Youyang Folk Songs

01 · Historical Records

Youyang Tujia and Miao Autonomous County borders Hubei to the east and Guizhou to the south and commands the strategic passage between Hunan and Chongqing; it is a convergence zone of ethnic cultures and the birthplace of the folk songs of southeastern Chongqing. Youyang folk songs are the product of the fusion and evolution of the Miao, Han and Tujia cultures in the special geographical environment of the Wuling Mountains, and their origin can be traced back to the Ba-Yu song and dance of ancient times; the high-register melodies of the various kinds of work chant all contain large upward leaps of interval from low to high, the high notes are lengthened in singing, and glottal tones are also used.

02 · Core Techniques & Process

Youyang Tujia and Miao Autonomous County borders Hubei to the east and Guizhou to the south and commands the strategic passage between Hunan and Chongqing; it is a convergence zone of ethnic cultures and the birthplace of the folk songs of southeastern Chongqing. Youyang folk songs are the product of the fusion and evolution of the Miao, Han and Tujia cultures in the special geographical environment of the Wuling Mountains, and their origin can be traced back to the Ba-Yu song and dance of ancient times. Heishui work chants are divided into seedling-planting chants, rice-transplanting chants, weeding chants and the like; Nanmu work chants are divided into opening chants, field-going chants, lingering chants, long chants and the like; Jinggang work chants are divided into morning chants, noon chants, afternoon chants, evening chants and closing chants and the like. The high-register melodies of the various kinds of work chant all contain large upward leaps of interval from low to high, the high notes are lengthened in singing, and glottal tones are also used. The Nanmu and Jinggang work chants vary the melody by approaching with an adjacent scale degree at the high notes, making the melody fuller in tone. What these kinds of work chants share in common is that their music implicitly contains the feige element of Miao songs, while dropping the lowered-third slide of Guizhou Miao songs and adding musical elements of the Tujia and Han peoples. The distinctive music of Youyang work chants formed in this way shows a fresh and pleasing style, natural and flowing, and quite individual in character. Besides work chants, Youyang folk songs also have many types such as mountain songs, children's songs and sacrificial songs. Among them the mountain songs have beautiful melodies and lyrics that can be improvised; when singers meet an equal partner in singing, each answers and overtakes the other, and often they go on all day without rest. Its representative pieces include "Bu Yao Chou Lai Bu Yao Jiao", "Taiyang Qu Le Po Bei Liang" and the like. Youyang is a sea of folk songs; at every traditional festival the townships all hold song contests.

03 · Regional Records & Related Items

The work chants of the Heishui area use a self-created turning-tone singing method for the high notes (which actually produces a sound like a struck string), and use a circular breathing method to enhance the colouring of the music. The Tujia have a language but no script, so Youyang folk songs carry the local social history, astronomy and geography, folk customs and sentiments, knowledge and skills, providing first-hand and vivid material for research in folklore, ethnology, the study of art, local history and culture, and many other disciplines.

04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding

About 1,700 or so Youyang folk songs have been excavated so far, of which the most distinctive and the most musically valuable are the work chants, represented by Heishui work chants, Nanmu work chants and Jinggang work chants. The townships of Youyang are separated from one another by the great mountains; although the folk songs are transmitted from a common source, each developed on its own in isolation, which brought about the situation in which each locality has its own tune for each kind of work chant; the musical styles of the folk songs of different regions are alike in some respects and different in others, and different in some respects yet alike in others. At present most of the elderly people in the Youyang area who could sing folk songs have passed away, and the ancient folk songs have few people to carry them on, so they urgently need rescue. Xiong Zhenglu (official archive entry of the associated inheritor): A man of the Miao ethnicity, born in May 1954, native of Youyang Tujia and Miao Autonomous County, Chongqing. His singing style is distinctive, his voice high and bright, with extremely strong carrying power, and the high struck-string tone is his outstanding feat. Because he studied suona blowing, the struck-string tone he uses in singing the work chants borrows the suona's flower-tongue technique, giving his music distinctive colouring. In recent years he has been active mainly on the various stages where Youyang folk songs are transmitted and disseminated, and has worked all along at the Heishui Town Central School of Youyang County on the transmission of Youyang folk songs. Representative inheritor of the Youyang folk songs national-level intangible cultural heritage project of the fifth national-level batch. He won the outstanding singer award at the "Contesting Wonder Minority Champion Challenge" held by the CCTV Opera and Music Channel.

05 · Associated Representative Bearers

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

• Xiong Zhenglu 05-2099

06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography

1. Youyang Folk Songs (Youyangtujiazumiaozuzizhi, Chongqing) · China ICH Official Project Archive
2. Xiong Zhenglu · National Representative Bearer Archive

Sources

China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)

Read the official ihchina.cn record ↗