Lisu Folk Songs

01 · Historical Records

The Lisu folk songs arose very early, growing up together with the Lisu history of migration, their primitive beliefs and their mountain farming life. As early as the Tang dynasty documents contain scattered records of the Lisu forebears “loving song and dance”; from the Ming and Qing onwards, as the Lisu settled in the Nujiang and Lancang river basins, the song kinds of the mugua, the baishi and the youye gradually took fixed form and were transmitted orally from clan to clan and village to village, forming a folk-song system with the narrative ancient song of the mugua at its core and the lyrical mountain songs of the baishi and the youye as its main trunk.

02 · Core Techniques & Process

The Lisu folk songs include such song kinds as the mugua, the baishi and the youye. The “mugua” is one of the most important and most widely current of the Lisu folk-song kinds, circulating in the Lisu areas of settlement of the Nujiang Lisu autonomous prefecture, Yunnan. In the Lisu language “mugua” originally referred generally to all songs and tunes, and later gradually became the specific name for the narrative ancient song; other songs and tunes of the mugua class are generally prefixed by their content, such as the achimugua (the goat tune) and the qiben mugua (the three-string tune). The mugua is used mainly for traditional narrative long poems of serious content and solemn atmosphere, and is mostly sung at national festivals, gatherings and similar times and occasions. Representative sung contents include The Creation, The Song of Production, The Shepherd's Song and The Song of Fleeing Marriage, and its tunes are plain and deep, with a bleak and ancient style. In antiphonal singing one person from each side leads and the many accompany: the leader sings a line and the accompaniers answer a line, and the chanting is enlivened with wine, drinking and singing together. The mugua antiphonal singing also has the character of a contest; if both leaders are masters of song, the contest may last several days and nights. The Lisu traditional narrative ancient songs sung antiphonally in the mugua manner touch widely on ethnic origins, human reproduction, production and life, customs and manners, love and marriage, religious belief and intercourse between peoples, vividly reproducing the broad panorama of Lisu social history and possessing relatively high cognitive and aesthetic value. The long narrative song The Song of Fleeing Marriage, for instance, reflects the Lisu marriage customs of “betrothal before birth” and “cattle as betrothal gift”, the social custom of fleeing marriage to win freedom and love, the primitive beliefs of killing a sheep to summon the soul, swearing by a dog's head and cursing over sprinkled wine, and also the spirit of unity in mutual exchange and mutual help among the various peoples and the level of the Lisu's productive forces and their conditions of production. With the passing away one after another of the older generation of singers, few people today can sing in full the content of the Lisu mugua historical songs and long narrative songs. The “baishi” and the “youye” are the two most representative kinds of Lisu mountain song in the Nujiang Lisu autonomous prefecture, Yunnan. The baishi is widely current in the Lisu areas of Lushui county and Lanping county and is sung in ordinary times and on festive occasions such as festival gatherings, celebrations of harvest and marriages; its lyrics are wide-ranging and its tune warm and unrestrained, well suited to the expression of inner passion, and it is deeply loved by the Lisu people. The baishi is mostly antiphonal singing between groups of men and women, and may also be sung by one person as a solo for self-enjoyment. The “duowo” sings mainly traditional narrative long poems, while the “xiawo” is improvised according to the partner in the singing, mostly on love and current affairs. Representative pieces of the baishi include The Bamboo-String Song, Song of Recalling Bitterness and Tears of the Orphan. The annual Denggeng “bathing-pool song contest” of Lushui county is a grand occasion of baishi antiphonal singing. The youye is current mainly in the Lisu villages of Fugong county and is divided by content and form into two kinds: one, in which the middle-aged and elderly sit round the fire pit drinking and singing antiphonally, has as its main content the recalling of past sorrows and suffering, with a low tune, slow tempo and even melody; the other, lighter and livelier in tune, is the chief means by which young men and women express their feelings, and may be sung antiphonally between man and woman or between persons of the same sex. The first kind of youye is now seldom sung, while the second is still widely current. Common youye pieces include The Hunting Song, Whispered Words and The Firewood-Cutting Song. The baishi and the youye are outstanding representatives of the Lisu oral literary art; through the creations of generations of singers they have long accumulated an extremely rich sung content touching almost every aspect of social life and folk activity. They have also created many artistic means of expression full of ethnic character—the sentence patterns, rhymes and rhetorical features of Lisu poetry, for instance, are chiefly embodied in these folk songs—and they reflect the typical musical features of Lisu folk song, for such things as the Lisu's multi-voice singing, vibrato singing and use of padding words are all fully embodied in the baishi and the youye.

03 · Regional Records & Related Items

The mugua is generally sung antiphonally by middle-aged and elderly men divided into two sides, sitting cross-legged round the fire pit and questioning and answering in the roles of man and woman. Its sung content is divided into the two kinds of the “duowo” and the “xiawo”.

Other submitting regions for the same item: Lisu Folk Songs.

04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding

If it is not rescued and explored in good time and the training of a younger generation of singers taken in hand, the mugua will face the situation of having no successors. (Associated bearer recorded in the official archive:) A Chengheng, male, Lisu, born March 1951, a native of Fugong county, Yunnan. In childhood he learned the traditional Lisu folk songs and the playing and making of traditional Lisu instruments with his father Heng Fuyan, and by eighteen he was already an artist known far and near. Today he can play and blow more than a hundred traditional Lisu pieces with skill, and the antiphonal Lisu folk songs “mugua” and “youye” are unanimously loved by his own people. He can play on the “qiben” such Lisu folk songs as Qian'e One, Sansi Dugua Lai Gua Lai, Qian'e Two, Qian'e Three, Nianmen Ni'e and Guake, and for each way of tuning the strings he can perform more than fifteen different pieces. His playing of the dilihan (the small four-hole flute) and the maguo (the jew's harp) is still more accomplished. At local wedding banquets and on the folk occasions of house-building and moving house he is an indispensable and important figure. He is a representative bearer of the fifth batch of national-level intangible cultural heritage items, the Lisu folk song, has always been keen on transmission, and has trained several dozen Lisu folk-song artists.

05 · Associated Representative Bearers

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

• Wang Li 02-0240
• Li Xuehua 03-0816
• Achengheng 05-2039

06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography

1. Lisu Folk Songs (Nujianglisuzuzizhi, Yunnan) · China ICH Official Project Archive
2. Achengheng · National Representative Bearer Archive

Sources

China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)

Read the official ihchina.cn record ↗