Meizhou Kejia Mountain Songs
01 · Historical Records
The Meizhou Hakka mountain songs spread and multiplied along with the formation of the Hakka community; they are the product of the fusion of Central Plains culture with the indigenous culture of Meizhou, and their lyrics are richly poetic, resembling the bamboo-branch songs and carrying the lingering charm of the “Airs of the States” and the “Wu songs”. As early as the late Qing scholars such as Huang Zunxian set store by collecting and sorting them, and for several hundred years they have been current by oral folk transmission in Meizhou and in the overseas Hakka areas of settlement.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
The Meizhou Hakka mountain songs spread and multiplied along with the formation of the Hakka community in the Song and Ming, and are the product of the fusion of Central Plains culture with the indigenous culture of Meizhou. Their lyrics are richly poetic, resembling the bamboo-branch songs and carrying the lingering charm of the “Airs of the States” and the “Wu songs”. They have nearly a hundred kinds of tune; the pitch is high, drawn out and long, steady and smooth with little undulation; the register is relatively high and the range relatively narrow; stepwise motion is more common and leaps rarer; the rhythm is free and the metre varied, often with several metres mixed in one song. Tens of thousands of sets of lyrics circulate among the folk, their content including work songs, topical songs, ceremonial songs, etiquette songs, love songs, other songs of daily life and children's songs, covering every aspect of Hakka life, of which the love songs are the most numerous, the most splendid in content and the highest in literary value. The Meizhou Hakka mountain songs are an important component of Hakka culture and a treasure of folk music and folk literature.
Nearly a Hundred Kinds of Tune
The system of tunes with a high and drawn-out pitch, a relatively high register, a relatively narrow range and varied metre.
Love-Song Mountain Songs
The mountain-song category most numerous in quantity, most splendid in content and highest in literary value.
Work Songs, Topical Songs, Ceremonial Songs, Etiquette Songs and Children's Songs
The categories of the tens of thousands of lyrics circulating among the folk and covering every aspect of Hakka life.
The Five-Line Clapper Songs and Traditional Oral Transmission
The traditional Hakka mountain-song five-line clapper songs collected and published by Tang Mingzhe, and the oral folk manner of transmission.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
The Meizhou Hakka mountain songs are folk songs sung in the Hakka dialect by the nearly five million people of Meizhou city's six counties, one city and one district; they circulate in the Hakka region of north-eastern Guangdong and have spread to the overseas areas of settlement of Meizhou Hakka.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
They have valuable reference value for the study of literature and art, sociology, history, linguistics, folklore, religious studies and Hakka studies. Scholars such as Huang Zunxian and Qu Dajun of the late Qing and Zhong Jingwen of the present day have all attached great importance to the collecting, sorting and study of the Meizhou Hakka mountain songs. They have always been transmitted orally by the folk. At present the ranks of mountain-song singers have aged severely, many outstanding singers have died one after another, and young people no longer like to sing or listen to mountain songs, so the situation in which the singing of mountain songs lacks continuity and successors grows more serious by the day. Saving and protecting the Meizhou Hakka mountain songs is of great significance for preserving Hakka culture, enriching Chinese culture and enriching the cultural life of the Hakka. (Associated bearer recorded in the official archive:) Yu Yaonan, male, Han, born 1938, a native of Dabu, Guangdong. From 1958 to 1964 he was an actor with the Dabu county opera troupe, the Dabu three-man quyi team and the Dabu propaganda team No. 1 respectively. From 1971 to 1978 he was deputy head of the Dabu county cultural centre, vice-chairman of the county federation of literary and art circles, a member of the municipal consultative conference and a director of the provincial quyi association, retiring in 1998. Quick-witted and able to compose a song offhand, he answers fluently in antiphonal singing and is especially good at the technique of striking the bamboo clappers. His representative works include The Tofu Couple and Old Love. He is a representative bearer of the second batch of national-level intangible cultural heritage items, Meizhou Hakka mountain songs. In 1990 he was named a “Meizhou mountain-song master”. Tang Mingzhe, male, Han, born October 1934, a native of Meizhou city, Guangdong. He has been engaged in singing and studying Hakka mountain songs for more than sixty years and can sing, play, perform, write and teach, with rich experience and considerable attainment. The mountain songs he sings have a rich rustic flavour and a manner of phrasing all his own, called by the relevant experts the “Tang style”, and he is known as a “Meizhou mountain-song master”. He has published seven monographs on mountain songs and collected, sorted and published more than thirty collections of the traditional Hakka mountain-song five-line clapper songs. He is a representative bearer of the third batch of national-level intangible cultural heritage items, Meizhou Hakka mountain songs. The Chinese Quyi Artists Association awarded him the title of quyi artist of special contribution. He has held many mountain-song training classes in the countryside, factories and schools, training more than ten thousand person-times in all, and also serves as a guest professor at colleges, actively training bearers of Meizhou Hakka mountain songs.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Yu Yaonan 02-0235
- Tang Mingzhe 03-0814
- Tong Aina
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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