Haimen Mountain Songs
01 · Historical Records
Haimen lies on the river beside the sea, in one corner of Jiangsu Province; the land on which it stands was formed by sediment deposited by rivers, and the county was officially established only in the thirty-third year of the Qianlong reign of the Qing (1768). In the twentieth year of the Republic (1931), Guan Jiange collected and collated Haimen mountain songs into Jiangkou Qingge, which caused a sensation in the arts circles.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
At that time large numbers of farmers from Chongming, Jurong and elsewhere poured into the Haimen area to reclaim land and create fields. After long development, the distinctive Haimen mountain songs finally stood out from labour life and reached a settled form. The language of Haimen mountain songs is vivid and graphic, and the music is pure, sweet, extended and mellow; it falls into two large types, lyrical mountain songs and narrative mountain songs. Lyrical mountain songs are also called “short mountain songs”; they are mostly improvised mountain songs sung extempore during or after work, in forms of four, six or eight lines, with seven characters to a line as the norm. Narrative mountain songs are also called “long mountain songs”; their texts often run to dozens or even hundreds of lines, with complete plots, and are sung to such tunes as the shange diao, duihua diao, foqi diao, youhu diao and haozi, in forms such as solo and antiphonal duet. The content of Haimen mountain songs is extremely rich and touches on almost every aspect of social life. Among them are works praising labour and expressing the people's longing for a happy life, such as Da Hang Shan Ge; works singing of love and expressing the persistent pursuit of sincere feeling by young men and women, such as Hua Wang Lang; works expressing an optimistic spirit, such as Wo Mai Shan Ge Wu Yao Qian; and works reflecting working people rising in revolt against exploiters, such as Xia Zao Tou Qing Wo Wu Gong Fu. Haimen mountain songs are handed down generation by generation among the people in an orderly succession. There are countless Haimen mountain singers in the countryside, and it is not unusual to find singers who can perform more than a hundred folk songs.
Da Hang Shan Ge
A work among Haimen mountain songs that praises labour and expresses the people's longing for a happy life.
Hua Wang Lang
A work among Haimen mountain songs that sings of love and expresses the persistent pursuit of sincere feeling by young men and women.
Wo Mai Shan Ge Wu Yao Qian
A work among Haimen mountain songs that expresses an optimistic spirit.
Xia Zao Tou Qing Wo Wu Gong Fu
A work among Haimen mountain songs that reflects working people rising in revolt against exploiters.
Xiao A Jie Kan Zhong Yao Chuan Lang
Sung by the inheritor Song Weixiang in 1986, performed in Beijing at Zhongnanhai with the Nantong Municipal Folk Art Troupe.
Lyric and narrative mountain songs
Lyrical mountain songs, also called “short mountain songs”, are mostly improvised and have forms of four, six or eight lines, with seven characters to a line as the norm; narrative mountain songs, also called “long mountain songs”, have texts running to dozens or even hundreds of lines and are sung to tunes such as the shange diao, duihua diao, foqi diao, youhu diao and haozi.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
They brought with them the dialect and customs of Jiangnan, and also the Wu-language mountain songs. As one expression of the river-and-sea culture, Haimen mountain songs are closely bound up with the production and life of the local people, and researchers in dialectology, folklore, ethnomusicology, history and other fields can all find precious material in them.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
After the founding of the People's Republic of China the Haimen Mountain Song Theatre was formally established, giving this distinctive local folk song a dedicated institution for transmission and development. At present, as the years pass the old mountain singers are departing one after another and few remain alive; traditional Haimen mountain songs are gradually declining and urgently need protection and transmission. Song Weixiang (as recorded in the official file of the associated inheritor): female, Han, born in December 1967, a native of Haimen City, Jiangsu Province. National first-class actress and director of the Haimen Mountain Song Art Theatre. She began learning and singing Haimen mountain songs as a child, and in 1984 entered the trainee class of the Haimen Mountain Song Theatre as a professional performer. In 1986 the Haimen mountain song Xiao A Jie Kan Zhong Yao Chuan Lang, sung by her, went to Beijing with the Nantong Municipal Folk Art Troupe and performed at Zhongnanhai. Over more than twenty years she has played more than fifty different characters in Haimen mountain song plays, giving about three thousand performances; the Haimen mountain songs she has sung individually number more than three hundred, in about two thousand performances. Representative inheritor of Haimen mountain songs, inscribed in the fifth national-level batch of national-level intangible cultural heritage. For many years she has served as a campus tutor for Haimen mountain songs, coaching tens of thousands of students in more than thirty colleges, schools and primary and secondary schools, and has trained more than twenty young performers for the Haimen Mountain Song Theatre.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Song Weixiang 05-2104
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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