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Suona Art

Ⅱ-37Traditional MusicLin, ShanxiBatch 4 (2014)Extension ItemFeatured

01 · Historical Records

More than a hundred traditional old tunes have been handed down to the present day, and the pieces that accompany the percussion drum beats, such as "Helengze", "Dadesheng" and "Xiaodesheng", are particularly local in character. Main representative works include "Mantianxing", "Desheng Huixing", "Minjian Xiaoqu", "Bendiao Huadaoze" and "Shuilongyin".

02 · Core Techniques & Process

The Linxian big suona is an ancient folk tradition of wind-and-percussion music, and is also the principal instrument of the local wind-and-percussion bands of Linxian County, Shanxi Province. Linxian lies on the western foot of Lüliang in western Shanxi, facing Lishi to the east, looking across the Yellow River at northern Shaanxi to the west, adjoining Liulin to the south, and touching Xing County against the mountains to the north. Its landscape is crisscrossed by gullies, making it a typical loess gully region. The Linxian big suona has a high volume, strong penetrating power and a heavy timbre. It absorbs not only the roughness, boldness and excited timbre of the northern Shaanxi big suona, but also the clear and lively subtlety and delicacy of the small suona of Shanxi and Sichuan, forming styles in which a street procession is majestic and magnificent, a stationary performance is elegant and restrained, joy is bright and lively, anger brings surging waves of sound, sorrow is plaintive and lingering, and happiness is boisterous and bustling. It has blowing techniques such as "che zhen yin", "qi hong yin" and "dead tunes played alive". Lin County big suona music belongs to the wind-and-percussion class, played with the suona as lead instrument combined with gongs and drums, and mainly uses suona, horn, big drum, hard jingles, gada luo and similar instruments. Generally two suona are used: one plays the melody in the high register, commonly called "kao zi", and the other supports the principal melody in the middle and low registers, commonly called "la tong". The music of the two suona is blended, with a clear contrast between the thick and the thin. The fingerings used are the ben, fan and jia modes as well as the six-character mode. In melodic structure their common characteristic is a clear line and fairly large undulation. Besides leaps of dominant and subdominant relations around the principal note, large leaps such as major sevenths, perfect octaves and intervals of thirteen to sixteen degrees form their distinctive style. The metrical patterns of performance have four-beat (one ban, three yan), ban-jiaban (one ban, one yan) and liushui (one ban) forms. The form is that of an independent tune pattern, and the usual tempo follows slow - gradually faster - fast - very fast conclusion. The big ensemble of the Linxian big suona is rough in style, using few delicate ornaments, with great momentum and a lively atmosphere, suited to large-scale group entertainment; the small ensemble is more elegant and refined, where narrative passages are soft and restrained and bold at the outset, and joy is noisy and boisterous. The small ensemble commonly uses the small suona (haidizi) as lead instrument; its civil ensemble is accompanied by huhu and erhu, and its martial ensemble by percussion such as bangzi, small barrel drum and small cymbals, and the pieces played are mostly Jin opera tune patterns.

Mantianxing

More than a hundred traditional old tunes have been handed down to the present day, and the pieces that accompany the percussion drum beats, such as "Helengze", "Dadesheng" and "Xiaodesheng", are particularly local in character. Main representative works include "Mantianxing", "Desheng Huixing", "Minjian Xiaoqu", "Bendiao Huadaoze" and "Shuilongyin".

Desheng Huixing

More than a hundred traditional old tunes have been handed down to the present day, and the pieces that accompany the percussion drum beats, such as "Helengze", "Dadesheng" and "Xiaodesheng", are particularly local in character. Main representative works include "Mantianxing", "Desheng Huixing", "Minjian Xiaoqu", "Bendiao Huadaoze" and "Shuilongyin".

Minjian Xiaoqu

More than a hundred traditional old tunes have been handed down to the present day, and the pieces that accompany the percussion drum beats, such as "Helengze", "Dadesheng" and "Xiaodesheng", are particularly local in character. Main representative works include "Mantianxing", "Desheng Huixing", "Minjian Xiaoqu", "Bendiao Huadaoze" and "Shuilongyin".

Bendiao Huadaoze

More than a hundred traditional old tunes have been handed down to the present day, and the pieces that accompany the percussion drum beats, such as "Helengze", "Dadesheng" and "Xiaodesheng", are particularly local in character. Main representative works include "Mantianxing", "Desheng Huixing", "Minjian Xiaoqu", "Bendiao Huadaoze" and "Shuilongyin".

Shuilongyin

More than a hundred traditional old tunes have been handed down to the present day, and the pieces that accompany the percussion drum beats, such as "Helengze", "Dadesheng" and "Xiaodesheng", are particularly local in character. Main representative works include "Mantianxing", "Desheng Huixing", "Minjian Xiaoqu", "Bendiao Huadaoze" and "Shuilongyin".

03 · Regional Records & Related Items

It is widely transmitted in Linxian County of Lüliang City, Shanxi Province, and the surrounding area in the form of oral instruction and mind to mind, and is deeply loved by the local people. This heritage item has a broad popular base, is an important part of local folk life, and plays an important role in enriching the cultural life of the people and bringing them together.

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04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding

This heritage item is transmitted mainly by oral instruction and mind to mind, with its essence grasped by intuition, and has now been transmitted to the seventh generation. The Linxian big suona has circulated to the present day for its long history, rich tune patterns, clear modes, and rough and unrestrained character, and provides a certain reference value for studying local folk customs and traditional music. Liu Xiaohong (as recorded in the official file of the associated inheritor): A male of the Han ethnicity, born in January 1966, native of Linxian County, Shanxi Province. He was devoted to the big suona from childhood, and at the age of 14 apprenticed himself to the famous artist Zhang Caiqing to learn blowing technique. In order to master as many ancient scores and tune patterns as possible, he visited for more than two years and received guidance from fifteen old artists of the county, collecting more than a hundred big suona ancient scores and old tune patterns, which he compiled and printed as "Linxian Chuida Yue". Representative works include "Fanguze", "Liuqingniang" and "Chu Duizi". His uniquely created finger-roll, air-blast and abdomen-vibration techniques were likewise affirmed by senior colleagues and professionals in the field. He has excavated more than twenty traditional pieces, including "Wulian Tao", "Quqin" and "Huadaozi". He is a representative inheritor of suona art (Linxian big suona), a project of the fifth national-level batch intangible cultural heritage. He has long been devoted to collecting materials and training successors, and has trained 126 students in total, among whom one each are provincial-level and municipal-level inheritors.

05 · Associated Representative Bearers

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

06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography

  1. Suona Art (Lin, Shanxi) · China ICH Official Project Archive
  2. Liu Xiaohong · National Representative Bearer Archive

Sources

China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)

Read the official ihchina.cn record ↗

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