Weeding Gong and Drum

01 · Historical Records

The Xingshan weeding gong-and-drum is also called “beating the gong-and-drum”, because it takes its name from singing while beating gong and drum at the weeding; it has a history of more than five hundred and fifty years and circulates mainly in the various townships of Xingshan county, Hubei.

02 · Core Techniques & Process

The weeding gong-and-drum, also called the “racket song” and commonly known as “making a racket”, is a folk-song form current in the Tujia areas of settlement. In the weeding season the Tujia gather scores or even hundreds of people for collective labour, and at such times two singers are usually invited to perform facing the weeding crowd, one beating the drum and one striking the gong, singing and dancing to the sound of gong and drum while the weeding crowd joins in the chorus. In dancing, the hands sway with the steps, the left hand with the left foot and the right hand with the right foot—light and lively, soft yet firm. The tunes of the weeding gong-and-drum are flexible and varied, and the song master can change the lyrics according to the time of day and the hour, so as to enliven the atmosphere and turn the monotonous and toilsome farm labour into a fiery and cheerful collective activity. The Xingshan gong-and-drum has three methods of voice production: first, singing an octave higher in falsetto, called among the folk the “ghost voice”, the “heavenly voice” or the “top voice”, used for the three-round gong-and-drum and the gathering gong-and-drum; second, singing an octave higher in the natural voice, called the “full-mouth voice”, used for the four-round and five-round gong-and-drum; and third, singing an octave lower in the natural voice, called the “second yellow”, used in moderation by the song master to regulate himself when tired. The Xingshan weeding gong-and-drum has a very rich repertoire of tunes, as many as seventy or eighty, including the starting drum, the closing drum, the tea-picking drum and the tiger-embracing-head. Its melodies fall into the two types of the “Xingshan characteristic third system” intonation and “general intonation”; the “Xingshan characteristic third scale” preserves a good deal of the lingering notes of the ancient tunes of Jing-Chu and has a striking local cultural character. The vocal styles of the Xingshan gong-and-drum are divided into the banqiang-form chantey, the raising song and the ballad-form miscellaneous song; the musical structure resembles the rondo form and is a great suite with suites within suites, standing alone in Chinese folk music.

03 · Regional Records & Related Items

The lyrics are mostly in a single rhyme throughout, and their content is divided into the parts of the “song head”, commonly called the “prelude”, the “invitation of the gods”, the “raising song” and the “sending off of the gods”. The Xingshan weeding gong-and-drum is sung mainly on occasions of collective productive labour such as weeding in maize fields, weeding in rice paddies, breaking new ground and building reservoirs; it may be divided into two kinds: first, the “flower gong-and-drum”, named for the singing of flower songs, that is, love songs, with a complex formal structure, varied lyric metre and rich and colourful tunes; and second, the “gathering drum”, named for the singing of The Thousand Hundred Gatherings, with a relatively simple musical structure, tune and lyric metre, its subject being mainly historical stories.

Other submitting regions for the same item: Chuanbeihaocao Gong and Drum · Weeding Gong and Drum · Weeding Gong and Drum · Weeding Gong and Drum · Weeding Gong and Drum · Weeding Gong and Drum · Weeding Gong and Drum · Weeding Gong and Drum.

04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding

The Xingshan weeding gong-and-drum is an important vehicle of the “ancient songs of Ba-Chu”, preserving for us a good deal of the musical-cultural information of antiquity, with very high value for historical, cultural and artistic research. Under rapid social change and the ceaseless impact of powerful outside cultures the Xingshan weeding gong-and-drum troupes have dropped sharply to fewer than thirty, the artists are ageing and successors are lacking, so protection and transmission are urgently needed.

05 · Associated Representative Bearers

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

• Wang Shaoxing 02-0252
• Meng Fanlin 03-0824
• Wang Aimin 03-0825
• Zhang Zhongxiang 05-2047
• Fang Yougen 05-2048
• Leng Haoran 05-2049
• Li Decui
• Xiao Shiqin
• Zhang Yuzhen

06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography

1. Weeding Gong and Drum (Xingshan, Hubei) · China ICH Official Project Archive

Sources

China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)

Read the official ihchina.cn record ↗