[SunkenCiv]

Archeologists from the Chifeng Cultural Academy have scrutinized a flute made of bones, which was unearthed at the Xinglongwa Site in Inner Mongolian in 1986. The ancient flute has long been kept at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing. It wasn't until recently that the flute was shown to the public.

[SunkenCiv]

One man's bid to keep China's ancient music alive
AFP
Monday, April 20, 2009

An obsessive passion to revive a nearly forgotten music enjoyed by China's elite more than a thousand years ago has cost Li Kai his wife, his job and most of his savings. But the energetic, ever-smiling 57-year-old insists he has no regrets... The group plays every week in a pagoda in Xian in the northern province of Shaanxi, once known as Chang'an, grand capital of China during the Tang Dynasty (618-907), which is widely regarded as a high point in Chinese civilisation... Li's 18-member group is a mixed bunch, including a fashionable 22-year-old tourism student and a 59-year-old policeman nearing retirement. Li said that 60 years ago, when the People's Republic was founded following decades of civil war and revolution, there were 50 groups practising this music in Shaanxi. Now, after the ravages of the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s and 1970s which sought to wipe out China's ancient traditions, only 12 groups remain throughout the country, totalling 200 people. Li says Tang music is the earliest form of written music. While some academics believe it originated later than the seventh century, there is a general consensus that the music is among China's oldest. It blends drums, bells, flutes and pipes, and during the Tang Dynasty performances were for the elite only, something Li finds amusing as he points to the pedestrians who stop and listen as his group plays... His passion has cost him more than money -- his wife left him seven years ago, saying he was putting the music before her.

[SunkenCiv]

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[wildbill]

you have lost your flute, Grasshopper.

[Hegemony Cricket]

"The ancient flute was made from the bones of bustard..."

Some relative of yours, perhaps?