Weeding Gong and Drum

01 · Historical Records

The Xuan'en weeding gong-and-drum is also called the “mountain gong-and-drum”; it is a folk song-and-drum born along with productive labour, its origins traceable to the drum-beating sacrifices of the Zhou dynasty, afterwards developing into an independent musical type and reaching its height from the Yuan and Ming to the early Qing. It is now current mainly in the Tujia areas of settlement of the Wuling mountain country where Hunan, Hubei, Chongqing and Guizhou meet, and in the neighbouring Han and other ethnic areas.

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 Xuan'en weeding gong-and-drum is generally sung by four or more song masters striking gong and beating drum in front of the labour band, with as few as one gong and one drum as accompanying instruments and as many as four—the horse gong, the first cymbals, the second cymbals and the suona. The singing procedure comprises the three parts of the song head, the raising song and the song tail; the song head and song tail are fixed rites of inviting and sending off the gods, while the raising song is improvised. The forms of singing include leading, chorus, interwoven singing and inserted speech, and the vocal styles are divided into the high style and the flat style. The lyrics are of two kinds, fixed and improvised; the many stanzas form a strophic or varied strophic structure and are mostly folk songs linked into suites. Because of the different instrument establishments the Xuan'en weeding gong-and-drum may again be divided into the three kinds of civil gong-and-drum, martial gong-and-drum and mixed gong-and-drum; its gong-and-drum tunes number more than thirty, of which about a dozen are in common use. It consists mainly of historical legendary songs, long narrative songs, songs of life and custom and children's songs, with rich subject matter touching on every aspect of Tujia life and containing abundant ancient cultural survivals, providing valuable material for the study of folklore, folk literature and musicology. With the passage of time the traditional life and labour of the Tujia have changed, the large-scale collective manner of labour no longer exists, and the living space of the weeding gong-and-drum has shrunk accordingly. Under the impact of the market economy and the tide of outside culture people grow ever more indifferent to traditional folk activities.

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”.

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

More and more Tujia young people are leaving the mountains of western Hubei, the artists who mastered the art of the weeding gong-and-drum have died one after another and those still living are in their declining years, so that this ancient folk art has no successors; the related work of rescue and protection is imminent and must be undertaken as soon as possible. (Associated bearer recorded in the official archive:) Leng Haoran, male, Dong, born October 1944, a native of Xuan'en county, Hubei. He is good at improvisational composition and singing, able to make meaning out of the scene, rousing emotional resonance in people with singing that is easy to understand, concise and clear and witty and vivid. His voice is powerful and round, he can grasp the lilt and rhythm and uses his singing technique with ease. He is familiar with the various performing tunes of the weeding gong-and-drum and has mastered the techniques of the gong, drum, cymbals and related percussion instruments. From 2008 he has used his own premises to set up a folk-culture training institute, training successors to the weeding gong-and-drum from among primary and middle school students by holding training classes, and has sorted out more than twenty thousand characters of traditional weeding gong-and-drum lyric material. He is a representative bearer of the fifth batch of national-level intangible cultural heritage items, the weeding gong-and-drum (Xuan'en weeding gong-and-drum).

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 (Xuanen, Hubei) · China ICH Official Project Archive
2. Leng Haoran · National Representative Bearer Archive

Sources

China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)

Read the official ihchina.cn record ↗