Wu Yongmei
Mastery, Signature Works & Repertoire
Fascinated by narrative singing from childhood, she began learning Nanyin at the age of ten; she is thoroughly versed in the old staging conventions of Cantonese opera and in bayin (eight-tone) music, and is skilled on the yangqin (dulcimer) and the qinqin (plucked lute). Her singing is composed and gentle, giving voice to the soft and restrained character associated with women of the Lingnan region. Her qinqin playing has a pure timbre, and her plucking, flicking, tremolo and sweeping techniques are masterly, following the singing closely like a shadow and fully revealing the melodic beauty and the dialectal beauty of Nanyin. She has accompanied the celebrated Nanyin masters Gan Mingchao and Ou Junxiang on the qinqin and recorded several discs. For twenty-eight years she has taught disciples with care; she took part in founding the Macao narrative arts society Xiang Le Le Yuan and has performed, taught and engaged in public welfare activities. Because she lived for a long time in Hong Kong, she is regarded as a senior narrative arts master of Hong Kong and Macao, and has been praised by the Cultural Affairs Bureau of the Macao Special Administrative Region Government as a "treasure of Nanyin".
Honors & Recognition
She was born in October 1927 in the Macao Special Administrative Region, of Han ethnicity, and died in July 2014. Representative bearer of Nanyin Narrative Singing, a fourth-batch national intangible cultural heritage project.
References & Archival Sources
Representative Items of This Bearer
- Nanyin Narrative Singing Ⅴ-112
Profile
This static English edition is rendered at the edge for search engines, AI crawlers and readers without JavaScript. Compiled from official national representative bearer archival records, organized by topic and translated into English. 阅读中文版。