Echoing the Environment in Kam Big Song

Abstract

Kam big song is an important genre sung within Kam (in Chinese, Dong) minority communities in southeastern Guizhou, China. It has traditionally served as a medium for transmitting historical, philosophical and ecological knowledge. Since the 1978 reforms, this region of Guizhou has been increasingly drawn into the national labour economy and has experienced a surge in economic development. The ensuing youth migration to urban centres, growing school attendance rates, and a marked rise in television viewing have led to a decline in Kam singing amongst younger generations. Nevertheless, in recent years certain forms of big song have featured increasingly in staged Kam cultural performances intended for broader audiences. Kam big song was recognised as a form of National Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) in 2006, and was included on UNESCO's Representative List of the ICH of Humanity in 2009. This study draws upon various big songs that I learnt during almost twenty-four months of musical research in rural Kam regions from 2004 to 2011. It illustrates the cultural and ecological significance of this musical tradition, and the importance and complexities of its maintenance at a time of social transformation.

Keywords:

• China
• Guizhou
• Intangible Cultural Heritage
• Kam (Dong) ethnic group
• folk song
• indigenous ecological knowledge

Notes

1. I gratefully acknowledge the many Kam singers and song experts without whose assistance this research could not have been conducted. In particular, I thank once again Wu Meifang, Wu Pinxian, Wu Xuegui and Wu Zhicheng (who guided most of the song translations quoted here), and the many Sheeam women who also taught and sang with me. I also acknowledge assistance provided by an Australian Postgraduate Award, an Endeavour Australia Cheung Kong Research Fellowship, a fellowship at the International Institute of Asian Studies, various grants and other support offered through the University of Melbourne's Faculty of Music, Asia Institute, and Writing Centre for Scholars and Researchers, and PARADISEC. Thanks to Anne McLaren for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper, and to Peter Jackson, Anne Platt and two anonymous reviewers for other useful suggestions during the final stages of revision.

2. According to Kam people, the name dare low is only used to refer to these tall, wooden, pagoda-like buildings and has no other meaning; it does not translate as gulou (“drum tower/building”), as is usually used in Chinese and sometimes thence translated into English. To my knowledge, Kam conceptualisations of these buildings are not focused on the notion of them holding a drum, and the destruction of most drums (and many towers) during the Cultural Revolution (1966–76) may have further reinforced such Kam conceptualisations.

3. Data from the 2005 census indicate that the Kam population in Guizhou alone had then reached 2.4 million (available at www.chinadataonline.org, accessed 9 September 2011). Consequently, the current Kam population (for which data are unavailable) almost certainly exceeds by a substantial amount the figure of 2.96 million given for the year 2000 (as cited in Minzu zizhi, 2009).

4. Kam is a tonal Tai-Kadai language with two main dialects and no widely used written form (see, for example, Long and Zheng 1998; Pan 2005; Yang and Edmondson 2008).

5. Ga translates as “song”, and lao can be variously translated as “big”, “old”, “main”, or “important”. Kam residents of some nearby villages in northern Guangxi also sing these songs.

6. Researchers state that songs with more than one simultaneous vocal line are sung amongst either 23 (Fan, 1998, p. 5) or 25 (Shen, 2002, p. 489) of China's 56 minzu (“ethnic groups”).

7. The songs may also be sung publicly in other important public spaces within Kam villages, and privately at home.

8. I transcribe Kam words using my own practical phonemic orthography that is based upon standard (Australian) English pronunciation, and which I have described elsewhere (see Ingram, 2007; 2010). All song lyrics are translations from Kam.

9. After an initial brief visit in late 2004, I was based in Sheeam for most of January 2005 to March 2006, and from February to July 2008. I returned to Sheeam briefly in October 2009, and for more than four months during December 2010 to June 2011.

10. For example, I participated in big song singing within Kam villages, and also in numerous staged performances such as the previously mentioned “Ten Thousand People Singing Big Song”.

11. Currently being archived with the Pacific And Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures (PARADISEC); see www.paradisec.org.au.

12. On my last visit in mid 2011, vehicular access to most villages was possible throughout most of the year.

13. See Eisenberg et al. (2009) for an overview of many of the plants found in the region today; see Zhu and Yang (1956), Yang (1961) and Mao (2003) for descriptions of the environment during earlier times.

14. According to this government report, “Sanlong Nature Protection Area… [comprises land that] is all managed by the community. Within its borders, the vegetation has already undergone a certain degree of destruction. However, as the mountains are high and the transportation is poor, fortunately some old-growth forests still remain. The vegetation is relatively diverse and includes a relatively large proportion of rare and precious plants. The total area is 11,505 mu, of which 8,340 mu is forested and 3,165 mu is covered with scattered forest… The animal life of the area includes animals [mammals], birds, snakes and amphibians” (Liping ziran, 2009).

