Here's the link: Minority Rapport
Saturday 11 February 2012
Global Times CN Interview
Global Times China's Vera Penêda interviewed me (already back in August 2011...)
Here's the link: Minority Rapport
Here's the link: Minority Rapport
Thursday 24 November 2011
“Alight Aloft” and breaking news about Prop Roots!
The following is an adaptation from what I wrote to the friends that subscribed
to the fan list on www.reverbnation.com/AntonLustig, as a kind of newsletter.
Dear friends around the world! I have a lot of news, about publications, awards, buildings, exhibitions, big plans starting to get realized! Before I go back to our Zaiwa/Jingpo village and probably lose connection from a few webpages for a few months, I just have to leave behind this newsletter! Unlike in previous newsletters, I will write more extensively about our Prop Roots Program, because of its important breakthroughs in the last half a year, and then (through the paintings) turn back towards music again, because this webpage, after all, is supposed to be about music.
For those who are not familiar with us yet: I am a musician and painter, that also happens to be linguistic expert on Zaiwa language, spoken by China’s Jingpo minority. Or shortly: ""I am the Dutch Zaiwa that paints with the children". Together with my wife Li Yang I also work on the Prop Roots Program, focusing on creative and language education in order to empower the Jingpo children, gifted with creativity and talent, though growing up in a community struggling with poverty, drug problems and HIV/AIDS. Though a lot of practicality is needed, Prop Roots nevertheless is a piece of art, like a very large window.
Therefore, this is not only about music. Shouldn't I most of all be writing about my struggles and experiences while integrating all my various activities and endeavors into the creative process? Things are even more complicated than that, because of my rather philosophical nature, or, I should say: the obvious strangeness of life itself. Besides project matters and music and painting, I am also much interested in existential issues like: "what is consciousness", "what does it mean to be a living being", the uncertainty principle, and all the other mysteries of science. There's always food for more thought, apart from the obligation to give the children my full attention, with an open mind. Since they deserve it and are so much worth it. And because it is rewarding! For me, the integrated approach is the real way to go. Matters that cannot easily be expressed should best find their way out through my own paintings and music.
Now the Prop Roots news:
2011 Summer activities
2011 Summer activity's Story Sharing and Charity Auction
After coming back to Beijing, we organized a meeting for sharing our stories and feelings with journalists, other non-profit organizations, artists, and all others who would be interested. Pictures. The event also included a charity auction, where the Jingpo kids’ paintings went under the hammer, as well as works donated by professional artists living in Beijing. All funds raised will be used for further non-profit activities (for donations to Jingpo children most in need of support, and for financing more creative activities by Prop Roots).
our bamboo activity center built soon!
From next year summer onwards we will also organize camps enabling city children to come and meet the Jingpo children in our village and to let the two sides play and learn from each other. In order to secure this plan, Li Yang took part in a CSR Charity contest organized by China’s biggest computer company Lenovo, and won a big prize. So now we can really build our bamboo activity center, on the green foothills of Yingpan village this winter! More news about the design, the professionals helping us for free, and the whole building process next time!
Not only the local children are going to be creative and have fun there. This will also be the place where more of my art and music will take shape, much of it in happy cooperation with the children, other works rather as Music for Music, Art for Art. It will be the ideal creative environment!
Not only the local children are going to be creative and have fun there. This will also be the place where more of my art and music will take shape, much of it in happy cooperation with the children, other works rather as Music for Music, Art for Art. It will be the ideal creative environment!
I/we got Awarded!
Some people may recall that Tianjin TV’s “China Right Here” (泊客中国) Program made a documentary about me and Prop Roots <all our videos are here, watch without VPN> as part of their series of high-standard documentaries about non-Chinese people contributing to Chinese culture, society or environment. The program’s Award Ceremony "You Bring Charm to China / 中国因你更美丽” for this year’s best documentaries was held on October 30th in Beijing, and among 10 other foreigners, I was also awarded, for my work on behalf of the Zaiwa/Jingpo culture and community. Most attention went to my language research, but underneath and in less words it was also for boosting Prop Roots! It was good that the presenters and VIP’s did not avoid mentioning heavy themes like ‘AIDS’ and ‘drugs’. This spectacular event, with orchestra, choir, great audio-visuals and many VIP’s appearing on stage was broadcasted on various channels in China and abroad (including Phoenix TV).
