Chuan Jiang Boatmen's Songs

Boatmen's work songs from the upper Yangtze, led by a caller and answered by the crew, with tempo following the rapids.

Related

Shange (Mountain Songs)Gong, Shang, Jue, Zhi, YuVoice

Time and place

The Chuan Jiang is the stretch of the Yangtze from Yibin to Yichang, cutting through the Sichuan basin and the Three Gorges. In the age of wooden junks, crews rowed, poled and hauled through the rapids, and work songs grew out of that waterway. They are sung in Southwestern Mandarin, and the accent shifts from Chongqing to Luzhou to Wanxian, taking the melodic colour with it. The songs are named after tasks, not after tunes.

What happened

The river changes character every few kilometres, and the songs change with it. Calm water takes a slow call, the sight of a rapid tightens the pace, the climb upstream demands full force, and the desperate haul becomes almost continuous shouting. The lead singer stood at the bow, and the crew answered on the stroke and the step. When motor vessels took over in the mid twentieth century, the wooden fleets disappeared, the songs left the water, and collectors turned them into concert pieces.

Musical features

The form is call and response. The call is long, the answer short, and the answer lands where the oar bites. Melody stays close to speech and within a narrow range, usually in zhi or yu mode. Tempo follows the water, denser upstream and more open downstream. There is no accompaniment. Voices and river are the whole sound. The caller had to read the water as well as carry the tune.

What to listen for

Begin with the long Chuan Jiang medley and follow the joins between sections; the change of speed is the change of water. Then listen for the gap between call and answer in the downstream song, and finally for the clipped replies of the hauling song. The lead is not a soloist. His phrases give orders, and he often leaves half a beat for the crew to come in.

Common misunderstandings

It is often said that these songs are all high and ringing. The calm-water calls are closer to recitation and not loud at all. Nor is the repertory one fixed song. It is a set of task songs ordered by the water, each with its own tune. The medley heard today was edited for the stage and is not a literal recording of a working boat.

Sources

• 中国民间歌曲集成全国编辑委员会编，中国民间歌曲集成（中国 ISBN 中心）— 曲目与水域核对，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.