She Folk Songs
01 · Historical Records
The She who live in the counties under the jurisdiction of Lishui and Wenzhou cities at the southern foot of the Donggong mountains in Zhejiang mostly migrated from eastern Fujian in the Ming and Qing, and a few lineages migrated from southern Jiangxi. Among them the mythical legendary song The Song of the High Emperor recounts the myth of She origins and the historical fact of the ethnic great migration, and is an important representative of She folk song.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
Singing mountain songs is an important way in which the She people transmit knowledge of history, culture, production and life and carry on cultural and recreational activities. She folk songs therefore have a long history, coming down along with the She people from generation to generation. The She use song to speak for them and to narrate, forming such song customs as antiphonal singing at work, the Third-Month-Three song fair, all-night antiphonal singing, wedding congratulation songs, sacrificial praise songs and funeral lamentations. Although the She living environment has the character of “widely scattered, small settlements”, surrounded by Han villages, the tunes of She folk songs are utterly different from the Han folk songs around them and preserve the character of their own ethnic music well. The words and lines of the same She folk song remain basically unchanged, only the rhyme being changed twice so that one becomes three, forming the distinctive “three-fold transformation” “repetition” technique, which is unique among Chinese folk songs. The singing of She folk songs is divided into “high voice” (falsetto) and “low voice” (natural voice), and the forms of singing include solo, antiphonal and ensemble singing. Zhejiang She folk songs include narrative songs (embracing mythical legendary songs and novel songs), miscellaneous songs (embracing content of love, working life, the imparting of knowledge, ethics and morality and recreational life) and ceremonial songs (embracing wedding songs, ancestor-sacrifice songs and merit songs), extremely rich in subject. The content of Zhejiang She folk songs is extremely rich, and their handwritten copies have always been valued by experts and scholars of Chinese folk music and literature; they are one of the representative works in the treasury of our country's folk literature.
The Song of the High Emperor
The mythical legendary song recounting the myth of She origins and the historical fact of the ethnic great migration.
The “Three-Fold Transformation” Repetition Technique
The distinctive technique in which the words of a song remain basically unchanged and the rhyme is changed twice so that one becomes three.
Antiphonal Singing at Work, the Third-Month-Three Song Fair and All-Night Antiphonal Singing
The She song customs of wedding congratulation songs, sacrificial praise songs and funeral lamentations.
The Lishui Tune, the Jingning Tune and Other Tunes
The system of Zhejiang She folk-song tunes divided by area of distribution.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
Zhejiang She folk songs are distributed mainly in the northern foot of the Donggong mountains in southern Zhejiang adjoining eastern Fujian. Their tunes may be divided by distribution and area of prevalence into the Lishui tune, the Jingning tune, the Longquan tune, the Wencheng tune, the Pingyang tune and the Taishun tune, each having such forms as the parallel two-phrase, the four-phrase exposition-development-turn-conclusion and various irregular phrases.
Other submitting regions for the same item: She Folk Songs · She Folk Songs.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
At present the old artists capable of singing She folk songs have died one after another, and the transmission of She folk songs faces a crisis and urgently needs protection. (Associated bearer recorded in the official archive:) Lan Chenqi, female, She, born January 1938, a native of the Jingning She autonomous county of Zhejiang. She loved to sing mountain songs from childhood, and after marrying in 1955 into Shuanghoujiang village of Hexi town in the Jingning She autonomous county she became a She singer famed for a hundred li around. Besides transmitting She historical songs, life songs, work songs, novel songs and love songs, she excels at on-the-spot performance and improvisation, composing songs on the spot according to life and production practice with a rich feeling for life. In 1994 she took part in the folk-art festival folk-song exchange activities in Fukui, Japan, singing She folk songs abroad. In recent years, besides singing, transmitting and publicizing She songs, she has been president of the Zhangchun branch of the Hexi town old-age association, leading the elderly friends in taking an active part in local spiritual civilization. She is a representative bearer of the third batch of national-level intangible cultural heritage items, She folk songs.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Lei Meifeng 03-0810
- Lan Chenqi 03-0811
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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