Yao Qihua
Mastery, Signature Works & Repertoire
From childhood he learned to sing Lüjiahe folk songs from his grandparents' and parents' generations; he was skilled in all kinds of folk ditties and long narrative songs, could sing more than twelve hundred folk songs of various types, and was known among local people as the singing sack. His representative works include Dui Zhan Ge (Song of Battle), Hei An Zhuan (The Tale of Darkness) and Bai Nian (New Year Greetings). He could improvise words and sing them on the spot, and he played a variety of folk instruments with skill. His singing rose and fell with cadence and was full of feeling, and its content was closely bound up with the work and life of farmers. Though an illiterate singer, he preserved a large body of living historical material of folk song by memory alone; over more than sixty years he sang, organized and composed Lüjiahe folk songs, consciously transmitting the local repertory by category, and he was the principal organizer and transmitter of Lüjiahe folk song activities.
Honors & Recognition
He was a man of the Han ethnic group, born in May 1942 in Danjiangkou, Hubei Province, and died in December 2017. National representative bearer of Lvjiahe Folk Songs, a third-batch national intangible cultural heritage project.
References & Archival Sources
Representative Items of This Bearer
- Lvjiahe Folk Songs Ⅱ-83
Profile
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