Hebei Wind and Percussion Ensemble
01 · Historical Records
Before the 1970s, the art of drum-and-wind music was still flourishing in the mass cultural activities of towns and villages.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
Yongnian drum-and-wind is the most representative of the drum-and-wind music of southeastern Hebei, and one of the folk instrumental genres with the greatest influence in Hebei province. It is said that when Dou Jiande, leader of the rebel army at the end of the Sui dynasty, established his capital and proclaimed himself king at Yongnian, wind-and-percussion music already existed both in the army and among the people. From the middle of the Ming dynasty onward, drum-and-wind music gradually became mature and flourishing. The Yongnian County Gazetteer (Customs chapter), compiled during the Guangxu reign of the Qing dynasty, records that it was used in large quantities at the weddings, funerals and sacrificial rites of the people, handed down from generation to generation without interruption. Yongnian drum-and-wind has a variety of performing forms, chiefly wind music, percussion music and ka-xi. Its repertory is rich, comprising three kinds, miscellaneous named tunes, suites and wind-and-ka pieces; it has more than two hundred pieces in all and more than fifty named tunes, many of them peculiar to Yongnian. Common pieces include A Single Flower, The Taihang March, Little Donkey Herd, The Great Ascension, Carrying the Bridal Sedan Chair and Great Donkey Herd. Yongnian drum-and-wind is a local folk art form of great distinctiveness in Hebei province and precious material for the study and learning of Chinese folk music; its traditional performing methods, techniques and style offer much enlightenment for the development and innovation of contemporary national wind-instrument performance art in China. Funing drum-and-wind has a large repertory, traditionally described as “fourteen sets of named tunes, and ditties as numerous as the hairs of an ox”. The surviving pieces fall into five main categories — yangge tunes, great named-tune pieces, Han blowing tunes, flower-blowing tunes and miscellaneous tunes — numbering more than two hundred in all. Commonly used pieces include All Red, Every Line a Pair, Liu Qing Niang, The Little Mill, Embroidered Red Lantern and The Old Official Tune. The instruments of Funing drum-and-wind are highly distinctive in form: suona of different shapes are its leading instruments, and there are in addition the “ka-wan” bowl used in ka-xi, the “mouth organ” used in flower blowing and many other common instruments. Funing drum-and-wind has varied performing methods and unique techniques, among them xianshang, adding flowers, forming characters, flowered tongue, trilled finger, triple strong tone and colour change, as well as the playing of the three-section suona in the ways called “pulling out three sections”, “changing the hold” and “linked blowing”; the blowing is organically combined with bodily movement, and the performing style is rugged and powerful, lively and witty, ardent and humorous, with a strong flavour of the local soil. Funing drum-and-wind is used mainly to accompany weddings and funerals, New Year festivals and folk dances, and has always been warmly welcomed by the people.
A Single Flower
Common pieces of Yongnian drum-and-wind include A Single Flower, The Taihang March, Little Donkey Herd, The Great Ascension, Carrying the Bridal Sedan Chair, Great Donkey Herd and others of the kind.
The Taihang March
Common pieces of Yongnian drum-and-wind include A Single Flower, The Taihang March, Little Donkey Herd, The Great Ascension, Carrying the Bridal Sedan Chair, Great Donkey Herd and others of the kind.
Little Donkey Herd
Common pieces of Yongnian drum-and-wind include A Single Flower, The Taihang March, Little Donkey Herd, The Great Ascension, Carrying the Bridal Sedan Chair, Great Donkey Herd and others of the kind.
The Great Ascension
Common pieces of Yongnian drum-and-wind include A Single Flower, The Taihang March, Little Donkey Herd, The Great Ascension, Carrying the Bridal Sedan Chair, Great Donkey Herd and others of the kind.
Carrying the Bridal Sedan Chair
Common pieces of Yongnian drum-and-wind include A Single Flower, The Taihang March, Little Donkey Herd, The Great Ascension, Carrying the Bridal Sedan Chair, Great Donkey Herd and others of the kind.
