Yi Music

Yi music joins antiphonal song, moon dancing and narrative through the yueqin, mouth harp and many local voices.

Related

Yueqin (moon lute)Kouxian (jaw harp)

Time and place

The Yi live in Liangshan in Sichuan, in Chuxiong, Honghe, Wenshan and Dali in Yunnan, in Bijie and Liupanshui in Guizhou, and in Longlin in Guangxi. Liangshan is the largest concentration; Shilin, Mile and Luxi in Yunnan are home to Axi branches, and haicaiqiang singing is centred on the shores of Yilong Lake in Shiping. Yi belongs to the Tibeto-Burman branch of Sino-Tibetan and has six major dialect groups; the traditional Yi script is used in bimo ritual books.

What happened

Yi music is organised closely by branch and occasion. Axi moon dancing takes place in courtyards on moonlit nights or festivals, with men and women in a circle led by the large three-string and flute. Haicaiqiang is sung antiphonally on the lake and in the fields around Shiping, with a lead voice and answering chorus, in spans long or short. In Liangshan, bimo priests chant in rituals close to speech. From the late twentieth century these genres were staged, haicaiqiang entered national competitions, and Axi moon dancing became a fixture of festivals and tourism. Dates of individual tunes rest on oral transmission, and documentary evidence is limited.

Musical features

Melodies are mostly pentatonic, wide in range, with many leaps. Haicaiqiang alternates falsetto and chest voice, rises high at the phrase start, holds the end, and lets the chorus enter at the close. Axi dance songs are short, with clear strong beats against the three-string's syncopation. The yueqin's tuning and plucking set the dance frame; the mouth harp uses the mouth cavity to select overtones and is quiet, close to speech. Drinking songs and wedding laments use different vocal placements, one bright and one tearful.

What to listen for

Hear how the haicaiqiang high note slides from falsetto into chest voice, then how the chorus enters at the phrase end. Essen-008776 is a moon-dance song with strong beats and repetition; essen-000392 is a Lunan mountain song with high register and clear phrasing; essen-000399 is a Xundian mountain song with ornament and close. None is a stage arrangement, so the breath of the outdoors remains.

Common misunderstandings

Haicaiqiang is often treated as the song of all Yi people, and Axi moon dancing as a unified Yi dance. Each belongs to particular branches and places. Nor is all Yi music pentatonic; the overtones of mouth harp and yueqin bring other pitches. Yi music is still used at weddings, festivals and rituals, not only on stage.

Sources

• 《中国音乐词典》编辑部编，中国音乐词典（人民音乐出版社）— 彝族民歌与乐器条目核对，未引用
• The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd ed., entry "China" — framework checked, not quoted

Used for fact-checking only; all prose is original.