The

music Music is generally defined as the art of arranging sound to create some combination of form, harmony, melody, rhythm or otherwise expressive content. Exact definitions of music vary considerably around the world, though it is an aspect ...

Yunnan Yunnan , () is a landlocked Provinces of China, province in Southwest China, the southwest of the People's Republic of China. The province spans approximately and has a population of 48.3 million (as of 2018). The capital of the province is ...

, a

province A province is almost always an administrative division within a country or sovereign state, state. The term derives from the ancient Roman ''Roman province, provincia'', which was the major territorial and administrative unit of the Roman Empire ...

in southwestern

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

, includes the traditional music of many

ethnic group An ethnic group or an ethnicity is a grouping of people who identify with each other on the basis of shared attributes that distinguish them from other groups. Those attributes can include common sets of traditions, ancestry, language, history, ...

s, including the

Miao Miao may refer to: * Miao people, linguistically and culturally related group of people, recognized as such by the government of the People's Republic of China * Miao script or Pollard script, writing system used for Miao languages * Miao (Unicode ...

, Hani and

Nakhi The Nakhi or Nashi (; Naxi: ; lit.: "Black people") are an East Asian ethnic group inhabiting the foothills of the Himalayas in the northwestern part of Yunnan Province, as well as the southwestern part of Sichuan Province in China. The Nakh ...

(Naxi), the last being the most numerous in the area. The

lusheng The ''lusheng'' (, ; Vietnamese: ''Khèn Mông''; also spelled ''lu sheng''; spelled ''ghengx'' in standard Hmong and ''qeej'' in Laotian RPA Hmong) is a Hmong musical instrument. It has a long history of 3000 years in China, traced back to the T ...

is a type of

mouth organ A mouth organ is any free reed aerophone with one or more air chambers fitted with a free reed. Though it spans many traditions, it is played universally the same way by the musician placing their lips over a chamber or holes in the instrument, an ...

used by the Miao of

Guizhou Guizhou (; formerly Kweichow) is a landlocked province in the southwest region of the People's Republic of China. Its capital and largest city is Guiyang, in the center of the province. Guizhou borders the autonomous region of Guangxi to t ...

for

pentatonic A pentatonic scale is a musical scale with five notes per octave, in contrast to the heptatonic scale, which has seven notes per octave (such as the major scale and minor scale). Pentatonic scales were developed independently by many ancie ...

antiphonal An antiphonary or antiphonal is one of the liturgical books intended for use (i.e. in the liturgical choir), and originally characterized, as its name implies, by the assignment to it principally of the antiphons used in various parts of the L ...

courtship Courtship is the period wherein some couples get to know each other prior to a possible marriage. Courtship traditionally may begin after a betrothal and may conclude with the celebration of marriage. A courtship may be an informal and private m ...

songs. The Hani of Honghe are known for a unique kind of choral, micro-tonal rice-transplanting songs.

Nakhi music

The

Lijiang Lijiang (), also known as Likiang, is a prefecture-level city in the northwest of Yunnan Province, China. It has an area of and had a population of 1,253,878 at the 2020 census whom 288,787 lived in the built-up area (metro) made of Gucheng ...

play a type of song and dance suite called

baisha xiyue Baisha xiyue (, literally "Baisha fine music") is one of the two surviving forms of traditional music of the Nakhi people, Naxi (also spelled Nakhi or Nahi) people of Lijiang City, Lijiang, Yunnan Province, China, known as "Naxi ancient music". Bai ...

, which was supposedly brought by

Kublai Khan Kublai ; Mongolian script: ; (23 September 1215 – 18 February 1294), also known by his temple name as the Emperor Shizu of Yuan and his regnal name Setsen Khan, was the founder of the Yuan dynasty of China and the fifth khagan-emperor of th ...

in AD 1253. Nakhi '' dongjing'' is an ancient type of music related to southern Chinese forms, and is popular today. Both these styles are quite old, which has led Nakhi music to be called a "living fossil" of

Chinese music Music of China refers to the music of the Chinese people, which may be the music of the Han Chinese The Han Chinese () or Han people (), are an East Asian ethnic group native to China. They constitute the world's largest ethnic group, ma ...

. In addition to donjing and baisha xiyue, a style called ''huangjing yinyue'' also has an ancient history in the area, but is no longer known.

