Music of China

Music of China refers to the music of the Chinese people, which may be the music of the Han Chinese in the course of Chinese history as well as ethnic minorities in today's China. It also includes music produced by people of Chinese origin in some territories outside mainland China using traditional Chinese instruments or in the Chinese language. It includes forms from the traditional and modern, Western inspired, commercial popular music, folk, art, and classical forms, and innovative combinations of them. Documents and archaeological artifacts from early Chinese civilization show a well-developed musical culture as early as the Zhou dynasty (1122 BC – 256 BC) that set the tone for the continual development of Chinese musicology in following dynasties. These developed into a wide variety of forms through succeeding dynasties, producing the heritage that is part of the Chinese cultural landscape today. Traditional forms continued to evolve in the modern times, and over the course of the last centuries forms appropriated from the West have become widespread. Today's Chinese music is both rooted in history and part of a global culture. According to legends, the founder of music in Chinese mythology was Ling Lun who, at the request of the Yellow Emperor to create a system of music, made bamboo pipes tuned to the sounds of birds including the phoenix. A twelve-tone musical system was created based on the pitches of the bamboo pipes, the first of these pipes produced the "yellow bell" (黃鐘) pitch, and a set of tuned bells were then created from the pipes. Archaeological evidence indicates that music culture developed in China from a very early period. Excavations in Jiahu Village in Wuyang County, Henan found bone flutes dated to 9,000 years ago, and clay music instruments called Xun thought to be 7,000 years old have been found in the Hemudu sites in Zhejiang and Banpo in Xi'an. During the Zhou dynasty, a formal system of court and ceremonial music later termed yayue (meaning "elegant music") was established.