Long Jingping

01 · Lineage & Regional School

Long Jingping, Male, Miao, from Jingzhoumiaozudongzuzizhi, Hunan, is a fifth-batch national representative bearer of Jingzhoumiaozugeteng (Ⅱ-23). The tradition is documented in Jingzhoumiaozudongzuzizhi, Hunan. Within the regional tradition and school record of Jingzhoumiaozugeteng in Jingzhoumiaozudongzuzizhi, Hunan: Nearly twenty thousand Miao live in this area. The Jingzhou Miao songs may be divided by style, melody, content, manner of singing and ethnic custom into the tea-song tune, the wine-song tune, the rice-song tune, the mountain-song tune, the water-carrying-song tune and the three-note-song tune. Their musical intervals and intonation differ both from the Miao folk songs of other places and from the neighbouring Dong and Han folk songs, with a clear individuality and character. The language of singing is mainly the local Miao dialect, the “sour speech”. With the development of transport and communications in the Qiaoli area the state of long relative isolation between the local Miao and the outside world has been broken, and the traditional cultural space on which the Miao songs depended for survival and development has rapidly shrunk; the important song masters and singers decrease year by year and the local Miao's interest in singing grows ever more indifferent, so that the Miao songs and the Miao traditional culture they represent have no successors. The Jingzhou Miao geteng arose in the Miao areas of settlement in the Qiaoli area of Jingzhou, Hunan. The Qiaoli Miao have a long history: in their beautiful natural surroundings the forebears imitated the harmonies of nature—bird calls, the cicada's song, the sound of flowing water and the sough of the woods—and the intervals they discovered in productive labour and hunting, and after long selection and refinement created the distinctive multi-voice Miao geteng, which has been handed down from generation to generation along with Miao folk custom.

02 · Mastery & Signature Works

Male, Miao ethnic group, born in May 1959, a native of Jingzhou Miao and Dong Autonomous County, Hunan Province. From primary school he learned to sing Miao songs with the elders of his family. After decades of collecting and collating, he worked with the county association for Miao studies to publish Selected Jingzhou Miao Ge Teng and with the county cultural department to compile a Music Textbook for Miao Ge Teng. In 2010 he founded the first Miao Ge Teng teaching and transmission centre in Jingzhou. Within the documented technical tradition of Jingzhoumiaozugeteng in Jingzhoumiaozudongzuzizhi, Hunan: Qiaoli in Jingzhou lies in the border area between Hunan and Guizhou in the south-west of Hunan. The Qiaoli Miao have a long history going back far. The Qiaoli Miao are diligent and simple, open and bold, and have long had the cultural feeling and healthy upward attitude of life of “nourishing the body with rice and the heart with song”. The Miao forebears, rising at sunrise and resting at sunset in their beautiful and fresh natural surroundings, imitated the harmonies of nature—bird calls, the cicada's song, the sound of flowing water and the sough of the woods—and the intervals discovered in productive labour and hunting, and after long selection and refinement created the Miao song of distinctive charm. Its lyrics are mostly in four seven-character lines, and its content touches on many aspects: historical legend, sacrificial rite, productive labour, marriage and love, admonition and reasoning, and the singing of natural features. The singing adopts a progressive form from low to high, light to heavy and few to many, mostly with a single person starting the song in the low voice part, the other parts entering one after another, and the several parts flowing in alternation. The Jingzhou Miao songs include the Mountain Song, the Water-Carrying Song, the Tea Song and the Three Songs. Their singing activities are often closely linked with Miao folk custom and fused with it. Representative repertoire, works and technical entries recorded for the project include: "The Mountain Song": One of the pieces of the Jingzhou Miao geteng. "The Water-Carrying Song": One of the pieces of the Jingzhou Miao geteng. "The Tea Song": One of the pieces of the Jingzhou Miao geteng. "The Three Songs": One of the pieces of the Jingzhou Miao geteng.

03 · Transmission & Safeguarding Status

A national representative bearer of Jingzhou Miao Ge Teng, a fifth-batch national intangible cultural heritage project. In 2010 he won a silver award in the Hunan regional selection of the CCTV Young Singers Competition, and in September 2012 he took part in the Sixth China Original Folk Song Competition hosted by the Ministry of Culture, winning an outstanding performance award in the group category and a special award from the organising committee. Through teaching apprentices year in and year out he has trained nearly one hundred of them, and outstanding apprentices such as Pan Yi have won prizes repeatedly in competitions at provincial, municipal and county level.

04 · Associated Heritage Item Dossier

05 · Fellow National Bearers Lineage

National representative bearers recorded under the same item code, ordered from the first to the sixth batch. Batch order is not a teacher–student relationship.

06 · Archival Sources & Bibliography

1. Long Jingping · National Representative Bearer Archive