Shandong Flower Drum
01 · Historical Records
Shandong flower drum has a long history. In the Southern Song dynasty, Nai Deweng's Ducheng Jisheng (Record of the Capital and Its Splendours) records: “Zaban, or miscellaneous impersonation ... mostly borrows the dress of villagers from Shandong and Hebei to amuse the audience; what is nowadays called beating the harmony drum ... and free-playing acts are all of this.” By the late Qing period, in many localities it had already developed from a single performer playing several roles into several performers each taking a role.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
Shandong flower drum is also called “huagudingxiang”, “beating the flower drum” and similar names; it is a quyi performance form that uses the flower drum as its principal accompanying instrument and is sung antiphonally by two performers while moving about. Its area of popularity is centred on Heze City, Shandong Province, and its range of activity reaches the whole of Shandong Province and the rural areas of the surrounding provinces and cities. Around the middle of the Qing dynasty, the southern-route flower drum performance popular in Heze City, Jining City and other places had already become fairly complete; in a few cases one person beats the flower drum and sings, but most often two performers sing antiphonally, and this became the principal performance form of Shandong flower drum. Later it spread northward and eastward from south-western Shandong as its centre, and at the same time mutually influenced folk tunes, dances and other art forms of various localities, forming the three different artistic styles of the southern, northern and eastern routes; from it gradually developed and derived such local opera genres as Liangjiaxian, Sipingdiao, Wuyin opera, Liuqin opera, Yigougou and others. The flower drum in its quyi form did not disappear either, and continued to develop in parallel. Shandong flower drum has a rich traditional repertoire, is full of the flavour of everyday life, and is skilled at portraying stories of household and neighbourhood life, in what are known as “needle-and-thread basket” subjects. Its short repertoire includes the “small eight-sentence” pieces such as Xiazhi Chi Huoguo (The Blind Man at the Hot Pot), and more than a hundred passages of the “large eight-sentence” type such as the duan'er shu (episode singing) Huolang Duan (The Peddler). Its medium- and long-length repertoire includes more than forty works such as Xiudingxiang (Resting Benzoin). The vocal music of Shandong flower drum comprises both the tune-pattern system and the metrical system, and is based mainly on the gong mode of the seven-tone scale; its tune patterns include [Wawa qiang] (Child Vocal) and [Caicha diao] (Tea-Picking Tune), and its metrical forms include [Kantou jue] (Cutting Off the Stub) and [Ku mizi] (The Lost Child Wept For). Its opening gong-and-drum pieces include [Bi di jin] (Gold All Over the Ground), [Fenghuang san di tou] (The Phoenix Nods Three Times) and more than ten others. The gongs and drums used in singing, recitation and spoken passages are the luogu jing (gong-and-drum patterns) interspersed among the various metrical vocal styles, the special tune patterns and the spoken passages; there are more than thirty of them. In its early period Shandong flower drum was performed by two people. The male role is called “gujiazi” (the drum frame); he carries the flower drum slung across his back and waves the drumsticks with both hands in a lively and witty manner. The female role is popularly called “baotou” (the wrapped head) or “wuzhuang” (the dancing post). At first all roles were played by male performers, who made up and dressed in costume, wore an embroidered silk ball on the head, and sang and danced as they went. The performance form is mostly antiphonal between a man and a woman; the female performer holds the shoulder of the male performer, the two moving in and out in close and well-timed coordination. Later it developed from one performer playing many roles into several performers each taking a role, who also handle the woodblock and such like instruments; the atmosphere is ardent, and there is a saying that “seven tight, eight slow, six performers grab away blindly”.
Drum-frame and turban roles
In the early two-person format the male drum-frame carries the drum and dances its sticks while the turbaned female role, originally played by men, sings and dances.
Xiu Dingxiang
A leading medium-length title among forty-odd, alongside over a hundred short items such as the blind man's hotpot sketch and the pedlar's tale.
The southern, northern and eastern routes
Spreading north and east from southwest Shandong, it formed three stylistic routes and gave rise to several local opera genres.
Tunes and metres
Its music mixes labelled tunes and metres in a seven-note gong mode.
Opening drum patterns
Over ten opening drum patterns and more than thirty dramatic patterns punctuate the singing and speech.
The living-room repertory
Grounded in the Heze dialect and rich in filler syllables, its repertory specialises in domestic tales of the sewing basket.
Troupe sayings
As one-man-many-roles gave way to split roles, the troupe saying describes how seven or eight hands scramble in a lively scene.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
Based on the Heze dialect, it is plain and friendly in manner, the sung text colloquial and rustic and well suited to the occasion; it often begins with the san ban (free-metre form) and makes free use of padding syllables, and is known as “nine vocal styles and eighteen inflections”.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
Shandong flower drum is one of the principal forms of cultural entertainment in the villages of south-western Shandong and the surrounding provinces and cities; it has a deep mass base, is the direct “parent body” of numerous local opera genres, has had a major influence on the history of the development of Shandong local theatre, and possesses interdisciplinary research value for dialectology, sociology, folkloristics and rural culture.
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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