Pictures and more info
Video from the award ceremony
Paintings
I have regularly visited my friend Gao Yuan’s studio in Songzhuang, on the edge of Beijing, and nearly finished a series of paintings there. These paintings are more spacious and contain more water and air than before. We are working on plans for an exhibition in Beijing in the first half of 2011, before our final move to Yingpan village. Of course I should say: a “music-exhibition”.
‘Alight Aloft’ EP free download
Generally, my musical style is moving towards ‘bluntly optimistic’ and ‘Jingpo’. But, a mix of my more introspective and transcendental music, titled “Alight Aloft” and nicknamed "chilly mix", has recently been published on the high-quality but also quite well hidden website INQB8R.net, "a free will foundation project having a goal to present innovative musicians and attract progressive listeners, merge different audiences and provide a new way of deep thinking through music." The website's team did a great job, making a perfect mix, with all the pieces merging so well, and having it mastered in a professional studio. Click and you will see my artist bio and songs descriptions. Behind every “eye” icon there is a picture or painting. This music is not suitable for while doing active sports, but much so for relaxing while meditating or daydreaming. At times it can be a bit hypnotizing too. This mix will stay available for free download. You could consider it as a gift.
 |
| more suitable for the cover? |
Soirée
In October I presented my music during one of the monthly musical soirées held by connoisseur and audiophile David Cahill at his comfortable home in Beijing. I played and commented more than 20 of my pieces, to the most attentive and responsive audience one could wish for, in the best sound quality and accompanied with a continuous slideshow of my paintings.
EP's
I was determined to publish two new EP’s (‘extended play albums’) around this time: named “Music for Stretching and Painting” (with Arno Vrijman and Richard Carciofo) and “Music for Optimism” onto iTunes and a few websites, but now I have to postpone this, because ‘unfortunately’ I have to leave for our village earlier than foreseen, to have our dream house and bamboo studio built.
I will publish them in due time, after some decent re-mixing and mastering. I am learning to do master the music, to improve the sound quality by some special tricks. And PSD already did some professional mastering on two of the tracks. Thank you, 圣石! These mastered files are too big to upload into my Reverbnation player, unless I convert them to mp3, in which case the sound becomes blurry. So all I can do with them on this site is to place in my store and offer them for sale. Link to my STORE. Of course I would love to share them with you for free. Luckily, I did manage to add them to my myspace music page. (Who would have guessed, Myspace wasn't dead after all!) (The only problem still is that you need to have fast internet to be able to play them.) Therefore, I put them a bit down the list, the tracks' names are: "Up" and "Summer (Mastered)".
Mastering can make a great difference in sound quality! You will hear more better mastered music from me in the future. I am also learning to do mastering myself. My many hours of unpublished music, once remastered, could be worked into several more EP's or LP's. My 'Art Therapy' CD, printed earlier this year, could also be re-mastered.
In October I presented my music during one of the monthly musical soirées held by connoisseur and audiophile David Cahill at his comfortable home in Beijing. I played and commented more than 20 of my pieces, to the most attentive and responsive audience one could wish for, in the best sound quality and accompanied with a continuous slideshow of my paintings.
EP's
I was determined to publish two new EP’s (‘extended play albums’) around this time: named “Music for Stretching and Painting” (with Arno Vrijman and Richard Carciofo) and “Music for Optimism” onto iTunes and a few websites, but now I have to postpone this, because ‘unfortunately’ I have to leave for our village earlier than foreseen, to have our dream house and bamboo studio built.
I will publish them in due time, after some decent re-mixing and mastering. I am learning to do master the music, to improve the sound quality by some special tricks. And PSD already did some professional mastering on two of the tracks. Thank you, 圣石! These mastered files are too big to upload into my Reverbnation player, unless I convert them to mp3, in which case the sound becomes blurry. So all I can do with them on this site is to place in my store and offer them for sale. Link to my STORE. Of course I would love to share them with you for free. Luckily, I did manage to add them to my myspace music page. (Who would have guessed, Myspace wasn't dead after all!) (The only problem still is that you need to have fast internet to be able to play them.) Therefore, I put them a bit down the list, the tracks' names are: "Up" and "Summer (Mastered)".
Mastering can make a great difference in sound quality! You will hear more better mastered music from me in the future. I am also learning to do mastering myself. My many hours of unpublished music, once remastered, could be worked into several more EP's or LP's. My 'Art Therapy' CD, printed earlier this year, could also be re-mastered.
