(b nr Wuxi, 1902; d 1981). Chinese Daoist ritual drum master. Zhu Qinfu was a Daoist priest and master of the ritual music of the southern Jiangsu area known as Shifan gu and Shifan luogu. Brought up in a family of Daoists in Wuxi, he also frequented the ιlite Tianyun she society. Around 1940 he set up a group of outstanding Daoist musicians called Shi wuchai. His close collaboration with the musicologist Yang Yinliu from 1937 resulted in major and influential publications on the local Shifan music. In 1947 he led performances in Shanghai; though published and broadcast, the recordings have not apparently survived the Cultural Revolution.
Under the People's Republic of China, in 1952 Zhu was incongruously enlisted to the orchestra of the Central Opera and Ballet Academy in Beijing. He was liberated from this job by the cutbacks of 1962, whereupon the major conservatories, to their credit, seized on the chance to employ him to teach and record his old art. This was interrupted by the Cultural Revolution; he was only able to continue his teaching in 1978. The Shanghai Conservatory made audio and video recordings of his drum playing before his death in 1981.
See also China, §IV, 4(i).
Li Minxiong: Yi Sunan chuida minjian yinyuejia Zhu Qinfu [In memory of Zhu Qinfu, folk wind-and-percussion musician from southern Jiangsu], Zhongguo yinyue (1982), no.3, pp.556
Yuan Jingfang: Minzu qiyue xinshang shouce [Handbook for the appreciation of Chinese instrumental music] (Beijing, 1986), 1312
Qian Jiandong: Nan guwang Zhu Qinfu [Zhu Qinfu, southern drum king], Renmin yinyue (1988), no.7, pp.357
China: Folk Instrumental Traditions, AIMP VDE 822-823 (1995)
S. Jones: Folk Music of China: Living Instrumental Traditions (Oxford, 1995, 2/1998 with CD), 24669
Special Collection of Contemporary Chinese Musicians, Wind Records TCD 1018 (1996)
STEPHEN JONES