Gupenge
01 · Historical Records
The drum-on-basin song is a very ancient form of quyi, which originated in the folk custom of Chinese ancient funerals in which "a basin is beaten as if it were a drum while singing accompanies the family of the dead". It is therefore also popularly called the "funeral drum", the "funeral drum song" and "beating the drum to make merry at a funeral"; its exact date of formation can no longer be verified.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
The drum-on-basin song is transmitted in the Shashi, Jingzhou and Jiangling area of the Jianghan Plain; it is usually performed by one or two singers who beat a clapper themselves, either solo or in antiphonal duet. At folk performances, enthusiastic listeners may also join in the chorus, singing together at the beginning and the end of each passage of the sung text; there is also a form in which a single person sings without accompaniment. The vocal styles of the drum-on-basin song include "Pingban" (level board), "Qiaoban" (beating the clapper), "Sanjuban" (three-and-a-half lines) and "Huqiang" (lake tune), among others. The drum accompaniment in the performance is distinctive in itself: its rhythm produces a strong beat without an accent at the closing of the upper and lower phrases of the music, which runs counter to the normal logic of musical metre and is comparatively rare in the musical history of China and of foreign countries. The sung text of the drum-on-basin song is mostly in seven-syllable lines sustaining a single rhyme throughout, and the singers may also improvise verses about the people and things before them. A sung section begins in "Pingban", shifts to "Qiaoban" as the tempo quickens, inserts "Sanjuban" to raise a laugh, and closes with "Huqiang". The singer-drummers have their own further conventions in beating the drum: the drum strokes settle with the phrasing of the sung text, and at the close of an upper and lower phrase a heavy stroke falls precisely where no accent is heard, producing the effect of a beat arising outside the metre, which is the exact opposite of the usual pattern of strong and weak beats in music.
Embroidering the Pouch
A piece by the inheritor Wang Xigao, taken into the Hubei volumes of the national folk-song and quyi collections.
The four vocal schemes
The genre's vocal schemes, moving from the plain board to the knocking board, the half-line and the lake tune.
Drumming through the vigil
The genre grew from the old funeral custom of drumming on a bowl and singing beside the mourners, kept as a wake vigil.
Joined singing and plain recitation
Listeners may join in at the head and tail of each stanza, or a single singer may perform unaccompanied.
Wang Xigao's seven hundred stanzas
A retired mill worker who collected, adapted and wrote over seven hundred stanzas of drum-bowl song.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
The drum-on-basin song is transmitted in Shashi, Jingzhou, Jiangling, Gong'an, Shishou, Jianli and Songzi in the Jianghan Plain, and it continues in a single line of descent the old Chu-region custom of beating the fou jar and the basin to make offerings to the spirits of the dead. Wherever there is a funeral locally, the family invites a singer-drummer to sit and sing in front of the coffin; a large drum is set on a wooden basin or on a drum stand, the singer strikes the drum to open the performance, and relatives and friends sit around listening, joining in chorus at the opening and closing of each passage, which is called he (harmonized singing); in some places there is no accompaniment at all and the singer performs a cappella, which is called gan chang (dry singing). Besides funerals, singer-drummers are also invited to happy occasions such as longevity feasts, births and the raising of the ridgepole of a newly built house, where they switch to auspicious sung sections. Because it is closely bound up with funerary ritual, the singer's vocal style, drumming and the sequence of the rite all follow the rules laid down by the bereaved family and cannot be added to or removed at will.
Other submitting regions for the same item: Gupenge.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
Because the performance of the drum-on-basin song is closely tied to folk customs, it has multiple values in folklore, sociology and cultural studies in addition to its value as art in itself. In a present day when the process of modernization is accelerating day by day, the drum-on-basin song, like other forms of folk art, faces a crisis of survival and needs to be taken seriously and protected. Wang Xigao (per the official archival record of an associated inheritor): a retired worker of the Shashi No. 1 Textile Mill. To date he has collected, adapted and independently composed more than seven hundred passages of drum-on-basin song lyrics, preserving a large body of textual and audio-visual material for the transmission of the drum-on-basin song. The "Xiu He Bao" (Embroidering the Pouch) sung by him was selected for both the Collection of Chinese Folk Songs, Hubei Volume, and the Collection of Chinese Quyi Music, Hubei Volume. Over decades, his prolific research and practical achievements in the drum-on-basin song have led people in the trade to call him a "living dictionary". Male, of Han ethnicity, born in 1928, died in 2009, a native of Jingzhou, Hubei. Representative inheritor of the drum-on-basin song item among the national-level intangible cultural heritage projects in the second batch.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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