Jiangnan Sizhu (江南丝竹) Music is a collective term referring to the music performed using traditional stringed and woodwind instruments that prevailed in the southern Jiangsu Province, western Zhejiang, and Shanghai. The performing band mainly uses Erhu, Yangqing, Pipa, Sanxian, Qinqin, flute and other Sizhu-type instruments (traditional stringed and woodwind instruments), so it’s named Jiangnan Sizhu.
During the Jialong years of the Ming Dynasty, a group of opera musicians headed by Wei Liangpu created a special Kunqu Opera singing tune called Shuimo Singing Tune (literal meaning: Water Grinding Tune) at the south wharf of Taicang. At that time, a complete Sizhu Band consisting of Zhang Yetang performed it with Gongche Notation. Later, Sizhu Music was largely performed by Kunqu troupes and drummers and gradually full-time professional performing troupes were formed after a long time of development. By the end of Wanli Years of the Ming Dynasty, a new music type “Xiansuo” was formed in Wuzhong (Suzhou area), which is the predecessor of Jiangnan Sizhu Music.
In the 1920s, the famous Sizhu musician Wang Xunzhi founded “Hangzhou National Music Society”, Hangzhou’s early Jiangnan Sizhu organization at “Lingshe Society” at the east foot of the Solitary Hill, West Lake. It performed traditional music, and soon, the Sizhu music pieces compiled and adapted by the society spread to Shanghai and other areas, producing a big impact on the music circle. Later, Wang Xunzhi established “Huaguang Music Society” in Shanghai with Cheng Wujia, a senior Sizhu musician, which started a good situation of the mutual exchanges in Sizhu music circles between Hangzhou and Shanghai and the Sizhu music were able to develop further.
Jiangnan Sizhu's tunes are beautiful and simple, refreshing and melodious, brisk and clear, varied and elegant. The performing skills are abundant and varied, with changes emerging endlessly and are particular about “the combination of complexity and simplicity, high pitch and low pitch, embellishment, variations, improvisation, etc.”
Jiangnan Sizhu is an outstanding representative of the music culture of Jiangnan Water Town. The performing skills and music styles are implicit, containing the pursuit of the modest, prudent and coordinated cultural connotations of profoundness. It has a deep practical and theoretical research value in areas including national music history, operas and folklore.