Wang Aimin

01 · Lineage & Regional School

Wang Aimin, Male, Tujia, from Zhangyangtujiazuzizhi, Hubei, is a third-batch national representative bearer of Weeding Gong and Drum (Ⅱ-27). The tradition is documented in Zhangyangtujiazuzizhi, Hubei. Within the regional tradition and school record of Weeding Gong and Drum in Zhangyangtujiazuzizhi, Hubei: The lyrics are mostly in a single rhyme throughout, and their content is divided into the parts of the “song head”, commonly called the “prelude”, the “invitation of the gods”, the “raising song” and the “sending off of the gods”. The Changyang mountain song is now distributed mainly in the eleven townships of Changyang county, Hubei, and is most prevalent in the Tujia areas of settlement of Langping, Hejiaping, Ziqiu, Yuxiakou, Yazikou and Gaojiayan. The Changyang mountain song is also called the “gong-and-drum song”; its origins may be traced to the “barbarian songs and Ba dances” and the “rustic songs of Ba” of the pre-Qin. Since the Sui and Tang the documents have continually recorded the mountain-song customs of the Tujia. Handed down from generation to generation along with the labour and life of the Tujia, it formed a settled tradition of singing in the Changyang Tujia areas of settlement.

02 · Mastery & Signature Works

From childhood he learned mountain songs from his father Wang Chuncheng and his mother Hu Shaozhen. His voice is clear and his range wide, and he is especially skilled at singing high-pitched long melismatic passages. His timbre is high and resonant and his rhythm relatively free; he often uses freely sustained notes to express feeling, and makes considerable use of ornamentation and portamento. He has travelled to Australia, Russia, Canada and other countries to perform and exchange at Chinese folk art festivals. He has taken more than thirty disciples and has compiled several hundred folk songs. Within the documented technical tradition of Weeding Gong and Drum in Zhangyangtujiazuzizhi, Hubei: The weeding gong-and-drum, also called the “racket song” and commonly known as “making a racket”, is a folk-song form current in the Tujia areas of settlement. In the weeding season the Tujia gather scores or even hundreds of people for collective labour, and at such times two singers are usually invited to perform facing the weeding crowd, one beating the drum and one striking the gong, singing and dancing to the sound of gong and drum while the weeding crowd joins in the chorus. In dancing, the hands sway with the steps, the left hand with the left foot and the right hand with the right foot—light and lively, soft yet firm. The tunes of the weeding gong-and-drum are flexible and varied, and the song master can change the lyrics according to the time of day and the hour, so as to enliven the atmosphere and turn the monotonous and toilsome farm labour into a fiery and cheerful collective activity. The Changyang mountain song is also called the “gong-and-drum song”; it is sung by people at agricultural production in the fields, and its origins may be traced to the “barbarian songs and Ba dances” and the “rustic songs of Ba” of the pre-Qin. Since the Sui and Tang the documents have continually recorded the mountain-song customs of the Tujia. The Changyang mountain song is high and ringing, free and unrestrained, its melody mostly stepwise, with a range between an octave and an eleventh. The opening seven-degree leap takes the listener by surprise, and together with the use of vibrato in the throw of the voice it gives the mountain song as a whole a rich breath of the wild hills. It is in pentatonic modes, the yu, zhi and gong modes and the gong-yu and yu-zhi alternating forms being more common, and it has much preparation in its expression, often setting up a suspense and then breaking the theme with a roar, producing a wholly satisfying aesthetic effect. By content the Changyang mountain song includes creation songs, work songs, topical songs, love songs and miscellaneous songs, and its forms of singing may be divided into solo, antiphonal and one-leading-the-many-responding. Its tunes fall into the several great categories of the chantey, the sound, the five-line, the tea-picking, the style and the miscellaneous song. The five-line form is the main form of the mountain song and may be sung to different tunes. The “nine beats and thirteen styles” of the Changyang mountain song is a large suite structure: the “nine beats” are the “nine sounds”, and the “thirteen styles” is a suite formed of thirteen tunes that are each undulating and varied, vast in structure and independent in themselves. The most distinctive of the Changyang mountain song's formal structures is the “tail wrapped in the head”, in which the closing line or closing stanza of each song serves as the opening line, revealing the theme at once with a striking effect. By such means as complete repetition, the addition of padding lines and the repetition of the closing line, a song of only four lines can in performance be expanded into a three-part structure. Representative repertoire, works and technical entries recorded for the project include: "Nine Beats and Thirteen Styles": The large suite formed of thirteen tunes that are each undulating and varied, vast in structure and independent in themselves. "The “Tail Wrapped in the Head” Structure": The formal structure taking the closing line or closing stanza of each song as the opening line and revealing the theme at once. "The Five-Line and Such Tunes as the Chantey, the Sound and the Tea-Picking": The main form and the great categories of tune of the Changyang mountain song. "Creation Songs, Work Songs, Topical Songs, Love Songs and Miscellaneous Songs": The categories of the Changyang mountain song divided by content.

03 · Transmission & Safeguarding Status

Male, of Tujia ethnicity, born in June 1971 in Changyang Tujia Autonomous County, Hubei Province, and died in March 2016. National representative bearer of Weeding Gong and Drum (Changyang Mountain Songs), a third-batch national intangible cultural heritage project. He won the Singer King award at the second National Folk Song Contest, the gold award at the national art performance of the Four Entries into the Community programme, the grand prize in the music category at the fourteenth National Xingxing Award, and the gold award in the original-ecology singing category and the Most Popular Singer award at the thirteenth National Young Singers Television Competition.

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. Wang Aimin · National Representative Bearer Archive