Weeding Gong and Drum

01 · Historical Records

The Changyang mountain song is also called the “gong-and-drum song”; its origins may be traced to the “barbarian songs and Ba dances” and the “rustic songs of Ba” of the pre-Qin. Since the Sui and Tang the documents have continually recorded the mountain-song customs of the Tujia. Handed down from generation to generation along with the labour and life of the Tujia, it formed a settled tradition of singing in the Changyang Tujia areas of settlement.

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 Changyang mountain song is also called the “gong-and-drum song”; it is sung by people at agricultural production in the fields, and its origins may be traced to the “barbarian songs and Ba dances” and the “rustic songs of Ba” of the pre-Qin. Since the Sui and Tang the documents have continually recorded the mountain-song customs of the Tujia. The Changyang mountain song is high and ringing, free and unrestrained, its melody mostly stepwise, with a range between an octave and an eleventh. The opening seven-degree leap takes the listener by surprise, and together with the use of vibrato in the throw of the voice it gives the mountain song as a whole a rich breath of the wild hills. It is in pentatonic modes, the yu, zhi and gong modes and the gong-yu and yu-zhi alternating forms being more common, and it has much preparation in its expression, often setting up a suspense and then breaking the theme with a roar, producing a wholly satisfying aesthetic effect. By content the Changyang mountain song includes creation songs, work songs, topical songs, love songs and miscellaneous songs, and its forms of singing may be divided into solo, antiphonal and one-leading-the-many-responding. Its tunes fall into the several great categories of the chantey, the sound, the five-line, the tea-picking, the style and the miscellaneous song. The five-line form is the main form of the mountain song and may be sung to different tunes. The “nine beats and thirteen styles” of the Changyang mountain song is a large suite structure: the “nine beats” are the “nine sounds”, and the “thirteen styles” is a suite formed of thirteen tunes that are each undulating and varied, vast in structure and independent in themselves. The most distinctive of the Changyang mountain song's formal structures is the “tail wrapped in the head”, in which the closing line or closing stanza of each song serves as the opening line, revealing the theme at once with a striking effect. By such means as complete repetition, the addition of padding lines and the repetition of the closing line, a song of only four lines can in performance be expanded into a three-part structure.

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 Changyang mountain song is now distributed mainly in the eleven townships of Changyang county, Hubei, and is most prevalent in the Tujia areas of settlement of Langping, Hejiaping, Ziqiu, Yuxiakou, Yazikou and Gaojiayan.

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 Changyang mountain song accumulates several thousand years of Tujia cultural information and has important historical, aesthetic and artistic research value. Today the life and labour of the Tujia have changed greatly and the survival of the weeding gong-and-drum has become difficult. Under the impact of the market economy and modern culture people grow ever more indifferent to traditional folk activities, the artists who transmit the art of singing the Changyang mountain song are advanced in years and some have already died, and the lack of successors grows ever more serious, so that the rescue and protection of the Changyang mountain song brooks no delay. (Associated bearer recorded in the official archive:) Wang Aimin learned to sing mountain songs with his father Wang Chuncheng and mother Hu Shaozhen from childhood; his voice is clear and his range broad, and he is especially good at singing high long-drawn phrases. His timbre is high and ringing, his rhythm relatively free, and he often uses free prolonged notes to express feeling, with much use of grace notes and glides. He has been to Australia, Russia and Canada to take part in Chinese folk-art festival performances and exchange. He has taken more than thirty apprentices and sorted several hundred folk songs. Male, Tujia, born June 1971, died March 2016, a native of the Changyang Tujia autonomous county, Hubei. He was a representative bearer of the third batch of national-level intangible cultural heritage items, the weeding gong-and-drum (Changyang mountain song), and has won the “song king award” of the second national folk-song tournament, the gold prize of the national four-into-the-community artistic performance, the grand prize of the music section of the fourteenth national Wenhua award, and the gold prize of the original-style singing section of the thirteenth national young singers' television grand prix and the award of the singer most loved by the audience.

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 (Zhangyangtujiazuzizhi, Hubei) · China ICH Official Project Archive
2. Wang Aimin · National Representative Bearer Archive

Sources

China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)

Read the official ihchina.cn record ↗