Great Donkey Herd
Common pieces of Yongnian drum-and-wind include A Single Flower, The Taihang March, Little Donkey Herd, The Great Ascension, Carrying the Bridal Sedan Chair, Great Donkey Herd and others of the kind.
All Red
Commonly used pieces of Funing drum-and-wind include All Red, Every Line a Pair, Liu Qing Niang, The Little Mill, Embroidered Red Lantern, The Old Official Tune and others of the kind.
Every Line a Pair
Commonly used pieces of Funing drum-and-wind include All Red, Every Line a Pair, Liu Qing Niang, The Little Mill, Embroidered Red Lantern, The Old Official Tune and others of the kind.
Liu Qing Niang
Commonly used pieces of Funing drum-and-wind include All Red, Every Line a Pair, Liu Qing Niang, The Little Mill, Embroidered Red Lantern, The Old Official Tune and others of the kind.
The Little Mill
Commonly used pieces of Funing drum-and-wind include All Red, Every Line a Pair, Liu Qing Niang, The Little Mill, Embroidered Red Lantern, The Old Official Tune and others of the kind.
Embroidered Red Lantern
Commonly used pieces of Funing drum-and-wind include All Red, Every Line a Pair, Liu Qing Niang, The Little Mill, Embroidered Red Lantern, The Old Official Tune and others of the kind.
The Old Official Tune
Commonly used pieces of Funing drum-and-wind include All Red, Every Line a Pair, Liu Qing Niang, The Little Mill, Embroidered Red Lantern, The Old Official Tune and others of the kind.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
Its performing style is rugged and ardent, cheerful and lively, with a marked regional character. Funing drum-and-wind is rich in content, with a distinctive regional cultural character and important historical and artistic value.
Other submitting regions for the same item: Hebei Wind and Percussion Ensemble.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
Yongnian drum-and-wind is transmitted mainly within families, and in the long course of teaching and practice five great family schools have gradually formed. It is transmitted in three ways, by family inheritance, by sworn brotherhood and by taking apprentices, and talent has flocked together generation after generation with famous artists appearing one after another; many players have had careers of the kind summed up as “learning the art as a youth in one's home town, earning a living by the art as a grown man in the Northeast, teaching the art in old age back in the home town, and spreading a fine name both inside and beyond the Shanhai Pass”. In recent years, for various reasons, both Yongnian and Funing drum-and-wind have been shrinking day by day and are in an endangered state with few successors, so that rescue and protection are urgently needed. Ren Lianyi (associated bearer, as recorded in the official archive): male, Han, born in November 1962, a native of Qinhuangdao city, Hebei province. After finishing junior high school he entered the folk artists' trade with the Ren family drum-and-wind troupe, and was mainly active in Qinhuangdao city of Hebei province and in various places of the three north-eastern provinces. His suona playing absorbs the essence of the various schools, forming a distinctive style of blowing that is highly rated among his peers. In technique he not only masters with skill the performing art handed down in his own school, but is also good at learning the techniques of colleagues in other provinces and cities, and can play more than two hundred traditional suona pieces. His representative works include, among the yangge class, All Red, Every Line a Pair and Liu Qing Niang; among the Han blowing tunes, The Old Tone and Jade Hibiscus; and among the great named-tune pieces, Four Comings, The Goose Alights and The Nezha Order. He is a representative inheritor of Hebei drum-and-wind music, a national-level intangible cultural heritage item of the fifth batch. In 2006 he was awarded the title of “National King of Blowing Songs”.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Liu Hongsheng 02-0301
- Ren Lianyi 05-2082
- Liu Haimin
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
This static English edition is rendered at the edge for search engines, AI crawlers and readers without JavaScript; it mirrors the bilingual dossier. 阅读中文版，或返回 英文名录。