Uyghur Folk Songs

01 · Historical Records

Luobunur is the old name for the area of the lower reaches of the Kongque River and of Lop Nur. The Uyghur people living in this region made their living by fishing and hunting, by herding and by cultivation, and their folk songs were formed gradually together with the production and the migrations of the Lop people. The townships and farms in which the farmers and herdsmen of Yuli County are concentrated, together with some townships and farms of the neighbouring Ruoqiang County and the corps farms, are its principal places of transmission; it is performed in many forms, including recitative, solo and antiphonal singing.

02 · Core Techniques & Process

Traditional folk songs include love songs, labour songs, historical songs, songs of life and custom, and so on. Love songs are used mainly to express the utter faithfulness and ardent pursuit of love by young men and women; labour songs include hunting songs, herding songs, wheat-harvest songs, threshing songs, canal-digging songs, spinning-wheel songs and wall-building songs; historical songs mainly reflect major events in Uyghur history, such as the Song of Building the City and Let It Flow Henceforth that are current in northern Xinjiang; songs of life and custom are closely bound up with the various Uyghur rites and traditional customs, and are chanted at weddings, funerals, marriages, celebrations, sacrifices and folk festivals. Love songs account for a very large share of Uyghur folk songs; in these songs the ardent love of young men and women is expressed by devices of analogy and comparison bearing the psychological features of the Uyghur nation and the characteristics of the locality, revealing a distinctive artistic charm. Uyghur folk songs have a wide range of content and a great number; the words of most of them are not fixed, and a melody that can be adapted is commonly chosen and new words fitted into it, expressing profound implications by devices such as analogy and comparison. The refrains in the songs vary in length, serving to strengthen the tone, to colour the atmosphere and to deepen the sense of the words. Luobunur Uyghur folk songs are the traditional form of singing of the Lop people living on the banks of the Kongque River and the Tarim River; they are current mainly in the townships and farms in which the farmers and herdsmen of Yuli County, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, are concentrated, and in some townships and farms of the neighbouring Ruoqiang County and the corps farms. Luobunur folk songs have a long history and have accompanied the production and the life of the people of Luobunur all along. They take many forms of performance, including recitative, solo and antiphonal singing; among them there are love songs, and also labour songs, hunting songs, historical songs, narrative songs and songs of longing, as well as customary songs such as wedding songs, celebration songs and funeral songs, reflecting from different sides the true conditions of the production and the life of the inhabitants of Luobunur. In the long course of oral transmission from heart to heart, inheritors often make alterations of the words and the melody according to their own feelings, performing level and understanding, and even improvise and compose new words to a relatively fixed melody. According to the different genres of the songs, Luobunur Uyghur folk songs vary in their style of performance, being either lyrical and lingering or ardent and unrestrained. Representative works include The Descendants of Karakushun and I Went to Milan to Do My Labour Service. Luobunur Uyghur folk songs are the most important recreational activity of the people of Luobunur, who express their joy, anger, sorrow and happiness and exchange feelings and information by singing together or by improvising antiphonally.

03 · Regional Records & Related Items

Uyghur folk songs are an extremely rich store, and by their content may be divided into two great parts, traditional folk songs and new folk songs.

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

04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding

Luobunur Uyghur folk songs directly reflect the life and the spiritual condition of the inhabitants of Luobunur, help towards interpreting their feelings, inner life and aesthetic ideas, and provide research material for solving historical riddles such as the “mystery of ancient Turkic music”, the “mystery of Altaic music”, and the relationship between the people of Luobunur and the ancient Karluks. In recent years, under the influence of the media forms of modern culture, folk singers find it hard to make a living, and the number of people who transmit and sing these ancient folk songs is steadily decreasing. If a protection plan is not drawn up as soon as possible, this precious art of ethnic folk music will be in danger of being lost. Tudi Niyazi (as recorded in the official file of the associated inheritor): male, Uyghur, born in May 1971, a native of Yuli County, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. He has liked folk songs since childhood and has exchanged and studied with all the well-known folk singers of the townships of Yuli County, and has mastered the singing and playing of Luobunur folk songs. Owing to his artistic gifts he worked at the Yuli County Cultural Centre from 1995 to 2009, pursuing further study at the Xinjiang Arts Institute during that period, and from 2009 has served as head of the Yuli County Huyang Art Troupe. In the course of his work he has taken part many times in the collecting, sorting out, recording and study of Uyghur folk songs organised by radio and television stations and by academic institutions. Representative inheritor of the fifth national-level batch of the intangible cultural heritage project Uyghur folk songs (Luobunur Uyghur folk songs). He has trained more than twenty inheritors who pluck and sing folk songs, and, on the basis of the traditional folk songs, has composed new Luobunur folk songs; he has also tried to apply Luobunur folk songs to other art forms such as dance, sketch and instrumental performance.

05 · Associated Representative Bearers

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

• Tudi Niyazi 05-2124
• Abudouwali Dawuti 05-2125
• Hailiqiemu Tiemuer 05-2126

06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography

1. Uyghur Folk Songs (Yuli, Xinjiang) · China ICH Official Project Archive
2. Tudi Niyazi · National Representative Bearer Archive

Sources

China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)

Read the official ihchina.cn record ↗