Yi Folk Songs
01 · Historical Records
The Yi people live mainly in the southern regions of China, distributed across Yunnan Province, Sichuan Province, Guizhou Province and the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. Yi wine songs are an ancient folk-song art of the Wuding Yi, with a long-standing historical tradition, current mainly within Wuding County of the Chuxiong Yi Autonomous Prefecture, Yunnan Province; in performance they generally use no instrumental accompaniment at all, while sacrificial wine songs are accompanied only by leaves, a sheepskin drum and a Dharma bell.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
Yi folk songs broadly fall into several large categories such as narrative songs, mountain songs, love songs, dance songs and children's songs. These folk songs have a rich repertory of tunes and a variety of performance forms, including solo singing, antiphonal singing, choral singing and one-leader-many-responders singing; sometimes several performance forms appear together within one mountain song, giving the artistic presentation a character of its own. Yi wine songs are an ancient folk-song art of the Wuding Yi, with a long-standing historical tradition, current mainly within Wuding County of the Chuxiong Yi Autonomous Prefecture, Yunnan Province. Wuding Yi wine songs are divided into "Nuoyi", "Daoga", "Qichu Nuoyi Ba", "Ming'ao", "Qichu", "Zaochu", "Nanga" and "Suowen Qiedachu", among which "Nuoyi" means songs transmitted from ancient times; its content is comparatively old and takes history and legend for its subject matter; "Daoga" refers to singing short tunes in clear, easily understood language, its content consisting mostly of maxims and aphorisms; "Qichu Nuoyi Ba" means combining the "marriage tune" with "Nuoyi", that is, organically unifying the gong mode and the shang mode; in "Ming'ao", "ming" means poem and "ao" means to see, so "Ming'ao" means that the lyrics, once sung, are like seeing with one's own eyes, and its content is mostly narrative poetry; "Qichu" is the "marriage tune", with more than one hundred and forty melodies and no fixed lyrics; "Zaochu" is a tune of praise, expressing congratulation, admiration and flattery; "Nanga" belongs to the antiphonal form and is sometimes also sung in unison; "Suowen Qiedachu" is the guests' wine-toast tune — it has many melodies and set lyrics, represented by works such as "Zhu Jiu Ge" and "Ying Ke Diao". Yi wine songs in performance generally use no instrumental accompaniment at all; sacrificial wine songs are accompanied only by leaves, a sheepskin drum and a Dharma bell, while at formal welcoming ceremonies the yueqin, the large three-stringed fiddle, the large suona and the ground horn are used for accompaniment, in a style that is rugged, warm and uninhibited.
Nuoyi
Means songs transmitted from ancient times; the content is comparatively old and takes history and legend for its subject matter.
Daoga
Refers to singing short tunes in clear, easily understood language; the content consists mostly of maxims and aphorisms.
Qichu Nuoyi Ba
Means combining the "marriage tune" with "Nuoyi", that is, organically unifying the gong mode and the shang mode.
Ming'ao
"Ming" means poem and "ao" means to see; the name means that the lyrics, once sung, are like seeing with one's own eyes, and the content is mostly narrative poetry.
Qichu (marriage tune)
That is the "marriage tune"; it has more than one hundred and forty melodies, and its lyrics are not fixed.
Zaochu
A tune of praise, expressing congratulation, admiration and flattery.
Nanga
Belongs to the antiphonal form, and is sometimes also sung in unison by all.
Guest wine-toast tune
The guests' wine-toast tune; it has many melodies and set lyrics, represented by works such as "Zhu Jiu Ge" and "Ying Ke Diao".
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
The Yi people live mainly in the southern regions of China, distributed across Yunnan Province, Sichuan Province, Guizhou Province and the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.
Other submitting regions for the same item: Yi Folk Songs.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
Yi wine songs are an important means of close exchange among the various branches of the Yi people; they carry content on many aspects of Yi social life, historical legend, folk custom and ethical ideas. Their language is vivid and graphic and highly compressed, and they fully express the ethnic wisdom and artistic talent of the Yi people, providing important documentary material for the study of ancient Yi music, ritual custom and social life. At present, because the life customs of the Yi keep drawing closer to those of the Han, the wine song — this traditional form of culture and art — is in danger of disappearing, and its protection should begin immediately. Yu Xueguang (official archive entry of the associated inheritor): A man of the Yi ethnicity (Nasupo branch), born in July 1956, native of Wuding County, Yunnan Province. He grew up surrounded by the Yi wine songs of his elders' generation and was thoroughly influenced by them from earliest childhood. He could sing independently from the age of 17 and began passing on Yi wine songs at 22. He has fully mastered the singing skills of eight categories of Yi wine song — Nuoyi, Daoga, Qichu Nuoyi, Ming'ao, Qichu, Zaochu, Nanga and Suowen Qiedachu — and has collected and organized more than one hundred Yi wine songs, filming them onto the compact disc "Wuding Yi Wine Songs" and editing them into the teaching material "Wuding Yi Wine Songs", which he distributed free of charge to students when running training classes. From 2010 he has carried out Wuding Yi wine song transmission activities at the Wuding Yi wine song learning centre, and has taken on more than one hundred disciples. Most of his disciples are scattered among the minority villages of the county's eleven townships. Representative inheritor of the Yi folk songs (Yi wine songs) national-level intangible cultural heritage project of the fifth national-level batch.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Yu Xueguang 05-2121
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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