Name: Li Daiguo
Nationality: Chinese-Taiwanese-American
Occupation: Composer, improviser, multi-instrumentalist
Current release: Li Daiguo teams up with Liang YiYuan for Sonic Talismans, out via Full Spectrum.

[Read our Liang YiYuan interview]

If you enjoyed this Li Daiguo interview and would like to know more about his music, visit his official homepage. He is also on Instagram.

For a deeper dive into his thoughts, visit our earlier 15 Questions interview with Li Daiguo or our conversation with him about Music's Social Responsibility.



What role and importance do rituals have for you, both as an artist and a listener?

I think ritual has become one of those cool words especially in western art and music that people abuse. Brushing your teeth is a ritual maybe. Or a habit? People like to use it in the creative sense to signify some kind of mysticism, or spirituality, or really to refer in some way to some kind of magic I think. That magic is the magic of making something mundane become totally cool.

On one hand I think fuck that and fuck the modern Western spiritual gaping hole that you have been left with since you realized Christianity is not for you, trying to fill it up with random shit or copy other ancient cultures' traditions or notions is not going to make you feel more spiritually fulfilled. On the other hand it's just another fad, another trend like greenwashing and even if it's poser-y it's not really harmful so why I am manifesting such animosity?! Yikes!?

The village I live in is Bai, which is an entirely different ethnicity than Han (which I am and which most people typically referred to as “Chinese” are), with their own language, clothes, music, instruments, food, etc. It's one of the ethnic minorities of China. Their funeral ritual, which we experience in our village maybe 10-20 times a year, involves a procession of maybe a hundred people wearing white headbands walking several kilometers holding ashes and a picture of the deceased commenced by a blare of fireworks and a walking band with suona and a variety of gongs as well as sometimes sanxian and some other bowed and plucked lutes. There might also be professional weepers. That is a ritual.

100 meters from our front door is a sort of senior center/community building where food is prepared and folk buddhist Bai chanting rituals by all the grannies in the village with their voices, finger cymbals, and wooden fish happen about every two or three weeks for a variety of different occasions. That is a ritual.

Last month our neighbor also did a 3 day spirit cleansing ritual that involved fireworks, gongs, chants, giant banner hanging, and burnt offerings. The day before yesterday was Zhongyuan Jie, which is a holiday that in short celebrates the dead. My wife and I and our three children burnt ritual money, clothes, and other goods for our ancestors and the spirits of other dead passersby in our garden under the loquat trees amidst the fire ants, goji berries, and variety of other vegetables we grow. Those are rituals.

This other shit that artists and musicians are trying to sell as spiritual performances are full of shit in my opinion, but in a cute way, not in a disgusting way. Ritual is important in my life, and important for me to keep in my children's lives. But in general, with each day I am blessed to be alive and living how I want, I am striving to be less full of shit.

I am a musician by occupation. I have a record contract. I sell the rights to my recordings for money. I do live performances for money. I make money to help keep my family alive. I am very much present in the regular global socioeconomic system and I would not want to try to associate that with any kind of spiritual or religious purity. However, I am serious and sincere about every sound I make, for sale or not, and so if somehow the power of a ritual were in my sound and were to allow a listener to derive some kind of benefit that could be related to the benefit they could get from a ritual or spiritual practice, that would not be a bad thing.

As a listener, listening to the music of a true religious ritual is different than going to a cool concert hall or arena or art gallery or festival or even watching a wicked busker in India. And it's important to me to cherish them whenever they happen.