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Sylvia Woods Harp Center
March 2025 Newsletter
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In early February, I received a fascinating email from Nancy Thym, a harpist I have known for many years. Here's the first paragraph.
Last November, I was invited to Zhengzou and Xinxiang in China to take part in the filming of a video produced by Henan Broadcasting along with harp colleagues from Iran, Turkey, Greece, India, Senegal, Scotland, and China, playing on various types of ancient harps. We recorded and filmed in studios, at places of interest in Zhengzou and Xinxiang, and along the Yellow River. It was difficult to perform in temperatures below freezing, but we were treated like royalty wherever we went.
I asked her to write an article for this newsletter, and she kindly agreed.
This newsletter is longer than usual, but I believe you will be fascinated by this unique harp adventure! Here's the YouTube link to the video that was the culmination of the project.
This photo of Nancy was taken during her trip to China. She is sitting with a Chinese dragon konghou harp reconstructed from the painting “Ladies Playing Musical Instruments” by Qiu Zhu, The Palace Museum, China, Ming Dynasty (15th century AD).
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Like many ancient Mesopotamian, Assyrian, Egyptian, Persian, Turkish and Japanese harps, the Chinese konghou (kōnghóu) is a so-called “vertical angular harp.” The string arm and soundbox are joined at an angle rather than an arch. The soundbox, which is often arched and covered with hide or skin, rises up over the player’s head.
Nancy also wrote a brief history of the Chinese konghou harp for me, which I will include in next month's newsletter.
And here's a bit of background about Nancy.
Nancy Thym's programs, which combine harp music, songs, stories, and dance, are warmly received worldwide. She is known for her ability to transform her extensive research on the history of the harp as well as traditional and early music into programs that are both entertaining and educational – storytelling combined with songs and harp music, ballad programs on specific themes, or one-woman theater pieces in which she portrays harpists of the past. Her Archive and Museum for Harp History in Germany houses a collection of over 40 historical harps and harp reproductions. Nancy is also recognized as the leading scholar on the history and playing technique of the 19th-century wandering harp ladies of Europe, as well as the Norwegian krogharpe, a unique harp that died out in Norway in the 18th century. She divides her time between her birthplace in California and her home in Germany.
Thank you for your articles, Nancy. I'm glad you are sharing your awesome adventure with us.
-- Sylvia
| | Diversity Respected and Beauty Shared | | |
Diversity Respected and Beauty Shared
A Film Project for Henan Broadcasting Television
for the Chinese Lunar New Year.
-- Article by Nancy Thym
In late November 2024, I was in Scotland, rehearsing with my colleague Bill Taylor, the virtuosic player of the Scottish and Irish wire-strung clarsach and specialist for medieval harp playing techniques. While there, Ardival Harps, for whom Bill works, received an email from Şirin Pancaroğlu of Turkey asking if they could recommend someone who played medieval music and would be available to come to Zhengzhou, China between December 17 and 23 to record a video with other players of ancient harps from around the world, to be aired for the Chinese Lunar New Year.
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The project was initiated by Lu Lu, a famous player of the modern Chinese konghou. Lu Lu teaches modern konghou at the China Conservatory of Music and serves as Vice President of the Chinese Konghou Professional Committee. She became interested in the ancient konghou, and her family created the Jiuding Konghou Museum in Xinxiang City with over 200 reconstructions of ancient konghou. Her goal, along with her team, was not only to record the video but also to form an association for the preservation of ancient harp and harp-related instruments.
Bill and I met on Zoom with Lu Lu and her husband, and they immediately invited us to participate in the project. When Lu Lu learned that I had been studying the Hurrian hymns and the musical system written on cuneiform tablets from Ugarit, the most ancient form of musical notation in existence (2nd millennium BCE), she asked if I would be willing to play on a reconstruction of a harp based on those depicted on reliefs at Nineveh (660-650 BCE) which they had built for the Jiuding Konghou Museum. In the photo, it looked similar to my Egyptian harp, so I agreed. But I had no idea of its actual size until I arrived in China!
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We had exactly two weeks until our time of departure. We needed to receive an official invitation and procure visas. Most importantly, we had to practice the music for the ensemble piece, learn the words to the Chinese folk song we were to sing, and improvise a short solo section (for a harp I had never played before). The visa process was fraught with difficulties, but my visa finally arrived two days before departure.
The moment I landed in Beijing on December 17, I felt like Alice in Wonderland. At Beijing airport, I recognized my two colleagues from Greece by the lyres they were carrying while standing in line at passport control. None of us had difficulties entering China. Five people from Lu Lu’s team greeted us – two translators, a driver, Lu Lu’s sister, and her business manager. During our five-hour trip to Zhengzhou, we saw the amazing high-rise architecture of Beijing contrasted with the exquisite filigree beauty of the Forbidden City and the expanse of Tiananmen Square. When we arrived at our hotel, we were treated to a feast. The food was always spectacular during our week-long stay, and we rarely ate the same thing twice.