But, I cannot be bothered by that now. I will be flying to our village tonight and stay there for about two months. I will be helping build our Prop Roots Program's activity center, which will also be our future house, roaming the village, puppeteering with the kids, reading books, eating wonderful food, and going on the internet sometimes, so maybe I can still share some of that with you. Or hear how my friends have been doing!
Anton
 |
| view from future house? |
Wednesday 7 September 2011
Sunday 22 May 2011
Dear Friends
The following is an adaptation from what I wrote to the people that subscribed to the fan list on www.reverbnation.com/AntonLustig, as a kind of newsletter.
Dear Friends,
I hope life has been treating you all very well lately. Thanks again for signing up to this fan list. It’s time for some updates.
You may well know that I do things in a bit of a complicated way. Not just a combination of both painting and music, but also a project for the Jingpo minority, involving education, research and intercultural exchange. At the point that painting and music had become indispensable parts of my destiny, a few years ago, I choose to also start that Jingpo project and try to find ways to integrate it all. I couldn’t just throw away my close connection to the Jingpo, after living in their villages for such long time, and being involved in research on their Zaiwa language for almost twenty years. It would be a difficult combination, but I had to do this because I knew that, after the inevitable hardships, the outcome would be better for all: for the Jingpo, for myself, for the outside worlds, and for Art.
In the course of the coming year, my wife Li Yang and I will move to a Jingpo village and start activities on a regular base there, instead of just in the holidays like we have done the last few years. It’s not easy, and first of all we need to find ways to feed ourselves.
It’s hard, you know, to maintain two different mindsets. The project mindset needs to be rational and pragmatic, though also idealistic. Luckily, Li Yang is better on this side. The artist mindset is one that spirals outward incessantly, always thinking of new ways of putting things. My art thing is much about transcending, surpassing my present life form… Luckily, I also tend to make simple, pure things, with bright colors and notes. The things I make are getting closer to the children’s world of perception. Besides, some of my music is made with the Jingpo people specifically in mind, making use of their musical themes, so there’s more connection to the project.
For the Dutch speaking, there now is a long interview with me on Geledraak.nl, an important info site about China.
The one-hour documentary about me and our project will be broadcasted throughout China in the beginning of June and then posted on-line. This documentary is in Chinese.
I have been painting like crazy on a new series of paintings, in my friend Gao Yuan’s studio in Songzhuang, Beijing. I certainly will publish some stuff about this happy cooperation.
Have been working on my various artist profiles and playlists, on Reverbnation (linked to Facebook’s My band), on Myspace and on a new Chinese douban page. I present myself differently on every site. So, all together a lot of my music can still be listened to for free. A next step is to start selling music on iTunes and such.
I made a CD! If you wouldn’t all be living so far away (in 7 different countries), I would give it to you for free!
photo: me with Jingpo band, early 1990's
Last week, the director of that documentary asked me to record myself singing a specific Jingpo song she heard when we were filming in the Jingpo area, and I decided to add instruments and arrange it into a full piece. Here it is, the piece Yvum mao / 家乡 / Back to the hills. So this is the first piece where I actually use my voice! It will be obvious to everyone that my voice needs training but I think that is not so important here. The song is about longing for the native Jingpo area and the funny thing here is that the singer here is me, the Dutch Jingpo. Therefore, the song could also well be about my deep wish to be living there and to become one with that area, with its great people, green hills and red earth, an environment that is so much full of life.
Happy days and a lot of inspiration to everyone!
Till later,
Anton
Dear Friends,
I hope life has been treating you all very well lately. Thanks again for signing up to this fan list. It’s time for some updates.
You may well know that I do things in a bit of a complicated way. Not just a combination of both painting and music, but also a project for the Jingpo minority, involving education, research and intercultural exchange. At the point that painting and music had become indispensable parts of my destiny, a few years ago, I choose to also start that Jingpo project and try to find ways to integrate it all. I couldn’t just throw away my close connection to the Jingpo, after living in their villages for such long time, and being involved in research on their Zaiwa language for almost twenty years. It would be a difficult combination, but I had to do this because I knew that, after the inevitable hardships, the outcome would be better for all: for the Jingpo, for myself, for the outside worlds, and for Art.
In the course of the coming year, my wife Li Yang and I will move to a Jingpo village and start activities on a regular base there, instead of just in the holidays like we have done the last few years. It’s not easy, and first of all we need to find ways to feed ourselves.
