Chaozhou Da Luogu

Led by a single big drum, Chaozhou da luogu stacks suona and deep gongs into the sound of processions and festivals

Related

Daluo (great gong)Suona

Time and place

Chaozhou da luogu flourishes around Chaozhou, Shantou and Jieyang in Guangdong and was already established in the Ming and Qing. Its occasion is the god procession and the festival: at New Year, Lantern Festival, Mazu's birthday and clan sacrifices, images are carried through the streets with the drum band clearing the way. Drum halls in the city and village music societies keep it alive.

What happened

Chaozhou merged Central Plains wind music, operatic drum patterns and local string repertory into an ensemble led by a big drum. The drummer conducts through patterns, gesture and eye contact; suona leads the melody, erxian, yehu, yangqin, sanxian, pipa and zheng follow, and douluo, big and small gongs, cymbals, qinzai and shenbo lay out the colours. After the 1950s the ensemble moved onto stages, its suites were edited, and it entered conservatory percussion teaching.

Musical features

The band has two layers: drum and bronze for rhythm, suona and strings for melody. The big drum is cowhide, deep in pitch, its patterns named and matched to the metre of the string repertory; the shenbo is a thick-rimmed gong whose long ring closes a section. Melodies come from Chaozhou string poems and labelled suites, pentatonic and densely ornamented, with the erxian high and hard. The whole is loud and layered, carrying outdoors and relying indoors on contrasts between drum and gongs.

What to listen for

Hear the drum pattern first, then how suona and bronze hand off. Dense drumming quickens the procession, sparse drumming lets the gongs spread, and one stroke of the shenbo ends a section. The library's Yueguang Ge from Chaozhou, Chaozhou Xiangqiao and the Chaoshan fish-name song are Chaozhou and Chaoshan dialect songs, not drum-band recordings.

Common misunderstandings

The da luogu is often taken for improvised noise. It has suites, named drum patterns and a strict course from opening to close, and the drummer drives dozens of players through changes of speed and weight. Another mistake is to call all Chaozhou music da luogu: the string poems are quiet chamber music, prized for nuance, and belong to another occasion.

Sources

• 《中国音乐词典》编辑部编，中国音乐词典（人民音乐出版社）— 条目与年代核对，未引用
• The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd ed., entry "China" — framework and dates checked, not quoted

Used for fact-checking only; all prose is original.