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One reason I was willing to drop everything and travel to China on two weeks' notice was to have the opportunity to meet other players of ancient harps and lyres whom I would never have met otherwise.
Diabel Cissokho from Senegal enjoys a unique position within our team. Unlike those of us who have had to study ancient manuscripts and iconography in order to pursue ancient music, Diabel was born into a family of griots, so he has inherited a living tradition going back at least 15 generations. A griot is a combination poet/storyteller/songwriter/historian/messenger traveling through the world. Diabel plays the Kora, an African harp-lute. The body is made from a calabash with leather stretched over it. It usually has 21 strings attached at the bottom of the instrument, running over a bridge and leading to a post protruding from the calabash to which the other end of the strings are attached. Formerly, the strings were attached to tuning collars, which needed to be pushed and twisted to tune. Now, they are often equipped with guitar tuning pegs. You can watch a 38-minute documentary about Diabel and visit his YouTube channel.
| | Theodore Koumartzis belongs to a family of luthiers who founded the Luthieros Workshop near Thessaloniki in Greece. He, his father, and his two brothers all work at and promote the workshop, which specializes in building ancient Greek musical instruments such as the lyre that he played in the video. The family also runs the Seikilo Museum in Thessaloniki, which exhibits reconstructions of ancient instruments from Greece, Rome, Egypt, Mesopotamia, etc. | | |
Theodore’s music partner, multi-instrumentalist and composer Marios Podaras performed on a Megiddo lyre built by Lutherios and based on a lyre pictured on a piece of ivory from Megiddo in present Israel from ca. 1350-1150 BCE.
Theodore and Marios have performed all over the world with various ancient lyres playing both ancient and experimental music. They have worked with many harpists, singers, and other musicians, including California harpist Diana Rowan.
| | Sivasubramanian (Siva) Muthusamy from India is an architect and archaeologist. He became interested in the Indian arched harp or yazh after studying ancient Buddhist manuscripts. The method of construction is described in these manuscripts. There are also many arched harps depicted on stone carvings in India. Siva conceived and constructed the harps. His colleague Tharun Sekar usually plays them, but sadly, he could not get his visa in time, so he was not able to join us. | | Bill Taylor is a strong promoter of both the wire-strung clarsach, as played in the Scottish Highlands and Ireland between the 10th to 18th centuries, and the gut-strung renaissance bray harp, which was fitted with wooden bray pins that lightly touched the strings and caused them to buzz. He is a leading authority on the Robert ap Huw manuscript, containing the earliest harp music from anywhere in Europe, employing the fingernail technique specified in the manuscript, whilst reading from a facsimile of the tablature and using modern copies of historical harps. | | Seifollah Shokri from Iran is a researcher, builder, and player of ancient Iranian musical instruments. He has been involved in many UNESCO projects. In China, he played a chang, a vertical angular harp of his own construction strung with silk strings he produced himself. For me, Seifollah was the poet and philosopher of the group. Even though everything he said needed to be translated from Farsi into Chinese and then into English, his words and music were very moving. His passionate pleas for global peace and understanding through music marked our presentations and mutual undertakings. | | Şirin Pancaroğlu from Turkey is an internationally known player of the modern pedal harp who became interested in the history of her country’s music. The ancient Turkish çeng died out at the end of the 17th century. So, in order to play this music on the appropriate instrument, she studied the harps depicted in medieval to early modern Persian and Ottoman book illustrations, reliefs, and ceramics and had reconstructions built of the ancient Turkish çeng. These were vertical angular harps very similar to those depicted in Assyria. They had soundboards of leather and probably silk strings. Şirin is the founder of the Turkish Harp Project. In this photo she is wearing a Turkish wedding dress that has been in her family for 200 years. | | |
Everywhere we went, we were accompanied by a large team of translators, photographers, sound engineers, hair and make-up artists, and the film and recording directors. Everything was documented in film and photos. Several television and news teams filmed and interviewed us. Many short trailers, interviews, and news spots were shown on national television, leading up to the original airing of the video. Therefore, we took our instruments with us everywhere we went as well. Luckily, I had packed a small medieval rota, or harp psaltery, into my luggage because I would not have been able to carry the Mesopotamian harp everywhere.