It’s hard, you know, to maintain two different mindsets. The project mindset needs to be rational and pragmatic, though also idealistic. Luckily, Li Yang is better on this side. The artist mindset is one that spirals outward incessantly, always thinking of new ways of putting things. My art thing is much about transcending, surpassing my present life form… Luckily, I also tend to make simple, pure things, with bright colors and notes. The things I make are getting closer to the children’s world of perception. Besides, some of my music is made with the Jingpo people specifically in mind, making use of their musical themes, so there’s more connection to the project.
For the Dutch speaking, there now is a long interview with me on Geledraak.nl, an important info site about China.
The one-hour documentary about me and our project will be broadcasted throughout China in the beginning of June and then posted on-line. This documentary is in Chinese.
I have been painting like crazy on a new series of paintings, in my friend Gao Yuan’s studio in Songzhuang, Beijing. I certainly will publish some stuff about this happy cooperation.
Have been working on my various artist profiles and playlists, on Reverbnation (linked to Facebook’s My band), on Myspace and on a new Chinese douban page. I present myself differently on every site. So, all together a lot of my music can still be listened to for free. A next step is to start selling music on iTunes and such.
I made a CD! If you wouldn’t all be living so far away (in 7 different countries), I would give it to you for free!
photo: me with Jingpo band, early 1990's
Last week, the director of that documentary asked me to record myself singing a specific Jingpo song she heard when we were filming in the Jingpo area, and I decided to add instruments and arrange it into a full piece. Here it is, the piece Yvum mao / 家乡 / Back to the hills. So this is the first piece where I actually use my voice! It will be obvious to everyone that my voice needs training but I think that is not so important here. The song is about longing for the native Jingpo area and the funny thing here is that the singer here is me, the Dutch Jingpo. Therefore, the song could also well be about my deep wish to be living there and to become one with that area, with its great people, green hills and red earth, an environment that is so much full of life.
Happy days and a lot of inspiration to everyone!
Till later,
Anton
Sunday 20 February 2011
Shooting the documentary (1)
I just got back to gray and smoggy Beijing after about two months in subtropical Dehong, the sunny land of the Jingpo minority. Traveling between these two places is nothing unusual for me, but this time I really need some kind of break, to do some reorganizing, and get used to the inhumane Beijing winter. The last week there in Dehong was the first week of shooting for the documentary. A team from Tianjin TV is making a documentary, with me myself, including my art and my life with the Jingpo, as the main topic. Since I am a modest and shy person, one can imagine that this period of shooting may have had some impact on me.
pic (1) the team, on a bridge between China and Myanmar
pic (2) the team (minus one) plus Li Yang and me (left) on the same bridge
A formidable team they are: two cameramen, the director, her boss the chief director, plus the beautiful presenter, all of them very pleasant people. They are greatly experienced and very professional, and since they are not in for making fake and superficial stuff, my main task was just to be myself. Unfortunately, being ‘just’ myself can be a very hard task for me, since I am a rather multiple being and tend to make the simplest things very complicated. While you watch the following pictures, I will do some rethinking. More will follow in the next blog.
(3) with the old man living on top of Loilung Hill
(4) back in time, once again studying with my old informant Pai Kun while he is cooking
Lately, every night I dream that I am still in some Jingpo village and that the filming continues there. I assist a shaman on some vague ceremony or we together are waiting for some surreal painting activity for village kids to start. I wonder how long these dreams will remain coming back. The real filming will start again in a week or so here in Beijing, and will be mainly about: me painting, doing music, cooking, talking about life, and maybe some unexpected other topics.
pic (1) the team, on a bridge between China and Myanmar
pic (2) the team (minus one) plus Li Yang and me (left) on the same bridge
A formidable team they are: two cameramen, the director, her boss the chief director, plus the beautiful presenter, all of them very pleasant people. They are greatly experienced and very professional, and since they are not in for making fake and superficial stuff, my main task was just to be myself. Unfortunately, being ‘just’ myself can be a very hard task for me, since I am a rather multiple being and tend to make the simplest things very complicated. While you watch the following pictures, I will do some rethinking. More will follow in the next blog.
(3) with the old man living on top of Loilung Hill
(4) back in time, once again studying with my old informant Pai Kun while he is cooking
Lately, every night I dream that I am still in some Jingpo village and that the filming continues there. I assist a shaman on some vague ceremony or we together are waiting for some surreal painting activity for village kids to start. I wonder how long these dreams will remain coming back. The real filming will start again in a week or so here in Beijing, and will be mainly about: me painting, doing music, cooking, talking about life, and maybe some unexpected other topics.
