Dangtu Folk Songs

01 · Historical Records

Records of Dangtu folk songs exist as early as the Six Dynasties period (220–589): the famous “white song and dance” presided over by the Liu-Song emperor Liu Yu was one line of Dangtu folk-song singing. The more than twenty “field-husband treading songs” by the Northern Song poet Li Zhiyi, who lived for a long time in Dangtu, and his chant “I live at the head of the Yangtze, you live at the tail of the Yangtze” both belong to the folk-song category. In the Qing dynasty the Dangtu man Huang Yue wrote more than fifty “Yuhu bamboo-branch lyrics” taking local customs and ways as their main content, representing the highest artistic level of Dangtu folk songs at that time. After 1949 the Dangtu people formed an upsurge of creating and singing folk songs, which reached its height in the late 1950s.

02 · Core Techniques & Process

The Dangtu folk song is the general name for the various folk songs current on both banks of the Yangtze in eastern Anhui. They are numerous and wide in subject, their content touching almost every aspect of social life. At the same time the folk songs of the plains, the polder areas and the hilly districts are wonderfully varied, forming many kinds of genre. The Dangtu folk song is rich in language, complete in structure, varied in tune and distinctive in singing, showing the charm of a markedly local folk music and language art. Representative pieces include The Wheat-Threshing Song, The Ox-Herding Song and Sister Hoes the Bean Rows in the Field.

03 · Regional Records & Related Items

Those current in the Dangtu Dagongwei area are the work chantey, the ox song and the dance tune; those current in the Boping, Huyang and Xinshi area are the boat song, the fishing song and the lantern song; and those current along the river at Caishi, Huoli and Xinqiao are the rice-transplanting song, the antiphonal song and the gate song.

04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding

The Dangtu folk song is the crystallisation of the wisdom of the Dangtu people and a typical representative of that cultural form of expression created orally, sung orally and transmitted from mouth to ear by the labouring people, and after artistic elaboration by men of culture through the ages it has gained a high historical, cultural and artistic value, being a rare treasure of musical and linguistic art. (Associated bearer recorded in the official archive:) Tao Xiaomei, female, Han, born August 1971, a native of Dangtu county, Anhui. She learned folk songs from her parents and neighbours in childhood and in 2003, under the guidance of the teacher Leng Hongmei, studied scientific methods of vocal production and formed her own distinctive singing style. Her singing is clear in enunciation and rich in local flavour, her timbre limpid, bright and sweet, with the distinctive charm of the water townships south of the Yangtze. Over the years she has collected and sung more than a hundred folk songs. She is a representative bearer of the fifth batch of national-level intangible cultural heritage items, the Dangtu folk song. In 2004 she won the second prize in the second national peasant singers' television contest with The Wheat-Threshing Song. From 2008 onwards she has taught the Dangtu folk song in local universities, middle and primary schools and at the county's transmission stations, teaching nearly ten thousand people a year, and many of her students have been recognised as municipal or county-level representative bearers.

05 · Associated Representative Bearers

Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:

• Tao Xiaomei 05-2036
• Chenyuelan

06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography

1. Dangtu Folk Songs (Maanshan, Anhui) · China ICH Official Project Archive
2. Tao Xiaomei · National Representative Bearer Archive

Sources

China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)

Read the official ihchina.cn record ↗