Derek Lim writes:

>It's incomprehensible only if you know why it was started....

Yes, I do remember your question.  But since when have people adhered
so religiously to the original confines of a question which begins a
thread?:-)

It remains curious, at the very least.

>Now...how _has_ the West influenced Chinese music?  In this century,
>mainly in two ways I think: * politics * musical ideas

Sure, I agree with this.  There has been a conscious move in China to
create Western-style music.  It is partly a political decision, and of
course this has meant the incorporation of real ideas, sometimes in
interesting combinations.

But...  let us not forget that China still has its own styles of music
which have not been very much affected, if at all.  I am personally an
afficionado of guqin, and this plays the same repertory as it always did.
Yes, it was officially suppressed in the Cultural Revolution, but it did
not disappear, and it is fully "back" again...  not with official support,
but more than enough toleration.  The sheer value & quality sustain it, as
does the tradition itself, of course.  The same can be said to some extent
for many of the traditional instrumental repertories, and there are even
attempts to reconstruct the T'ang court music, etc.  In some ways, one
might then extend this Western influence to ideas of musicology and
reconstruction of earlier repertory, but through the techniques of da-pu,
etc., this had already been an element of Chinese music and aesthetics.
That many modern Chinese, even in the educated class, do not seem to
understand their own music is a source of dismay to me.

Todd McComb
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 [Pot shot from the gallery: Would you say modern Westerners, even among
 the educated class, understand their own music?  -Dave]