Saturday 13 November 2010
My ‘Zaiwa Grammar and Dictionary’ for Dummies (1)
Now that my books finally have been published, this is a good time to look back on why and how they have come to be. And to offer some basic knowledge on one of the strangest of human phenomena: language. Before I can talk about my books properly, I need to clear up some misconceptions and blurriness around these matters.
Thousands of languages are known to exist in our world. (Mainly as the result of globalization, more than half of them, at least, will have become ‘extinct’ within hundred years. But let us keep this topic for later.)
Many people do not make a clear distinction between written and spoken language. These people should know that most of the world’s languages are unwritten. Spoken language is the basis, whereas writing systems are useful innovations or ‘extra’ features. Languages can be written in all kinds of ways. Some languages are written in pictograms, such as Chinese and old Egyptian, and others are written in the most various types of alphabets. (There are several tens of them, such as the Latin one, the Cyrillic, Arabic, Cherokee, Burmese etc., many of which can be used for different languages. One very special type is International Phonetic Alphabet, which aims at pinpointing the language exactly the way it sounds, like a recording device in letters.)
My set of books is named ‘Zaiwa Grammar and Dictionary’, so it is NOT only a dictionary. In fact, the grammar part of my work consists of more than twice as many pages than the dictionary. The reason why many people think that my work is basically a dictionary may well be that the meaning of a ‘grammar’ is not very clear. A ‘grammar’ is an extensive description of all the workings and building blocks of a language, from its sounds and their variations onwards, and discussing as many as possible of the grammatical tools and how to use them, while also PROOVING all statements, through numerous examples.
My books are not boring!
My books contain all building blocks and instruments and a large part of the vocabulary, of a world named ‘Zaiwa language’, a unique and richly varied world of possibilities for conceiving and expressing things. Any language is a world on its own. Of course: special living environments (subtropical areas, polar steppes, etc.) and collective memories (for example: a history of innumerous migrations for thousands of years) also make things interesting. (And once you have the tools, you can start to explore the old tales and songs, etc.) These factors do make the research and the language contact more exiting, but just as interesting is the language itself. It is always amazing to see how greatly languages can differ in the ways of expressing things, with not only all the words different, but also very much different grammatical tools. At other times, the similarities with other languages as for their ways of expressing can be striking. To cut short: I believe that ‘language contact’ can feed the mind.
In my books I have reduced the use of linguistic jargon to a minimum and left lots of space for example sentences, about daily life and other, sometimes funny, situations. These examples are for illustrating or proving the use of the words or grammatical items in question, but also for showing how these components ‘cohabit’ with others within the language, and for the reader they can be used for peeping into the language on a larger scale, and testing unto what extend one can find one’s way in. (These books are also my own Private playground, since I enjoy feeling the language coming to life when I read them.) Though these books may not be easy, I think their value is that they offer a ‘window’ into the world of Zaiwa language.
My research took place in the settings of PhD studies at Leiden University and was much inspired by the scientific mindset taught by my tutors, for which I am much grateful of course. This undertaking formed part of a specific scientific field: the comparative linguistics of the language family in case.
Zaiwa belongs to the Tibeto-Burman language family (or Sino-Tibetan: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Tibetan_languages), including a few big Asian languages such as the Chinese and Tibetan languages and Burmese, but the most of them being really small. Scientists in this field - but not me! – can use these materials in their reconstructions of proto-languages, which are the languages that are thought to have preceded certain groups of languages, before they had split up and diversified because of migrations, being separated by mountains or rivers, etc. This is all unwritten ethnic history going back thousands of years, often exceeding the scope of archeology. In recent years, genetics has been used alongside linguistics (such as by my tutor George van Driem) to trace back ancient migrations. And indeed, the correlation between genes and languages is also an immensely interesting field for scientists to explore.
Grammars and dictionaries like mine are mostly only read by colleagues in the same field, but they can also be treasured as monuments, since most of these languages are disappearing. They can also be used for reference and justification when making writing systems and educational materials.
One could also say that my two books are the outcome of a kind of very special game: to expose a person to a language completely different from his/her mother tongue and spoken in far away place, and let him/her investigate this language totally from scratch, and moreover describe it systematically so that other non-speakers of that language will also understand. Will the results be objective? Expertise and tricks are needed, learned from very competent teachers, but also a good intuition.
