Laohekousixian

01 · Historical Records

Laohekou silk-string music is a branch of the Bianliang small tunes, brought from Henan into Hubei, and has a history of more than four hundred years. It was originally a form of pastime in which folk artists, scholars, merchants and people of other occupations gathered to play the qin and amuse themselves; it later gradually developed into a musical genre with strong local characteristics and circulated widely among the people. By the late Qing dynasty Laohekou silk-string music had already attained scale there, with dozens of performance troupes in the urban area alone and close to a thousand performers. In the 1960s Laohekou silk-string music ceased to be played for a time, and it was not until the 1980s that collecting and sorting out work on it began again.

02 · Core Techniques & Process

Silk-string music arose in Kaifeng, Henan; its main component is the Bianliang (Kaifeng) small tune. Existing tune-pattern names such as "Poxia", "Dazaogan", "Yinniusi", "Dieduanqiao" and "Pipoyu" are all small-tune patterns that circulated among the folk in the Ming and Qing dynasties. Laohekou silk-string music is played in three main forms: first, ensemble playing, led by plucked instruments such as the sanxian, guzheng, pipa and yueqin; second, solo playing, with the sanxian, guzheng or pipa as the leading instrument; third, silk-string singing, mainly performing ancient tune patterns. The pieces of Laohekou silk-string music are classical tune patterns, laying stress on symmetry and regularity. Each piece has a title; in the music the large number of altered "7" notes are replaced by the principal "1", and in many places stepwise runs with added ornaments even replace fourths, so that the three scale degrees "5", "1" and "2" stand out as the backbone of the music, giving it a marked regional character. Laohekou silk-string singing has more than one hundred tune kinds, of which more than fifty are silk-string tune patterns. Pieces current in the Laohekou area today include "Su Wu Longs for Home", "Chen Xingyuan Reconciles at the Border" and "Shooting Wild Geese". With its traditional mode of performance, elegant and turning melodies and an art of singing and narration in which sound and sense blend, Laohekou silk-string music stands out in the world of music, is deeply loved by the local people, and has become an important subject of study in traditional folk music.

03 · Regional Records & Related Items

Laohekou silk-string music is a form of folk music appealing to both refined and popular taste, current in the Laohekou area of the Hanshui river basin in the northwestern part of Hubei Province.

04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding

At present this traditional form of folk music still requires further excavation and protection, restoration and revival. Yu Jiebing (from the official record of the associated inheritor): female, Han nationality, born in January 1944, native of Laohekou City, Hubei Province. She studied diligently and seriously, and inherited the whole repertoire of playing pieces. She then carried out long years of work on the playing, transmission and study of silk-string music. The silk-string pieces she sorted out and collated were included in the "Collection of Chinese National and Folk Instrumental Music, Hubei Volume". She organised and rebuilt the silk-string ensemble, established a silk-string teaching institute, set up a children's silk-string transmission and training base, and carried out the transmission work carefully. She is a representative inheritor of Laohekou silk-string music, a third-batch national-level intangible cultural heritage item. She has successively received such awards as the contribution award for the compilation achievements of the major national art research project, and the third "Inheritor Transmission Award of Chinese Intangible Cultural Heritage" presented by the Chinese National Academy of Arts (China Intangible Cultural Heritage Protection Centre).

05 · Associated Representative Bearers

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

• Yu Jiabing 03-0866

06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography

1. Laohekousixian (Laohekou, Hubei) · China ICH Official Project Archive
2. Yu Jiabing · National Representative Bearer Archive

Sources

China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)

Read the official ihchina.cn record ↗