It has become common over the last 15 years for musical ethnographies to feature an accompanying CD of sound recordings that usefully illustrate the genres and developments described by the author. Stephen Jones's new book, which comes packaged with a DVD compiled from his fieldwork videos of the early 1990s and early 2000s, represents an exemplary further step along the road to integration of text and audio-visual documentation. One can read the book on its own and acquire a wealth of information about music and ritual in northern Shanxi villages, or watch the DVD as a stand-alone narrated film that allows the viewer to experience the lively, often chaotic sonic-visual world of funerals and temple fairs in the region. Better, however, to use book and film as intended, as an integrated whole. Jones's text carefully references different scenes from the DVD, so that the reader-viewer can understand exactly what is occurring throughout the film. At the same time, (s)he grasps the main points of the book all the better for having each one vividly illustrated as the author himself filmed it. Stephen Jones, his DVD editing partner Sarah Bilby, and the AHRC Research Centre for Cross-Cultural Music and Dance Performance, which supported this project, are all to be congratulated on a very successful experiment in presentation of ethnographic research. A minor reservation I have concerns the reproduction of the book's maps and photos, which have tended to come out rather dark.

Aside from the novel format, Jones has once again made a major contribution to the Western-language literature on Chinese folk music and its embeddedness in the ritual life of villages and small towns. Concentrating on villages in part of Yanggao county, northern Shanxi, Jones “seek[s] to show music-making in the daily life of a typically poor community, [and] the constant modification of the ongoing traditions … of ceremonial” (p. x). In particular, he aims to highlight “the continuity of the folk ceremonial practice of shawm bands in one small area of rural north China” (p. viii) from the 1940s to the present. This concentration on the details of one small locale pays off handsomely, resulting in a convincing picture of the changing lives and repertoire of shawm (suona) band musicians over the last 60-plus years. While local documentary sources are few, Jones's use of participant observation and in-depth personal interviews provides rich portraits of several shawm bands in the region (particularly the Hua Family Shawm Band) and of the learning, performing, and economic experiences of the men involved. Surprising to many Sinologists is the degree to which ritual-related musical traditions were kept going in some rural areas even during the Cultural Revolution (pp. 25–27), although the very disparate experiences of different bands even within this small area remind us that local variation is substantial. A major development since the 1980s has been the encroachment of pop music into the entertainment provided at funerals and temple fairs (important venues for shawm band employment) and the adoption of pop repertoire and instruments by the bands, to the detriment of their more complex traditional repertoire. Jones explores this issue in some detail (pp. 34–38 and elsewhere), and while deploring the attenuation of the older repertoire, examines the aesthetic and economic reasons behind the shift. Research on pan-Chinese pop has tended to focus on big cities, so it is interesting to see how it features in this remote rural region, in particular in traditional ritual contexts.

There are many other gems here. Jones pays close attention to local dialectal words and sayings, explains the economics of the shawm band business, provides Chinese characters in a glossary-index, tabulates clearly the sequence of events at funerals and temple fairs, and outlines the technical musical aspects of the shawm band repertoire. We learn about the prominent role blind musicians have long played in this tradition, and encounter fascinating anecdotes of the Hua Family Shawm Band's visits to the Smithsonian Folklife Festival (2002), to SOAS and other British venues (2005), and to the Amsterdam China Festival (2005) (pp. 51–54). Given the ubiquity of non-Western performers at “world music”-style events in Europe and North America, Jones's description of the preparations for the Band's appearances overseas, and of local reactions to their success, is a timely behind-the-scenes look at how such cultural encounters affect the musicians and repertoires involved.

This book will appeal primarily to Chinese music specialists, though it also has much to offer a wider Sinological readership willing either to work through the passages of dense musical description (pp. 89–113) or else to ignore them in favour of the first 88 pages, which concentrate on social, historical, and ritual issues. Ideally it would be read in conjunction with the CD Walking Shrill: The Hua Family Shawm Band (Leiden, Pan Records 2109, 2004), which is referenced in the text, and with the parallel Chinese-language study by Wu Fan, Yinyang, gujiang: zai zhixu de kongjian zhong (Yinyang, Gujiang: In the Space of Order) (Beijing, Wenhua yishu chubanshe, 2007).