Lhasa Nangma
01 · Historical Records
Lhasa nangma is a form of indoor song-and-dance performance deeply loved by the Tibetan people. It originates in the Ngari area of Tibet and is transmitted in Lhasa, Shigatse, Gyantse and other areas of the Tibet Autonomous Region, where it has a history of more than a thousand years.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
The Lhasa nangma has graceful dance postures and a plain vocal style; its main content is the praise of all things in nature, while at the same time it expresses reverence for the deities and longing for beautiful love. The structure of the Lhasa nangma is divided into two main parts, jiangban and jiban together with juexie and kuaiban. In performance the slow section comes first; this part contains very little dancing and centres mainly on qin accompaniment and a cappella singing. When the dancers, all together or the lead dancer alone, call out a single lesi, the dance moves at once into the kuaiban stage; the dancers sing as they dance, and the length of time is decided by the lyrics — when the words end, the dance is finished. The lyrics of nangma have rich content, with such themes as praising primitive religion, extolling the home land, talking of love and longing for a beautiful future. The dancers of the Lhasa nangma are mainly women; men mostly hold instruments and accompany at the side. In performance the band sits cross-legged to one side, the dancers stand in the centre, and a wooden board is placed under the feet of each of them. Because it is constrained by the occasion and the audience, nangma is basically danced on the spot, and during the performance the wooden boards under the performers' feet give out a tapping rhythm. The whole nangma performance gives a feeling of flying freely. The dance contains basic steps and gestures such as the withdrawing-backward and lunging-forward step, the two-step two-stomp, the leg-lifting step, the continuous stamping step, the forward-and-back arm swing and the greeting gesture, of which the most characteristic movement is the continuous stamping step followed by the double arm swing. At the climax of the performance the bowl-dance appears, in which the performer balances a bowl filled with highland barley wine on the head. Nangma is one of the more highly developed forms of comprehensive art combining song, dance and music in Tibetan folk tradition; its instrumental part is highly independent and can be performed on its own. Nangma music has a long history, a distinctive style and a complete and strongly contrasting structure, and is a rare flower among the folk music of the Tibetan nationality.
The slow and fast sections
Nangma falls into a slow section of plucked-song and a fast section entered when the dancers, or the leader alone, call out lesi.
The board under each dancer's feet
Staged indoors, the band sits cross-legged at one side while each dancer stands on a wooden board that clicks out the rhythm in place.
Linked steps into double hand sweeps
Its basic steps include retreat-and-lunge, two-steps-two-stamps, leg-lifting, the linked step, swinging hands and the salutation hand, the linked step into double hand sweeps being the most distinctive.
The bowl-balancing dance
At the climax a dancer balances a bowl of barley wine on her head, the signature turn from quiet song to full exaltation.
Luobu Quzhen and her album
The national inheritor Luobu Quzhen learned from Phurbu Drolma from the age of seven, holds nearly a hundred pieces by memory and issued the album Echoes of the Snow Land in 2008.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
Down to the present day, nangma still plays an important part in the cultural life of the local people and in modern professional artistic creation and performance, and it has special value.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
At present, as the times change, the transmission of the Lhasa nangma lacks successors, and rescue and protection are urgently needed. Luobu Quzhen (as recorded in the official archive of the associated inheritor): from the age of seven she studied nangma performance with the nangma duixie artist Pubu Zhuoma; her dance postures are beautiful and her movements are marked by strikingly distinctive ethnic and regional features. She has mastered orally close to one hundred traditional nangma and duixie sung pieces. In 2008 she published the album of Tibetan nangma and duixie music Snowy Plateau Resounding. From 2009 she has served as an instructor at the local folk art troupe, taking on more than twenty disciples, all of whom can sing forty-seven nangma pieces and more than thirty-five duixie pieces. A woman of the Tibetan ethnic group, born in September 1935, died in October 2017, native of Lhasa City, Tibet Autonomous Region. Representative inheritor of the fourth-batch national-level intangible cultural heritage project Lhasa nangma.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Luobuquzhen 04-1579
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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