Sound of the Other: Representations of Pipa in Medieval Chinese Literature, 7th-13th Centuries

This talk investigates the evolving literary representations of the pipa, a plucked string instrument prominent in medieval China, in writings from the Tang and Song dynasties. Unlike instruments associated with moral cultivation and musical pedagogy, the pipa remained unbound by such interpretive traditions, allowing it to be a vehicle for fantastical, morally ambiguous, and emotionally charged representations of music. Tang and Song writers thus imagined the pipa as a sonic emblem of the “other,” associating it with foreignness, supernatural and ritual practices, and alluring femininity.