Minority Musics of China

China's fifty-five minority peoples each keep their own languages, occasions and ways of passing music on.

Related

MatouqinHulusiBronze drum

Time and place

China's fifty-five minority peoples live across high plateaus, grasslands, oases, mountains and islands. Their music is bound to language, livelihood and belief: long song in pastoral areas, choral singing in rice-growing regions, suites in the oases, bronze drums and reed pipes in the mountains. Since the twentieth century, fieldwork, conservatories and heritage listing have changed how it is passed on.

Musical features

Song repertory includes mountain songs, work songs, ritual songs and lyric songs; instruments include morin khuur, dombra, hulusi and bronze drums; dance, narrative singing and opera often run together. Dong grand song and Zhuang three-part singing use polyphonic textures, Mongolian long song uses nogula, and Uyghur muqam is a large suite. Transmission depends on oral teaching and ritual occasions.

Repertoire

Liaokuo de Caoyuan, Alamuhan, the Dong grand song, and the Gesar epics of Tibetan and Mongolian singers are cited examples.

What to listen for

Hear first how the stresses and tones of the language become melody, then how occasion shapes the form. In polyphony, listen for the order in which parts enter; in long song, for how a sustained note bends.

Common misunderstandings

Minority music is often treated as a single style. The languages and musics of fifty-five peoples differ widely; not all use pentatonic scales, and none exists only for tourist shows.

Sources

• 《中国音乐词典》编辑部编，中国音乐词典（人民音乐出版社）— 民族音乐条目核对，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.