“Is Zaiwa a ‘dialect’?”
Zaiwa is one of the five languages spoken by the Jingpo minority within China. These should be referred to as languages, and certainly not as dialects of Chinese, Burmese or any other languages. The scientific ways for dividing between languages and dialects are often different from how people normally tend to speak about these matters. But there is one popular saying which is in fact quite true: “a language is a dialect with an army” (and a government, a currency, a flag etc.). For most people, a ‘dialect’ refers to some unified form of speech spoken by a relatively small community that somehow belongs to larger communities speaking in a different way. Just like in China; in order to simplify matters and to emphasize a sense of unity, all variants of Chinese are normally called ‘dialects’ (方言), whereas scientifically, Chinese rather is a group of languages, of which each can be divided into numerous dialects.
But how do scientists distinguish languages and dialects then? I am afraid this is rather a complicated matter, which I would like to keep to some experts on these matters. The rate of mutual intelligibility is often a criterion, though not always decisive. Sometimes, two dialects may sound very different but, upon a closer look, have a lot of structural similarities. My teacher once joked that Dutch and German should in fact be called dialects of one another, since they don’t differ so much. To consider Swedish and Norwegian to be different languages should be really ridiculous then, because they are very similar.
People often underestimate the differences existing between languages, given that for outsiders they would all sound just as unintelligible. Very small languages can also be very different from bigger ones spoken in surrounding areas. (There even are language isolates, like Basque and some languages in the Himalayas, that in all their basics are completely unlike other languages around, and that are the result of ancient migrations.) People sometimes ask whether the difference between Zaiwa and Chinese may be something like Dutch and Frysian. Well, no, maybe it would rather be like between Dutch and Russian, or English and Italian.
But what IS in these books then?
The next piece will be entitled: the Fun of Zaiwa.
Thousands of languages are known to exist in our world. (Mainly as the result of globalization, more than half of them, at least, will have become ‘extinct’ within hundred years. But let us keep this topic for later.)
Many people do not make a clear distinction between written and spoken language. These people should know that most of the world’s languages are unwritten. Spoken language is the basis, whereas writing systems are useful innovations or ‘extra’ features. Languages can be written in all kinds of ways. Some languages are written in pictograms, such as Chinese and old Egyptian, and others are written in the most various types of alphabets. (There are several tens of them, such as the Latin one, the Cyrillic, Arabic, Cherokee, Burmese etc., many of which can be used for different languages. One very special type is International Phonetic Alphabet, which aims at pinpointing the language exactly the way it sounds, like a recording device in letters.)
My set of books is named ‘Zaiwa Grammar and Dictionary’, so it is NOT only a dictionary. In fact, the grammar part of my work consists of more than twice as many pages than the dictionary. The reason why many people think that my work is basically a dictionary may well be that the meaning of a ‘grammar’ is not very clear. A ‘grammar’ is an extensive description of all the workings and building blocks of a language, from its sounds and their variations onwards, and discussing as many as possible of the grammatical tools and how to use them, while also PROOVING all statements, through numerous examples.
My books are not boring!
My books contain all building blocks and instruments and a large part of the vocabulary, of a world named ‘Zaiwa language’, a unique and richly varied world of possibilities for conceiving and expressing things. Any language is a world on its own. Of course: special living environments (subtropical areas, polar steppes, etc.) and collective memories (for example: a history of innumerous migrations for thousands of years) also make things interesting. (And once you have the tools, you can start to explore the old tales and songs, etc.) These factors do make the research and the language contact more exiting, but just as interesting is the language itself. It is always amazing to see how greatly languages can differ in the ways of expressing things, with not only all the words different, but also very much different grammatical tools. At other times, the similarities with other languages as for their ways of expressing can be striking. To cut short: I believe that ‘language contact’ can feed the mind.
In my books I have reduced the use of linguistic jargon to a minimum and left lots of space for example sentences, about daily life and other, sometimes funny, situations. These examples are for illustrating or proving the use of the words or grammatical items in question, but also for showing how these components ‘cohabit’ with others within the language, and for the reader they can be used for peeping into the language on a larger scale, and testing unto what extend one can find one’s way in. (These books are also my own Private playground, since I enjoy feeling the language coming to life when I read them.) Though these books may not be easy, I think their value is that they offer a ‘window’ into the world of Zaiwa language.
My research took place in the settings of PhD studies at Leiden University and was much inspired by the scientific mindset taught by my tutors, for which I am much grateful of course. This undertaking formed part of a specific scientific field: the comparative linguistics of the language family in case.