15. Luo and Wang (2002) quote figures provided by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences giving the population in big-song-singing areas as 100,000.

16. See, for example, Dongren wang (Kam Net: http://www.dongren.cn, accessed 5 September 2011). See also blogs by Dongge (Kam Brother: http://blog.zjol.com.cn/315294), by Lao Wu (Old Wu: http://blog.sina.com.cn/lipingsanlong), and the blog entitled Dongzu fengqing (Kam Customs: http://blog.sina.com.cn/u/1418188415), all accessed 5 September 2011.

17. As I have noted elsewhere (Ingram et al., 2011), Kam song classes in schools also seem to be designed mainly to support these staged song performances.

18. The first comprehensive, academic-oriented English-language book about Kam people (Geary et al., 2003) includes a chapter that provides one general perspective on Kam singing and song categorisation, albeit not seemingly based on detailed study of any Kam song repertoire. Other English-language sources on various aspects of Kam culture, such as Yang Quan (2000), Deng (2001) and Ruan (2006), also offer a variety of insights concerning Kam singing that these scholars obtained incidentally in the course of conducting research into other aspects of Kam culture. Ou's (2007) autobiography of his Kam childhood village, translated into English, gives a view of the cultural situation in a Kam village outside the big-song-singing region. The musical impoverishment that the author notes during the 1930s and 1940s stands in marked contrast to the accounts of extensive singing activity during the same period that were related to me by many older villagers in Sheeam.

19. In this section I also quote examples of songs sung in Sheeam. While the song genres mentioned here are known throughout many Kam areas, the melodies and lyrics used are unique to each region.

20. As heard on Track 23 of the CD entitled Dong Folksongs (2002).

21. These songs probably originated in the Kam villages of the Fulu river area of Sanjiang county, Guangxi; hence their name.

22. Probably the young shoots of the wild fern Pteridium aquilinum.

23. This tree produces a fruit known in Chinese as longzhao guo (“dragon's claw fruit”).

24. From Ga sheeang-wak (“Song about the community”), a ga sheeang category big song.

25. Referring to the Chinese-language lishu.

26. From Ga wang (“Song about the Emperor”), a ga sheeang category big song.

27. From Kong mang ban mang (“Nothing for fun”), a ga sheeang category big song.

28. From Ban bao juuee (“Friends say [you are] proud”), a ga sheeang category big song.

29. From Bu naow ban mang (“In this time, friends are happy”), a ga sheeang category big song.

30. Bi derives from biyu (“metaphor”); xing can be translated here as “to begin the topic”.

31. A formulaic phrase often used in song.

32. One of the two ga nyin-jing category big songs in the Sheeam repertoire.

33. Ramie (Boehmeria nivea (L.) Gaud.), known in Chinese as zhuma gen (see Liu et al., 2002, p. 32), is probably the plant referred to here in Kam as gan.

34. Gong gan gao (“The tall gan”), a ga ma category big song.

35. Ga translates as song; sor is a polysemous word translating variously as sound, voice, breath or life-force. Here, the name might be translated as “songs that emphasise sound”, a contrast to most other big songs which emphasise the lak (“bones”) or song lyrics, as discussed in the conclusion to this paper (while “sound imitation songs”, a translation sometimes given for ga sor, is appropriate to the content of many of these songs, it is not a direct translation of the Kam name). Although Kam song experts and experienced singers do not consider these songs classified as ga sor to be among the genre's most important, these are the songs that feature most prominently in staged Kam song performances such as those for tourists or associated with promotion of big song as ICH.

36. Jee-yot is probably Macrosemia kareisana (Matsumura), known in Chinese as damachan (see Chou and Lei, 1997, p. 320, plate 137); numleng (or leng-lee) is probably Pomponia linearis (Walker), known in Chinese as langchan (Chou and Lei, 1997, p. 314, plate 91). I was unable to formally identify the cicada known as neng.

37. Probably Liquidambar formosana Hance.

38. Some Sheeam song experts understood ee to be used here as a pun: it translates both as “fine pieces/particles” (implying the wearing away of rock) and “youth”. According to one song expert, the meaning of the verse is that “when you are young you can't help thinking of your sweetheart, just like the water can't help flowing down the river”. Although in several sources the line is translated into Chinese as chang jieban (“often being friends”), no song experts in Sheeam offered such a translation.

39. In Kam areas, worms occasionally make quiet, high-pitched sounds.