Danzhou Diaosheng

Collective antiphonal singing from Danzhou, Hainan, with men and women in lines, arms linked, singing and stepping in brisk time.

Related

Shange (Mountain Songs)VoiceGong, Shang, Jue, Zhi, Yu

Time and place

Danzhou lies in northwestern Hainan, with diaosheng strongest around Nada, Zhonghe and Wangwu. It is sung in Danzhou speech, a Chinese dialect that coexists with Li, Junhua and Minnan varieties. Performances cluster at the Mid-Autumn and Lantern festivals and in the farming slack season, at village entrances, on slopes and at markets. Men and women form separate lines, from a handful to several dozen, arms linked, bodies swaying to the beat. With little land and a long coast, the song gathering also served as a place for young people to meet.

What happened

Danzhou had a custom of Mid-Autumn song gatherings, when village lines came out, one singing and another answering, words improvised, sometimes until late at night. After the 1950s, performing groups arranged diaosheng for the stage and radio. In the 1980s the gatherings revived, and competitions and tourist performances appeared alongside them. Around 2006 diaosheng entered the national intangible heritage list, and documentation and teaching followed.

Musical features

Diaosheng is mostly in duple time, brisk, with short even phrases, either one leading and many answering or two lines in dialogue. Melody rests on a pentatonic frame, often zhi mode, with a saucy downward slide at the close. Vocables are dense, and kinship terms such as nong, gu and ge recur, cutting the real words into fragments. The body moves while singing; steps and swinging arms are the beat, so the music always feels danced. There is normally no instrument, though a drum may join.

What to listen for

Begin with the song inviting a partner to answer: one line starts, the other replies with almost no gap. Then take the song that draws people in, where many voices thicken the sound and slide down together at the close. The urging song is the most impatient in tone. Finally the song praising Danzhou's sea of music locks place names and vocables together, and the rhythm of the dialect comes through.

Common misunderstandings

A common mistake is to take diaosheng for Li folk song. Diaosheng is sung in Danzhou speech by Han communities, while Li song is in Li, with different occasions and tunes. Nor is it a staged invention: it comes from village gatherings, and its collective character is fundamental. It is also not a mountain song. A mountain song can be sung alone in the hills; diaosheng requires a group and a reply.

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）— 曲目与儋州方言核对，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.