Tibetan Folk Songs

01 · Historical Records

The chanting tune, also called the “six-syllable mantra song”, is a type of song sung by Buddhist believers when worshipping the Buddha and the other deities in a monastery. By the eleventh century CE the “le” style of folk song had become one of the folk song forms most beloved by the people of the Amdo Tibetan area, and it developed gradually from that point on.

02 · Core Techniques & Process

Mountain songs are called “lalu” in the Weizang region, “lu” in the Khampa region and “le” in the Amdo region; they are songs sung freely in the mountains and wilds. Labour songs are called “lexie” in Tibetan; there are very many kinds of them, and almost every form of labour has its own particular song. Love songs include songs of courtship and tea-of-love songs, while custom songs include wine songs, guessing antiphonal love songs, wedding songs, arrow songs, farewell songs and so on. Huarui Tibetan folk songs are current in Tianzhu Tibetan Autonomous County of Wuwei City, Gansu Province and the surrounding area, and have a history of more than one thousand five hundred years. Fragments of Tibetan manuscripts among the Dunhuang documents record that in antiquity the Tibetans had the habit of using folk songs as a way of communicating with one another. Huarui Tibetan folk songs are characterised by being vivid and plain, popular and easy to sing, with a marked rise and fall of delivery. By content they may be divided into narrative tunes, love songs, songs of lament at a daughter's marriage, satirical songs, songs of admonition, humorous songs and songs of welcome; the content is rich and the kinds complete, and the forms of singing include solo, antiphonal, unison, singing with dance and question-and-answer forms, among many others. Representative works include the Song of the Auspicious Sheep, the Trilogy of Genesis and Xizan. Huarui Tibetan folk songs are current at all kinds of feast gatherings and at occasions of daily life; they combine entertainment, artistry, local character and ethnicity in one, and shoulder the heavy task of cultural enlightenment. Their content is very wide-ranging, from primitive religious culture to historical geography, from local customs and human relations to social production, comprehensively reflecting the profound understanding of life and the broad awareness of a harmonious natural world acquired by the Huarui Tibetans over the course of the nation's historical changes; while displaying a broad social life they also permeate ideological content such as ethics and morality, becoming an encyclopaedia of Huarui Tibetan social life.

03 · Regional Records & Related Items

Tibetan folk songs are the principal form of folk music in Tibetan areas, and may be divided into types such as mountain songs (herding songs), labour songs, love songs, custom songs and chanting tunes. As one branch of the Amdo Tibetans, the Huarui Tibetans inherited and carried forward the form and content of the “le” style of folk song, and gradually formed Huarui Tibetan folk songs with a character distinctly their own. At present, under the rapid change of traditional ways of life, the folk art troupes of Tianzhu County have been disbanded one after another, while local facilities for preserving sound and video recordings remain relatively backward.

Other submitting regions for the same item: Tibetan Folk Songs · Tibetan Folk Songs · Tibetan Folk Songs · Tibetan Folk Songs · Tibetan Folk Songs · Tibetan Folk Songs · Tibetan Folk Songs · Tibetan Folk Songs · Tibetan Folk Songs.

04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding

Under these circumstances the channels through which Huarui Tibetan folk songs are transmitted are growing narrower and narrower, their survival has run into crisis, and urgent rescue and protection work is needed. Ma Jianjun (as recorded in the official file of the associated inheritor): also known as Huarui Suonancairang, male, Tibetan, born in May 1946, a native of Tianzhu Tibetan Autonomous County, Gansu Province. He loved the culture of his own people from childhood, taught himself, and became an outstanding figure in the singing of Huarui folk wine songs. When the singing of Huarui folk songs was about to have no successor, he voluntarily shouldered the task of teaching apprentices and handing on the culture; his apprentices are now to be found throughout the Huarui region. From 1978 onwards he published in newspapers and magazines across the country fifteen narrative long songs that he had collected and sorted out, among which representative works such as The Origin of Qingke were entered into the History of Tibetan Literature, and he was honoured and rewarded in turn at the county, city, provincial and national levels. He was included in the Who's Who of Contemporary Chinese Art in 1995, and was entered in the Dictionary of Chinese Biography (Contemporary Culture Volume) in 1998. Representative inheritor of the third national-level batch of the intangible cultural heritage project Tibetan folk songs (Huarui Tibetan folk songs).

05 · Associated Representative Bearers

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

• Ma Jianjun 03-0871
• Hua Ergong 03-0872
• Dawazhandou 03-0873
• Jiangbaqizha 05-2122
• Wudefen 05-2123
• Majinlian

06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography

1. Tibetan Folk Songs (Tianzhuzangzuzizhi, Gansu) · China ICH Official Project Archive
2. Ma Jianjun · National Representative Bearer Archive

Sources

China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)

Read the official ihchina.cn record ↗