When we visited the Henan Museum in Zhengzhou, we were filmed playing in front of the museum for crowds of school children. Once inside the museum, another crowd gathered as Seifollah played his Iranian flute in front of the case exhibiting a 7000-year-old Neolithic bone flute found in Jiahu, Wuyang, China, one of the world’s oldest musical instruments still in existence. We were also filmed while visiting and playing in front of the famous Shaolin Kung-fu temple. But it was not all work. We were also treated to a Chinese massage and a lovely tea ceremony.
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One of our stay's most moving moments was the reception we received at the Jiuding Konghou Museum in Xinxiang City. Drones were hovering as we exited the bus. TV cameras were everywhere. A red carpet led us to the museum, where we were greeted by cultural and political dignitaries, among them the mayor of Xinxiang City and the cultural minister of Henan Province. A symposium was held in which each of us described our research, our instruments, and our music. We received three different certificates from the cultural minister and from Lu Lu, who named us Vice Presidents of the International Harp-related Intangible Cultural Heritage Safeguarding Association, advisors to the Jiuding Konghou Museum, and cultural ambassadors for the Association. Please check out the IHICHSA website to learn more about the musicians and watch additional short videos about our trip.
| | | | We spent one day filming on the banks of the Yellow River. It was bitterly cold and windy as we strode through the grass and played on the riverbank. We were slowly sinking into the mud as we were filmed, but the result was spectacular, with the sun setting across the river behind us. The costume team spent all night cleaning our costumes and shoes so that we could use them again for filming the next day! | | | Our last day of filming was spent at Henan Film Studios. One entire side of the large hall was open, allowing the camera to zoom in and out on the tracks. The outside temperature was below zero, so it seemed even colder than the previous day on the Yellow River! We were in makeup at 6:30 am and returned at 5:30 am the next day. We filmed for 20 hours with short breaks for food and to take naps at a tea house and a nearby hotel. The film team was there before we were, and they were still working when we left, as were the beautiful ladies you see playing the various Chinese harps in the video. | | |
Just a few words about the background and symbolism of the video. Except for our improvised solos, the instrumental music was all composed by Lu Lu. The song you hear us singing at one point is a traditional Chinese song about the beauty of Jasmine blossoms. The flower floating throughout the video is a Jasmine blossom, bringing to life the ancient images of harp players. The sound of the Chinese harps floats through the air like the flower and resonates with harps throughout the world, calling them to China. The Jasmine blossom then floats to important rivers and waterways of the world and ends with us on the banks of the Yellow River, a central source of life for China, just as the sun is setting.
As Theodore, Marios, Diabel, and I were waiting at Beijing airport for our flights home, we realized what had been in our minds and hearts for the entire week. We had a limited time frame to accomplish the filming and recording. We worked long hours under challenging conditions and freezing temperatures. Some group members were not accustomed to performing in front of a camera. Others were not good at improvising at the speed required for the piece. But there was no whining, no arrogance. There were no hissy fits, no harsh words. There were no divas and no prima donas. Everyone supported and helped the others when things got difficult. We left China having formed deep friendships and secure in the knowledge that we were a team and that we would continue to work and perform together to promote ancient harps and harp-related instruments.
-- Nancy Thym
Photos courtesy of Nancy Thym and IHICHSA.
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In the spirit of Nancy's article, this month's sale features music from around the world.
To get the 15% discount, enter the code word World in the "Enter Promo Code" box on your shopping cart page and click "Enter Code" by April 1, 2025. See the "How to get the 15% discount" section at the bottom of this newsletter for more information.
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The Asian Harp
by Deborah Dahl Shanks
PDF
15% off with World code
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The Japanese Harp
by Deborah Dahl Shanks
PDF
15% off with World code
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Three Korean Folk Songs
by Kathleen Blackwell-Plank
PDF
15% off with World code
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How to get the 15% discount
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15% off select sale items when you use the code word World
Our newsletter promo codes are redeemable online and are only valid for the products listed above in the monthly sale section. They are not valid for phone or email orders. This month's code word is World.
Here's how to get your newsletter discount at harpcenter.com:
#1. Put the items you want to purchase in your cart.
#2. On the page where you view the items in your cart, type this month's code word World in the "Enter Promo Code" box and click "Apply."
The actual price of the featured sale products on this page will then automatically change to reflect the discount. For example,
Unit Price: $9.95 (the original price)
Total Price: $8.46 (the discounted price)
You'll also see a note below the Promo Code box saying the name of the promo code you entered and the percentage amount of the discount.
REMEMBER: You must enter this month's code word World in the Promo Code box and click "Apply" on your shopping cart page by April 1, 2025, to get the discount!
If you forget, or if you have trouble adding it to your order, email Sylvia immediately.
This offer expires at the end of the day on 4/1/2025.
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Sylvia Woods Harp Center
Lihue, Hawaii
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