Zaiwa belongs to the Tibeto-Burman language family (or Sino-Tibetan: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Tibetan_languages), including a few big Asian languages such as the Chinese and Tibetan languages and Burmese, but the most of them being really small. Scientists in this field - but not me! – can use these materials in their reconstructions of proto-languages, which are the languages that are thought to have preceded certain groups of languages, before they had split up and diversified because of migrations, being separated by mountains or rivers, etc. This is all unwritten ethnic history going back thousands of years, often exceeding the scope of archeology. In recent years, genetics has been used alongside linguistics (such as by my tutor George van Driem) to trace back ancient migrations. And indeed, the correlation between genes and languages is also an immensely interesting field for scientists to explore.
Grammars and dictionaries like mine are mostly only read by colleagues in the same field, but they can also be treasured as monuments, since most of these languages are disappearing. They can also be used for reference and justification when making writing systems and educational materials.
One could also say that my two books are the outcome of a kind of very special game: to expose a person to a language completely different from his/her mother tongue and spoken in far away place, and let him/her investigate this language totally from scratch, and moreover describe it systematically so that other non-speakers of that language will also understand. Will the results be objective? Expertise and tricks are needed, learned from very competent teachers, but also a good intuition.
“Is Zaiwa a ‘dialect’?”
Zaiwa is one of the five languages spoken by the Jingpo minority within China. These should be referred to as languages, and certainly not as dialects of Chinese, Burmese or any other languages. The scientific ways for dividing between languages and dialects are often different from how people normally tend to speak about these matters. But there is one popular saying which is in fact quite true: “a language is a dialect with an army” (and a government, a currency, a flag etc.). For most people, a ‘dialect’ refers to some unified form of speech spoken by a relatively small community that somehow belongs to larger communities speaking in a different way. Just like in China; in order to simplify matters and to emphasize a sense of unity, all variants of Chinese are normally called ‘dialects’ (方言), whereas scientifically, Chinese rather is a group of languages, of which each can be divided into numerous dialects.
But how do scientists distinguish languages and dialects then? I am afraid this is rather a complicated matter, which I would like to keep to some experts on these matters. The rate of mutual intelligibility is often a criterion, though not always decisive. Sometimes, two dialects may sound very different but, upon a closer look, have a lot of structural similarities. My teacher once joked that Dutch and German should in fact be called dialects of one another, since they don’t differ so much. To consider Swedish and Norwegian to be different languages should be really ridiculous then, because they are very similar.
People often underestimate the differences existing between languages, given that for outsiders they would all sound just as unintelligible. Very small languages can also be very different from bigger ones spoken in surrounding areas. (There even are language isolates, like Basque and some languages in the Himalayas, that in all their basics are completely unlike other languages around, and that are the result of ancient migrations.) People sometimes ask whether the difference between Zaiwa and Chinese may be something like Dutch and Frysian. Well, no, maybe it would rather be like between Dutch and Russian, or English and Italian.
But what IS in these books then?
The next piece will be entitled: the Fun of Zaiwa.
Monday 18 October 2010
Trickster Rabbit and the Bamboo Puppeteers
Adapted English version of an article for the magazine De Wereld van het Poppenspel (the World of Puppetry):
That July afternoon, each coming in from other parts of China, Harriet van Reek and I finally met up in Dehong prefecture, an ethnically very diverse subtropical area, almost on the Burmese border. It was the first time Harriet was traveling through China and from that day on I was her guide, interpreter and friend.
In my previous blog, written before the event started, I already introduced the Dutch artist Harriet van Reek (www.harrietvanreek.nl) and showed some pictures of her work.
I have been visiting the Jingpo ethnic minority area since almost 20 years ago, and one could call me an expert on Zaiwa, the Jingpo’s main language within China. Needless to say, I know a lot of people here and we are starting a project… Wait, I’ll tell you later because the puppetry performance is starting… Now we are going to see Jingpo children performing their own stories with the puppets they made themselves…..
Rabbit is the smartest of all animals, fooling just everyone. Some even get themselves tricked by him much more than once so you can laugh about Dragon’s foolishness. Or Tiger’s, whose stripes and bad throat are all results of Rabbit’s trickery.
