Bimo Music
01 · Historical Records
“Gaji” mainly sings and recounts the origin of all things, the migrations of the clan, moral admonition, praise of the bimo ancestors, myths and legends, genealogies, and everyday knowledge of production and life; the language is fairly plain and easy to understand. The “Man Shu” (Book of the Barbarians) by Fan Chuo of the Tang dynasty also records it.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
Bimo music is the traditional ritual music chanted by the Yi ritual specialists, the bimo, in sacrifices, funerals and other ritual occasions and places; its content covers the political history, literature and art, production and daily life of the Yi people. Bimo music in Meigu County of Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan Province preserves distinctive chanted styles, chanted recitative styles and melodies, and is widely transmitted. Besides this, bimo music is also transmitted in the Yi settlements of places such as Zhaojue County and Butuo County of Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan Province. “Gaha” is mainly of the type for seeing off the spirit and sacrificing to the ancestors; its content includes historical origins, praise of the ancestral forefathers and foremothers, and prayers for abundant harvests, thriving livestock and for fertility and offspring. In terms of the form of the melodic style, bimo music falls into two large classes: the chanted recitative style and the sung style. The low chanting style has a low, gentle melody and a slow tempo; the notes used change with the tonal pattern of the words, and are very carefully worked out. The high calling style has a high-pitched, bold and unrestrained melody; the sung words take one note for each syllable, and are very tightly packed. The tempo is mainly fast, and the formal structure consists mostly of single sentences, occasionally with two contrasting lines; structures of four lines or more are rarely seen. As the ritual differs, the sung style of the music differs too. The praise-ancestors tune, the prayer-for-blessing tune, the auspicious-omen tune and the summoning-of-the-spirit tune all differ widely from one another; the sung words consist mainly of five-syllable and seven-syllable lines, supplemented by three-syllable, nine-syllable and eleven-syllable lines, and vary with the ritual. Its sung styles include more than twenty kinds, such as the spirit-seat sacrifice tune, the tea-offering tune, the account-of-origins tune, the circle-guard tune, the discourse tune, the consolation tune and the marriage tune. The “Huayang Guozhi · Nanzhong zhi” records: “Among the barbarians, those who are astute and able to speak and argue and win over the people are called elders, and they are made the leaders. Those who discourse and are fond of comparing and likening things are called barbarian classics”. The “singer” system recorded in the “Xinan Yizhi” also shows that as far back as two thousand years ago there were bimo carrying a lot-drawing tube on their backs, holding a divine bell and shaking a divine fan, performing bimo chanting of the scriptures. Each bimo learns different chanted recitative styles and sung styles through oral teaching and heart-to-heart transmission; the local lines of transmission of bimo music are mainly the Ribu lineage and the Qubilahuo lineage. The bimo use speaking-and-singing forms to narrate historical stories, shape artistic images, express emotion, and reflect Yi social life, philosophical thought and cosmology.
Gaji
One of the two large classes of bimo music, mainly singing and recounting the origin of all things, the migrations of the clan, moral admonition, praise of the bimo ancestors, myths and legends, genealogies and everyday knowledge of production and life; the language is fairly plain and easy to understand.
Gaha
One of the two large classes of bimo music, mainly of the type for seeing off the spirit and sacrificing to the ancestors; the content includes historical origins, praise of the ancestral forefathers and foremothers, and prayers for abundant harvests, thriving livestock and for fertility and offspring.
Low chant and high call
The chanted recitative style is spoken in the main and can be divided into low chanting and high calling: the low chanting style has a low, gentle melody and a slow tempo, with the notes used varying with the tonal pattern of the words; the high calling style has a high-pitched, bold and unrestrained melody, with one note for each syllable of the sung words.
Twenty-plus ritual melodies
As the ritual differs, the sung style of bimo music differs too; it includes more than twenty kinds, such as the spirit-seat sacrifice tune, the tea-offering tune, the account-of-origins tune, the circle-guard tune, the discourse tune, the consolation tune and the marriage tune.
Record in Huayang Guozhi
The “Huayang Guozhi · Nanzhong zhi” records: “Among the barbarians, those who are astute and able to speak and argue and win over the people are called elders, and they are made the leaders. Those who discourse and are fond of comparing and likening things are called barbarian classics”; the “singer” system of the “Xinan Yizhi” also shows that as far back as two thousand years ago there were bimo carrying a lot-drawing tube on their backs and holding a divine staff.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
Bimo music is varied in content, rich and manifold, distinctive in style, and can be divided into two large classes, “gaji” and “gaha”. The chanted recitative style is spoken in the main, and can be divided into low chanting and high calling.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
Bimo music has absorbed the essence of Yi folk music and made it classic and formulaic; it is a treasury of the “song, poetry and music” of Yi traditional culture, plays a positive part in refining the disposition, lifting the spirit and in combining entertainment with education, and also provides important reference for the study of ancient Yi music and art. Qubilahuo (official archival record of the associated inheritor): Male, of Yi ethnicity, born in October 1977, a native of Meigu County, Sichuan Province. His representative works in the Yi bimo documentary literature include “Yehuo”, “Amonire”, “Zhaobing Jing”, “Zhuigui Jing”, “Momo”, “Yejia”, “Zhizuo” and “Xisha”. In September 2014 he took part in the Dali mouth-harp concert, and in November of the same year took part in the sixth Asian Youth Arts Festival, where he gave bimo music performances. He has persisted in the transmission of bimo music for more than twenty years and has trained more than twenty apprentices. Representative inheritor of the fifth national-level batch intangible cultural heritage project bimo music. He has been devoted to the transmission and protection of Yi bimo culture, accompanying domestic and foreign scholars and experts in one hundred and twenty field investigations, and assisting the Meigu County Cultural Centre in completing the survey, registration and record-building of bimo music inheritors. In 2012 he won the first prize in the folk song category of bimo music at the first China Meigu Yi intangible cultural heritage performance exhibition.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Qu Bilahuo 05-2177
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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