Mongolian Folk Songs
01 · Historical Records
Mongolian folk songs are rich in content, free in rhythm, delicate in feeling, high and resonant in melody, extended and winding, and leave a long lingering aftertaste. Fuxin eastern Mongolian short-tune folk songs arose and are current in the Fuxin Mongol Autonomous County in the north-west of Liaoning Province and have a history of more than three hundred years. Fuxin lies in western Liaoning and is a half-farming, half-pastoral district where Mongols and Han have long lived in mixed settlement; after the local Mongol ancestors migrated south from the grasslands they gradually turned from herding to farming, and the short-tune folk songs took shape in this exchange of Mongolian and Chinese music and in farming life.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
Mongolian folk songs are rich in content, free in rhythm, delicate in feeling, high and resonant in melody, extended and winding, and leave a long lingering aftertaste. They fall into two kinds, the long-tune folk song and the short-tune folk song. Long-tune songs are generally sung in Mongolian; they are of great length, draw the breath out long and are deep in feeling, their use of the shake ornament is subtle and distinctive and their melodies far-ranging, and both melody and vocal style show the breadth and vigour of grassland folk song. Short-tune songs are current mainly in the half-farming, half-pastoral districts where Mongols and Han live in mixed settlement, are mostly sung in Chinese, are short in length, have an even rhythm and a fixed metre, readily use reduplicated syllables, and have simple lyrics and a free, flexible manner. Fuxin eastern Mongolian short-tune folk songs arose and are current in the Fuxin area of north-western Liaoning and have a history of more than three hundred years. Through the untiring efforts of generation after generation of artists, it has become a musical form that is widely social and artistic in both content and form: it keeps the lofty, far-reaching and bold, free-spirited style inherent in Mongolian music, while also taking on the plain, cheerful and sharply rhythmic colouring of farming life; at the same time it has absorbed and drawn on the content of primitive religious art, showing a sincere, fresh and solemn gravity. By subject matter this folk song may be divided into wine songs, wedding songs, sacrificial songs, songs of praise, love songs and the like. Its lyrics follow the typical narrative-folk-song form of “overlapping repeated stanzas” in which two stanzas make one unit: a stanza has four lines, the upper and lower stanzas overlap and repeat, and eight lines make up a segment of meaning. At the same time it uses devices such as simile, antithesis and exaggeration to narrate and to express feeling; its words are plain but its meaning deep, leaving an endless aftertaste. Eastern Mongolian short-tune songs are built mostly from five notes, and the two notes “4” and “7” are used very little. The commonest modes are the yu mode and the zhi mode, followed by the gong mode; the shang mode and the jue mode are used less often. Compared with long-tune songs, eastern Mongolian short-tune songs have a smooth, placid tune, an even and steady rhythm and a clear, orderly metre, and are generally performed in the form of solo, antiphonal singing or chorus. Representative works include The Bridal Song, The Fire-Offering Song, Sixty-Three and Ten Thousand Li.
The Bridal Song
Representative works include The Bridal Song, The Fire-Offering Song, Sixty-Three and Ten Thousand Li.
The Fire-Offering Song
Representative works include The Bridal Song, The Fire-Offering Song, Sixty-Three and Ten Thousand Li.
Sixty-Three
Representative works include The Bridal Song, The Fire-Offering Song, Sixty-Three and Ten Thousand Li.
Ten Thousand Li
Representative works include The Bridal Song, The Fire-Offering Song, Sixty-Three and Ten Thousand Li.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
Fuxin eastern Mongolian short-tune folk songs record, on the scale of an encyclopaedia, the development history of the local Mongol tribes, reflect the economic, political and cultural conditions of eastern Mongolia in each historical period, and exert a major influence on the sustained development of modern Mongolian culture.
Other submitting regions for the same item: Mongolian Folk Songs · Mongolian Folk Songs · Mongolian Folk Songs · Mongolian Folk Songs · Mongolian Folk Songs · Mongolian Folk Songs · Mongolian Folk Songs · Mongolian Folk Songs.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
At present the local short-tune folk song artists are advanced in years, and the problem of transmission has become a matter of the greatest urgency, waiting to be solved. Han Mei (as recorded in the official dossier of an associated inheritor): female, Mongol, born in September 1971, a native of Fuxin Mongol Autonomous County, Liaoning Province. A national second-class performer. In 1992 she entered the Fuxin Ethnic Art Troupe and began her professional career as a singer. Her voice is rich and sonorous and her range wide; when she sings her feeling is true and the voice is led by the emotion, so that voice and expression are one, and with the recurrent melodies and the beautiful, poetic lyrics it moves the heart and is rich in artistic appeal. She sings mainly love songs and narrative songs, and has mastered more than seventy short-tune folk songs; her representative pieces include Wuyun Shandan, Daya Boer, Yun Liang and Longmei. She teaches short-tune folk song at Fuxin Higher Vocational College, bringing the treasure of the national art into the classroom. Representative inheritor of Fuxin eastern Mongolian short-tune folk songs, a national-level intangible cultural heritage project in the fifth national-level batch.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Haleizhen 04-1533
- Guribasier 05-2111
- Suyaletu 05-2112
- Hanmei 05-2113
- Guli 05-2114
- Aoyunbielige
- Houqinghe
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。