Tajik Folk Songs
01 · Historical Records
The folk songs transmitted to the present day mainly have content reflecting ancient social life, ethics and morality, solidarity and mutual assistance, helping others for their own good, local customs and folkways, the praise of love, and religious activities.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
Tajik folk songs are an important heritage of traditional Tajik music; from the music to the lyrics they bear the characteristics of the Pamir Plateau and the ethnic features of the Tajiks, and they are an important part of Tajik culture, with a long history. In ancient times Tajik folk songs came all the way down from the remote past together with Tajik religious culture, faithfully recording the development history of the Tajik people. Tajik folk songs are transmitted mainly in Tashkurgan Tajik Autonomous County and the surrounding plateau regions. The Tajiks mainly earn their living from farming and animal husbandry; they are good at singing and dancing, and folk songs have become an inseparable part of their life. The content of Tajik folk songs is very wide-ranging. More of them take love as their theme; when young men and women are courting they also use the form of the rubayi (four lines to one couplet, or antiphonal singing) to sing against each other, expressing admiration and longing. Its main categories include: customary songs, love songs, narrative long poems, funeral laments, religious songs and humorous songs. Tajik folk songs maintain a plain, distinctive style. Judged by genre and function, Tajik folk songs include some folk songs that accompany dancing, so the melodies in Tajik folk songs are varied, with all kinds of folk songs in fast and slow rhythms. When the Tajiks sing folk songs, according to the different contents and tunes of the songs, they gather during festivals and weddings and in spare moments after work, accompanied by instruments such as the eagle flute, the tambourine and the rawap; the folk singers sing with feeling and the crowd dances gracefully. As modern popular songs spread, the younger generation has gradually forgotten the ancient Tajik folk songs.
Customary songs
One of the main categories of Tajik folk songs.
Love songs
One of the main categories of Tajik folk songs; more of them take love as their theme, and when young men and women are courting they also sing against each other in the rubayi form.
Narrative long poems
One of the main categories of Tajik folk songs, relatively long and mainly narrative.
Funeral laments
One of the main categories of Tajik folk songs.
Religious songs
One of the main categories of Tajik folk songs, related to the religious and cultural activities of the Tajik people.
Humorous songs
One of the main categories of Tajik folk songs.
Rubayi antiphonal singing
A form in which four lines make one couplet, or in which two singers answer each other, used by young men and women to express admiration and longing.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
The Tajiks of Tashkurgan live in villages grouped by pasture and village community and sing collectively; at festivals and weddings and in spare moments after labour they often gather in numbers to sing, accompanied by the eagle flute, the tambourine and the rawap, with a singer leading the chorus and everyone joining in; young men and women then declare their feelings through rubayi antiphonal singing (four lines to one couplet, or antiphonal singing), so Tajik folk songs have the dual functions of the ritual and of social life.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
Tajik folk songs have been handed down to the present day from generation to generation, mainly by family transmission and by master-apprentice transmission. Tajik folk songs have marked ethnic characteristics and are of important value for the study of the folk songs of China's ethnic minorities and of musicology. At present the singers who can sing traditional folk songs are all over 55 years of age, and the number who can really sing them all is very small; they are also of advanced age, there is nobody to succeed them, transmission has broken down, and the tradition is in an endangered state. Reyimbay Mubarkasha (official archival record of the associated inheritor): male, Tajik, born in October 1962, native of Tashkurgan Tajik Autonomous County, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. He was born into an artistic family, learned to sing folk songs from his uncle as a child, and had already become a locally known young singer in his boyhood. He has mastered the different singing methods of Tajik folk songs; he can not only sing more than a hundred folk songs of strong local character, but also play the eagle flute, the rawap, the tambourine and other folk instruments proficiently. Besides singing, he has dedicated himself to collecting folk songs, ancient instruments and ethnic costume. Representative inheritor of the fifth national-level batch of the Tajik folk songs intangible cultural heritage project. He frequently takes part in all kinds of cultural and artistic activities and has won a number of awards. He has voluntarily served as captain of the township farmers' and herders' cultural troupe, teaching apprentices and passing on the art, and has already trained numerous disciples.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Reyimubayi Mubalakexia 05-2166
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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