Published
firecracker 鞭炮
Liu Huirun passed away without knowing she was a field recording artist. This tape, which her grandson Zhang Kankan discovered in a box of cassettes in 2021, is technically Liu’s first posthumous release. It’s full of the pops, sizzles and bangs of fireworks, which allowed Zhang to date it to before 1994, when firecrackers were banned in the city of Taiyuan. But as he notes, field recording as a concept wasn’t popularized in China until a decade later. Liu was simply recording sounds that she found memorable (as well as participating in the fad of self-taping one’s own a cappella versions of popular tunes—there’s a few of those here, too). More than 30 years later, her efforts are being shared around the world: Firecracker is sonically fascinating and culturally invaluable as a time capsule from a bygone era.
it was during the workshop session of acoustic taiyuan: a native soundscape project, more precisely, on aug. 2nd, 2021, that the original recording made by my grandma had been fossicked off from a m size carton of a few hundred cassettes.
as distinguished from taping one’s own unaccompanied singing, which used to be a fad and the outputs of which one would still occasionally dig out in flea fairs, this recording registers a long period of firecrackers cracking with uncontrollability that mumbles, sputters, and spins to become an intumescing cosmos. there are also vocally covered snatches of (p)ops from the late 1980s and early 1990s. since on sept. 1st, 1994, taiyuan municipal government issued a ban on fireworks and firecrackers, the cracking part was very likely to be recorded prior to that day.
i have been trying but seem to fail to hit, in an e bargain for reach-me-down, another least one self taped noise, which, to be strict, might not be called “field recording” being a concept employed in china probably a decade later and often in either academic tone or professional. however, i believe a number of folks must have done the same.
a friend replied: “surely there were myriads of people who did it, and she was one, and a singular one.”
in memoriam of my dear grandmother
zhang kankan
jul., 2024这盘录音的最初版本，是“原音：太原的地方声景”工作坊期间（2021年8月2日），在一箱老磁带里找到的，是我姥姥录的。
和流行一时、今天偶尔可在跳蚤市场采集到的自录自唱不同，这盘录音是长时间的、密集失控也许于是维系着一种内在秩序的鞭炮声。其中也有几小段自录自唱，基本上是1980年代末-1990年代初的影视和流行歌曲片段。《太原市禁止燃放烟花爆竹的规定》自1994年9月1日起颁布实施，所以鞭炮声的录制，应该不晚于这个时间。
我后来又试着在网上找了找用磁带自录的环境声（严格来说，也许不能叫“田野录音”，在中文语境中，这是后来才有的学术和专业概念），可惜没有找到。但我相信，肯定还有人像那样录了。
一位朋友说：“肯定有无数人这样录了，这就是无数人中的一个，是惟一的一个。”
张侃侃
2024年7月