Music and martial arts in L/ROCH

[Ken Cheng]

For the longest time, I thought that associating martial arts with music was a unique idiosyncrasy of East Heretic Wong Yerk See. After all, he carried around a jade flute (and later, an iron one) as his main melee weapon. He was the resident musician/martial artist of L/ROCH and it wouldn't be until SPW that Jin Yong would do anything more about merging music and martial arts.

Increasingly, however, I'm discovering that Wong Yerk See was far from unique in merging music with martial arts. In fact, ALL of the Greats did it...and even someone like Lee Mok Sau could and did.

This is not a revelation that pleases me much. It seems to take a big part of Wong Yerk See's uniqueness away from him.

[Guo Fu ):]

well HYS was so good that with just 1 string from LMC's whisk thing, he could play a song powerful enough to shake up LMC.

[Ken Cheng]

well HYS was so good that with just 1 string from LMC's whisk thing, he could play a song powerful enough to shake up LMC.

He's still the best at it, no doubt, but I don't see him as being unique at it anymore. I've long known that West Poison, North Beggar, and South Emperor were all East Heretic's equal in terms of martial arts, but I long believed that despite their martial arts parity, it wouldn't occur to any of the others to use music as a weapon as Wong Yerk See does because that's his schtick.

But it's no longer so much his schtick in my view now that I'm gradually discovering that many other people also did this.

[ChronoReverse]

I can't remember, but did they not do the scene in LOCH83 where OYF and HYS dueled musically and then eventually H7G joined in?

[pannonian]

Hong Qigong and Ouyang Feng duelled with him by whistling and playing a zither respectively, while Guo Jing tapped a stick to disrupt his flute sound. In ROCH, Xiao Longnu's reading of the Jade Maiden Heart Manual was partly shaped by her zither play. At the end of ROCH, Yang Guo dispensed with all subtlety and just yelled lesser opponents into submission. On a related note, Zhu Ziliu practiced his 1 yang finger according to the character of various calligraphy styles, while Yang Guo improvised a swordstyle against Gongsun Zhi based on a poem that came to his mind.

[Ken Cheng]

I can't remember, but did they not do the scene in LOCH83 where OYF and HYS dueled musically and then eventually H7G joined in?

LOCH '82 did not, which is part of the problem. In LOCH '82/ROCH '83, Wong Yerk See was the *only* Great who showed any musical inclinations whatsoever. Everyone else seemed ignorant of/indifferent to music.

[Guo Xiang ( :]

I thought it was really cool when HYS drove away LMC with music.

[Guo Fu ):]

actually my former neighbour with his crappy taste in music and even crappier guitar playing skills almost drove me nuts.