Baisha xiyue

Supposedly introduced to the Nakhi by

when he conquered the

Kingdom of Dali The Dali Kingdom, also known as the Dali State (; Bai: Dablit Guaif), was a state situated in modern Yunnan province, China from 937 until 1253. In 1253, it was conquered by the Mongols but members of its former ruling dynasty continued to ...

and received help from a Nakhi leader named Mailiang, basha xiyue is performed by orchestras. There are 24 simple, energetic ''

qupai A ''qupai'' (; also called ) is the generic term for a fixed melody used in traditional Chinese music. The literal meaning is "named tune," "labeled melody," "titled tune," or "titled song". ''Qupai'' are relatively brief, most comprising between 2 ...

'' (tunes) in use.

Dongjing

Dongjing uses a type of traditional

musical notation Music notation or musical notation is any system used to visually represent aurally perceived music played with instruments or sung by the human voice through the use of written, printed, or otherwise-produced symbols, including notation fo ...

called gongchepu. There are traditional dongjing operas, such as '' Song of the Water Dragon'', '' Waves Washing the Sands'' and '' The Sheep on the Hill''. Dongjing is a type of ritual music, said to have been sung by

Taoist Taoism (, ) or Daoism () refers to either a school of philosophical thought (道家; ''daojia'') or to a religion (道教; ''daojiao''), both of which share ideas and concepts of Chinese origin and emphasize living in harmony with the ''Tao'' ...

monks in the area. It was introduced at least by the AD 13th century, and is now known only in Yunnan and the distant city of

Chengde Chengde, formerly known as Jehol and Rehe, is a prefecture-level city in Hebei province, situated about 225 km northeast of Beijing. It is best known as the site of the Mountain Resort, a vast imperial garden and palace formerly used by t ...

(in

Hebei Hebei or , (; alternately Hopeh) is a northern province of China. Hebei is China's sixth most populous province, with over 75 million people. Shijiazhuang is the capital city. The province is 96% Han Chinese, 3% Manchu, 0.8% Hui, an ...

) and

Chifeng Chifeng ( zh, s=赤峰市), also known as Ulanhad ( mn, (Улаанхад хот), ''Ulaɣanqada qota'', , "red cliff"), is a prefecture-level city in Southeastern Inner Mongolia, People's Republic of China. It borders Xilin Gol League to the ...

(in

Inner Mongolia Inner Mongolia, officially the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, is an autonomous region of the People's Republic of China. Its border includes most of the length of China's border with the country of Mongolia. Inner Mongolia also accounts for a ...

). Dongjing is traditional performed during the

Chinese Lunar New Year Chinese New Year is the festival that celebrates the beginning of a new year on the traditional lunisolar and solar Chinese calendar. In Chinese and other East Asian cultures, the festival is commonly referred to as the Spring Festival () as ...

. The President of the Dayan Naxi Ancient Music Association, Xuan Ke, has claimed that donjing originated from the religious and imperial music of the

Tang Tang or TANG most often refers to: * Tang dynasty * Tang (drink mix) Tang or TANG may also refer to: Chinese states and dynasties * Jin (Chinese state) (11th century – 376 BC), a state during the Spring and Autumn period, called Tang (唐) b ...

and

Song A song is a musical composition intended to be performed by the human voice. This is often done at distinct and fixed pitches (melodies) using patterns of sound and silence. Songs contain various forms, such as those including the repetitio ...

dynasties A dynasty is a sequence of rulers from the same family,''Oxford English Dictionary'', "dynasty, ''n''." Oxford University Press (Oxford), 1897. usually in the context of a monarchical system, but sometimes also appearing in republics. A d ...

br>
(thus placing its origins between 618 and 1279). This same period saw the developed of ci (poetry), ci poetry, which accompanied music led by

stringed instrument String instruments, stringed instruments, or chordophones are musical instruments that produce sound from vibrating strings when a performer plays or sounds the strings in some manner. Musicians play some string instruments by plucking the st ...

s. By the 1980s, dongjing had mostly died out. It has since been revived, however, and its popularity among the younger generation is rebounding, especially in Chuxiong,

, Baoshan, Dali and

Kunming Kunming (; ), also known as Yunnan-Fu, is the capital and largest city of Yunnan province, China. It is the political, economic, communications and cultural centre of the province as well as the seat of the provincial government. The headquar ...

. The Dayan Naxi Ancient Music Association was formed in 1987 to help revive donjing. Renowned modern performers include Peng Youshan and Lei Hong'an.

References

{{Yunnan topics