Long Tongzhen
Mastery, Signature Works & Repertoire
Female, of the Miao ethnic group, born in 1936, a native of Huangping, Guizhou. The Miao Ancient Songs are an epic created by the ancient Miao people through long ages of productive labor. Their content is all-encompassing, ranging from the birth of the universe, the origins of humankind and all living things, and the great flood of primordial times to the great migrations of the Miao, their ancient social institutions, and their everyday productive life; they may be called a summation of ancient Miao mythology. As the Miao have no writing system of their own, the singing of the ancient songs has served to transmit the history and culture of the ethnic group. Strict taboos surround the performance of the ancient songs: they may be sung only on major occasions such as ancestral sacrifice, weddings and funerals, gatherings of kin and friends, and festivals, and the performers are mostly elderly shamans and singers. Long Tongzhen began learning the Miao Ancient Songs from her grandmother and her mother at the age of six, inheriting a sung tradition that stretches back through eight generations and some four hundred years, through such figures as Long Gouyu and Pan Wufu. After the age of twenty she became a singer, and she won warm praise for her consummate skill and her excellence in both song and dance. Besides the Miao Ancient Songs, Long Tongzhen could also sing more than one hundred Da Songs, wine songs, and traveling songs.
Honors & Recognition
A national representative bearer of the Miao Ancient Songs, a first-batch national intangible cultural heritage project. Long Tongzhen was not only devoted to the singing of the Miao Ancient Songs but also taught them to more than a hundred younger singers in her own village and the surrounding villages, training a group of young performers and making a definite contribution to the transmission of the Miao Ancient Songs.
References & Archival Sources
Representative Items of This Bearer
Profile
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