Hunan Folk Songs

Hunan's high mountain calls, boatmen's work songs and flower-drum tunes share vocables and falling endings.

Related

Shange (Mountain Songs)SuonaDaluo (great gong)Ban and Yan

Time and place

Hunan's folk songs are spread across the central lowlands, the mountains of the west and the south of the province. Han songs mix with the traditions of the Tujia, Miao and Dong peoples. High mountains produced ringing mountain songs, the busy Xiang River produced call-and-response work songs, and towns and festivals favoured short tunes and flower-drum melodies.

Musical features

Mountain songs often open in a high register and fall away at the phrase end, with many vocables. Boatmen's songs are short-breathed, the lead answered tightly by the crew. Huagu and tea-picking tunes sit closer to xiaodiao, in duple time with neat phrase lengths. Yu and zhi modes prevail, and fourth or fifth leaps are shaped by local speech tones.

Repertoire

The Lishui boatmen's songs, Cold Water Makes Tea Steep Slowly, the Guzhang mountain song and the Wangcheng mountain song are common examples. Tea-picking tunes from flower-drum opera are also sung on their own.

What to listen for

Hear how the first line climbs, then how the ending falls. In work songs, listen for the gap between the lead and the answering crew. Town tunes can be counted; note that vocables are not mere filler but often fix the phrase length. A mountain song often ends on a long sigh, as if the sentence were finished and yet held.

Common misunderstandings

A common mistake is to hear all Hunan song as high mountain calls. Work songs, town tunes and flower-drum melodies belong to different settings. Songs around Sangzhi combine Han and Tujia elements and cannot be assigned to a single people.

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）— 曲目与地域核对，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.