - the only person on the "expedition" - spent over three years traveling China collecting cultural artifacts that showcased the arts and pre-industrialized customs still common in China. In that time, he collected over 7,500 objects of Chinese culture that were sent to the American Museum of Natural History, dramatically expanding the museum's holdings from East Asia. Laufer recorded a wide array of folk music, Beijing opera, and music to accompany dramas and shadow plays.

This compilation is from the Indiana University 'Berthold Laufer Collection,' and had been distributed as a CD set entitled 'Anthology of Wax Cylinder Recordings from the Late Qing Empire,' by Sunchime, this collection consists of 400 cylinders preserved by the University with many of those cylinders dating between 1901 and 1902 and recorded throughout China by Berthold Laufer. These are also the earliest known Chinese recordings. Included with this collection is an English-Chinese translation of the cylinders which are numbered and tracklisting.

As a bonus, the collection on Ambientscape also includes additional historic wax cylinder recordings of Hebei bangzi (河北梆子), which was a genre of local opera (Chinese: difang xiqu, 地方戏曲) from Hebei, northern China, and recorded in China during 1901 the location, date and names of the performers on these recordings are unknown. The play being performed is entitled "Da Xiangshan"《大香山》

During the time these cylinder recordings were recorded, "Qinqiang" (秦腔) was still used to refer to early Hebei bangzi performances, this genre of clapper opera (Chinese: bangzi qiang, 梆子腔) having only been recently introduced by performers originating in Shanxi and Shaanxi provinces. The accompanying instruments include banhu (板胡, vertical fiddle with coconut shell resonator and wooden soundboard) and dizi (笛子, bamboo transverse flute with buzzing membrane) playing together an octave higher, (with each instrument using its own distinctive ornamentation), and percussion (gong/cymbals and guban 鼓板).

Indiana University website

Articles

Stereo Recordings Believed to be the World's Oldest: Preserved at Indiana

The Strange & Circuitous Journey of Berthold Laufer's Chinese Recordings

Ebook

The Biographical Memoir of Berthold Laufer 1874-1934 by K.S. Latourette

The Berthold Laufer Collection

(Googledrive Access)