One day Rabbit fell into a deep pit. It was so deep he couldn’t get out. He was trapped! Then he heard someone coming. It was Tiger. “Hey, Tiger brother, where are you going? The sky is going to fall down! You’d better come down here! Quickly!” Tiger believed him, and was very frightened, and jumped into the hole. And there they sat together. After a while, Rabbit began to tickle Tiger. Tiger said, “Stop that, you little pest, or I’ll throw you out of here!” “Oh, no, please don’t do that, Tiger!” begged Rabbit. But after a little while, he began to tickle Tiger again. Tiger was furious. He took hold of Rabbit and threw him out of the pit. Rabbit jumped up gleefully and ran away.
The full story still went on for a while. After he got out of the pit, Rabbit threw down a lot of dried leaves and a piece of burning firewood. But we didn’t go that far that day.
This opening of our show became a bit messy, which we didn’t really mind though, because of the boys’ improvisation while I was reading out this story in Zaiwa. The funny thing was that they played part of this story down on the floor, invisible for the audience. Of course, since weren’t Rabbit and Tiger deep down in a pit then?
These and other pieces were performed, by different groups of kids, at the last day of our project (August 8th, 2010), watched by parents, teachers and a local tv crew. Our video is on: Youtube and facebook.com/PropRoots. Pictures of this project are in the pictures folder here. The music (about “Rabbit”) played between acts and used as ‘working music’ (“Summer”) was from my hand, and can be heard on: Myspace.
This is the story coined by a group of slightly elder girls and also played on the last day:
Four very close girlfriends went into the forest to pick mushrooms. One of them got lost, but somehow later on appeared again. But actually this was a demon, but the other girls could not do otherwise than believe her, since she answered all the questions correctly. This demon girl later on persuaded them to go into the forest again, which they did. This girl acted more and more strangely and the other girls unmasked the demon only just in time. They cut open her belly and out came the poor real girlfriend. The demon, though, felt remorse and in the end they all became good friends.
The aim of my Prop Roots Program is to make use of my tight bond with the Chinese, western and Jingpo cultures, to make connections with interesting, creative and scientifically minded individuals and institutions, to achieve a wide range of projects in the integrated fields of education, research and exchange. A great meeting place between various disciplines and cultures is coming into existence here, empowering the Jingpo and enhancing the Jingpo children’s future. Worth noting here is that not only for foreigners but also for most fellow Chinese citizens, the ‘Jingpo’ world is also still largely unknown, thus increasing the value of intercultural exchange even more. This platform is also the breeding ground for unprecedented creations that I always have wished to feed upon, and where I will continue making art and music, though more often with Jingpo children as a sounding board, more for project aims, and more deeply breathing the spirit of Jingpo culture. There will also be guest studios!
Dehong prefecture, where the Jingpo live (counting ± 130.000 within China and much more numerous in Burma) is a beautiful place inhabited by wonderful people. For decades, the Jingpo have been struggling with enormous problems around HIV/Aids and drugs, poverty and the loss of their traditional culture. The Prop Roots Program can provide better education, making the kids stronger and more creative, so that they can have a better future. We also want to set up inspiring video and other exchanges with schools in the Netherlands or other countries, and invite interesting people to come and teach and do more projects. Throughout this all, we also aim to reintroduce elements from the traditional oral culture, often making use of fieldwork materials collected by myself. More information can be found on www.facebook.com/PropRoots (which is also accessible for non-facebook people).
All puppeteers and other enthusiasts are highly welcome here and together we will place Dehong on the “world map” op puppetry and special arts! There are plenty of things to do!
This was our second experiment with entertaining and teaching Jingpo children, while also making use of elements of the traditional Jingpo oral culture. Again it showed that it is not so easy to wake the kids’ interest into the old stories. So, we should not put too much emphasis on those elements. And isn’t it even better to have the kids making their own stories, anyway?
I should also tell that on the first day, Harriet and I were rather disappointed and slightly panicking, because during the morning session the kids were surprisingly serious and silent, and, moreover, just a few showed up for the afternoon session. Now we know that this was because (1) they were not used to this kind of playful event, and (2) they were too glad they had holiday and didn’t want to return to their school, with so many associations to boringness and tiresomeness. (The holidays also cause addictions to television and playing outside.) But, children are still unpredictable, and gradually they became more and more excited and even very creative, as can be seen from the photos. So finally it became a lot of fun.
This may have been a small event, but, especially since it is the first of its kind in this area, it will have a long-lasting influence, and it is a good example for future projects.
Anton Lustig
Beijing, October 18, 2010
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)