Yellow River Boatmen's Songs

Ferrymen's work songs from the Shanxi-Shaanxi gorge of the Yellow River, with short forceful phrases and a tightening pulse.

Related

XintianyouShange (Mountain Songs)Voice

Time and place

Below Ningxia the Yellow River cuts through the loess plateau, forming a gorge between Jiaxian, Wubu and Fugu on the Shaanxi bank and Hequ and Baode on the Shanxi bank. Ferries worked the crossings with wooden boats, and crews hauled, carried and rowed; the work songs belong to that stretch of water. They are sung in Jin and Central Plains Mandarin, and the two banks sound close but not identical. Crossings sit where the bank flattens, yet the songs are shouted in the fastest water.

What happened

The river runs fast and heavy with sand, so boats cannot simply tie up. Cargo and passengers were loaded and unloaded at fixed crossings. There were songs for starting the boat, checking it, poling it, hauling it off shallows on men's backs, raising and lowering the mat sail. The crew changed songs with the task, and the caller read the water to set the pitch. In the 1940s musicians based in Yan'an collected The Yellow River Boatman's Song by the Shaanxi bank; it was later arranged for chorus and became a standard source for music about the river.

Musical features

Call and response dominates. The call is fairly short, the answer shorter, like a shout and its echo. Melody leaps in fourths and fifths and covers a wider range than the Chuan Jiang songs, with a dry, hard tone and little ornament. The beat is heavy and even, accented where the hauling leg pushes and the oar enters the water. Tempo tightens over rapids, one phrase pressing the next. There is no instrument, only voices and river.

What to listen for

Start with the well-known Yellow River Boatman's Song and notice how one long phrase repeats and how its ending drops. Then take the hauling-off song and hear the opening that sets the crew in motion from standstill. Follow the accents of the outside hauling song, and finally the breathing gaps in the short back-carrying phrases. Set it beside the Chuan Jiang repertory: the Yellow River phrases are shorter and barer.

Common misunderstandings

A common mistake is to treat The Yellow River Boatman's Song as a folk original preserved intact. It was collected, notated and arranged, and the choral version is further from the workplace. Nor are all Yellow River work songs called boatman's songs; starting, hauling and back-carrying each have their own items. The repertory is not Shaanxi's alone. Shanxi shares the water and the sequence of tasks.

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）— 曲目与渡口核对，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.