Bronze Drum Dance
01 · Historical Records
Of the bronze drum artefacts excavated in Guangnan County, the earliest is the Shaguo drum of the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods, which has a history of more than two thousand years. The bronze drum dance began with the nature worship and the ancestor worship of the ancestors of the Zhuang and Yi peoples of Wenshan.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
The bronze drum was used very early as a symbol of power, as a sacred vessel for warding off evil and praying for blessings, and as an instrument for entertaining the gods. The Yi hold that the bronze drum is the spirit of all things; by beating the drum and dancing, people's wishes can be conveyed to the heavens and to the ancestors. The Zhuang hold that beating the bronze drum and dancing can dispel demons and evil from the village and pray for peace. The bronze drum dance is an ethnic collective dance. The dancers form a circle and, stepping to the rhythm of the drum, dance counterclockwise; after completing one set of dance movements they go on to dance another set, and the content of these reflects the agricultural production and life of the Zhuang and Yi peoples. The bronze drum dance of the Zhuang in Magui Village, Nasai Town, Guangnan, preserves in full twelve sets of dance movements, reflecting the different production activities of the twelve months of the four seasons. The bronze drum dances of several villages such as Malipo and Funing are used mainly for folk customs such as praying for rain, seeking a good harvest and the funerals of elders. The bronze drum dance of the Zhuang and Yi is widely transmitted, its movements are simple and archaic, and its dance vocabulary is very rich. In the performance of the Zhuang bronze drum dance, one person beats the bronze drum while another assists with a wooden box to form a resonant glissando; this cannot be found in any other musical performance. The Yi performance on the bronze drum, by contrast, is a special technique: with a pair of bronze drums, one male and one female, a single player can produce twelve combinations of pitch, abbreviated as the twelve tones.
Twelve sets for twelve months
The Zhuang of Magui village in Nasa township, Guangnan, preserve twelve complete sets of movements mirroring the year's twelve months of work.
Resonating box and twelve tones
One Zhuang player strikes the drum while another works a wooden box for a sliding resonance; a Yi player draws twelve tone combinations from a pair of male and female drums.
Sun drum and moon drum
The male drum stands for the sun, the female for the moon and the twelve tones for the months, so the Yi dance encodes a local calendar.
Rain, harvest and funerals
Spread through the Zhuang and Yi villages of six counties, the dance serves chiefly to pray for rain and harvest and to bury the old.
The Shaguo drum of two millennia
The earliest bronze drum unearthed at Guangnan, the Spring-and-Autumn Shaguo drum, is over two thousand years old.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
The bronze drum dance is one of the oldest dance forms most widely transmitted and most influential among the Zhuang and Yi people of the Wenshan Zhuang and Miao Autonomous Prefecture, Yunnan Province. It is distributed among the Zhuang and Yi villages of Guangnan, Malipo, Funing, Xichou, Maguan, Qiubei and other counties, while the bronze drum dances of the Zhuang and Yi of Guangnan County, of the Bailuo branch of the Yi in Xinzhai Township of Malipo County and of Muyang Township of Funing County are the most representative. According to account, the male drum stands for the sun and the female drum for the moon, and the twelve tones stand for the twelve months of a year; accordingly the Yi bronze drum dance also contains the calendrical culture of the local ethnic group. It has accumulated the nature worship and ancestor worship of the Zhuang and Yi ancestors and carries historical and cultural content in many respects, including sustaining the survival and development of the ethnic group; it has distinctive ethnic and regional features and important historical, cultural and artistic value.
Other submitting regions for the same item: Bronze Drum Dance · Bronze Drum Dance · Bronze Drum Dance.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
Under the impact of outside culture, the younger generation of the Zhuang and Yi lack a deep understanding of the traditional ethnic history and culture, which has caused a sharp drop in the number of those who learn the bronze drum dance; if it is not protected and transmitted in time, it is in danger of disappearing. Lu Xiaozong (official file of the associated inheritor): Male, of the Yi ethnicity, born in 1949, native of Wenshan, Yunnan. His representative works include "Bronze Drum Dance", "Shepherd's Purse Dance", "Erhu Dance" and "Dance of Entering the New House". Representative inheritor of the bronze drum dance (Wenshan Zhuang and Yi bronze drum dance) of the second batch of national-level intangible cultural heritage items. Huang Zhengwu (official file of the associated inheritor): Male, of the Yi ethnicity, born in 1945, native of Wenshan, Yunnan. In the Yi traditional festival "Tiaogong Festival" every year he serves as the lead dancer. Representative inheritor of the bronze drum dance (Wenshan Zhuang and Yi bronze drum dance) of the second batch of national-level intangible cultural heritage items.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Lu Xiaozong 02-0384
- Huang Zhengwu 02-0385
- Ban Dianyi 04-1568
- Huang Mingrong 05-2236
- Li Fangcai 05-2237
- Liang Zhenggong 05-2238
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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