Tzu Lho: Simmering Songs
Byron Au Yong
About this work:
Ga-ji. I had to look the word up. It is in Cantonese, a language spoken by Chinese sojourners from the mid-1800s to the present. A word many Cantonese speakers now would not understand, for it refers to the specific experience of early Chinese immigrants who came to the United States.
Ga-ji means "false papers" and refers to the documents used during the Chinese Exclusion Act. In 1906, the San Francisco earthquake and fire destroyed birth records. This enabled many Chinese to claim U.S. citizenship as a birthright.
Thousands of these immigrants spent weeks to years on Angel Island, the West Coast version of New York's Ellis Island. Some of the Chinese gained entry. Other inmates were sent back or committed suicide. They leave a legacy of carved poetry in the walls of the immigration holding station, an expression of their impressions being away from their homeland and of finding a harsh reception in America.
There are over 37 million overseas Chinese. Three million live in the United States. The rest are scattered throughout the world, in Singapore, London, Toronto, Buenos Aires, and other cities. Some consider themselves overseas Chinese, yet others do not, preferring instead to identify with their adopted country. In creating a work that draws on the Chinese experience, I find inspiration in those who have left China.
To do otherwise would be untrue to my experience. My version of being Chinese lives in the stories of my family who migrated and who now live in the United States, Philippines, and Canada as well as with the overseas Chinese I have met in Paris, Berlin, New York, Los Angeles, and other cities throughout the world. My work merges impressions of my Chinese background with an exploration of multiple musical conventions.
Tzu Lho is a made-up phrase. I coined the title from my limited Chinese vocabulary. It means "simmering songs" and is a combination of Mandarin and my family dialect Minnan Hua, from Fujian Province. Some of the text in this work is Chinatown Chinese, a dialect spoken by early immigrants from Guangzhou who settled in California. This language is passing away with the generation that created it. I search for the longing and loss inherent in the sounds of fading words; in the emotions they evoke that transcend the literal meaning of the conventions of language.
Hanng san. Another Cantonese word I discovered in my research. It means "walking the mountain" and refers to a pilgrimage to ancestral graves. Here Chinese set off firecrackers and make ritual offerings. We are all mountains of memories. On a winter day, you may find your lineage around your heart setting off sparks. Your visible breath comes from the smoke of their fire.
Byron Au Yong
Year composed: 2000
Duration: 00:06:00
Ensemble type: Chorus, with or without Solo Voices
Instrumentation:
Instrumentation notes: 36 voices with 72 pieces of paper