Thank you for sharing this observation. I listened again and now notice the sound you're referring to. Some yehu players prefer black horsehair (which is coarser than white horsehair), and in the old days players used to cleverly melt a blob of rosin onto the coconut shell at the exact spot where the bow hair contacts the shell, causing the bow to be rosined with each stroke of the bow; both of these things would probably serve to augment that characteristic "chuff" of the attacks of notes.

After the inadvertent squeak at 01:05 the player blames it on the rosin (though I can't tell if he says that it's because of too much or too little)!

@@dbadagna thank you for sharing the history. A privilege🎼

I'm glad you enjoyed it. I do my best to find and share videos of little-known regional Chinese musical traditions, and, thankfully, many of them are documented in China's intangible cultural heritage lists at the national, provincial, and municipal levels. docs.google.com/document/d/1wTivlzxD8V2I-0NSw6ELSixpndnVagobWWPG_mbUnnQ

It's an anonymous poem of the same title that was found in Cave 17 (the "Library Cave") of the Mogao Grottoes near Dunhuang in Gansu province, northwest China in 1900. It was found among around 50,000 manuscripts that had been stored in the cave since it was walled off for unknown reasons early in the 11th century. Because the poem was found in the same cave as the pipa scores (meaning it also dated roughly to the 10th century or possibly somewhat earlier, i.e., the late Tang Dynasty or the subsequent Five Dynasties period), and had the same title, it seemed a logical choice to treat the poem as a set of lyrics for the melody of the same title. The poem reads as follows (note that, in the recording, some of the lines are switched around or repeated): ====== 《西江月 其一 女伴秋江三首》 Three Poems About [Traveling With] a Female Companion on the Autumn River No. 1: "Moon Over the Western River" 作者：敦煌曲子词无名氏（唐） Author: Anonymous song lyrics from Dunhuang (Tang Dynasty) 女伴同寻烟水。今宵江月分明。 My female companion explores the misty waters with me; On this night, the river moon is clear and distinct. 舵头无力一船横。波面微风暗起。 The rudder is powerless, and the entire boat drifts sideways, As a gentle breeze subtly stirs the water's surface. 拨棹乘船无定止。楚词处处闻声。 Paddling the boat without a fixed destination, The songs of Chu can be heard everywhere. 连天江浪浸秋星。误入蓼花丛里。 Merging with the sky, the river's waves soak up the autumn stars, As if accidentally entering a field of flowering wormwood.

@@dbadagna I can't believe you are still replying to comments. You're awesome

@@ShenZhang-CS It's *social* media, so of course it's important for us to reply to good-faith comments. I intend this channel as an educational resource.

Yes

@@maychan5562 Thank you

As of 2024 this tradition still exists among the Qiang, but has been heavily commercialized and used as a way to draw tourists to this area. You can find some more recent videos on KZfaq showing Qiang shaman rituals being performed in a town square as a show for tourists, something that seems rather contrived, in the same manner visitors to predominantly Uyghur regions of Xinjiang are shown a highly artificial, stage-managed facsimile of actual Uyghur culture.

The Daur people speak a southern Mongolic language (Mongolian being central Mongolic), while the Manchu language is in the Tungusic language family. The Daur people are descendants of the Khitans, the rulers of the Liao Dynasty (916-1125), which was sacked in 1125 by the Jurchens (who were renamed Manchus in the 17th century).

According to the end credits, the studio dressed them; the costumer is listed as Ms. Wu Yuli (武玉丽).

There are wonderful (though often little-known) traditions like this surviving in almost every corner of China. I've done my best over the past few years to use this channel to document them and share them with the world.

Chuida groups are the most widespread and common form of traditional ensemble in China.

The real credit goes to the artists themselves, and the filmmakers who have so lovingly documented their artistry and life's work over the past few years. It's my pleasure and honor to do my best to make their work better known around the world. You may also enjoy this video about narrative singing performers from the Miyun District of Beijing: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/r9JjbNh10N26h4k.html

Here's one more similar documentary that you may like: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/h9CZm7uEzr_HeIU.html

Thank you for sharing this reminiscence. Wow, you flew him all the way out to Utah? Do you remember when that was? I also invited him to perform for a world music series in Kent, Ohio (in 2017), and was most impressed by his oration (in fluent Seneca) of an extensive multi-part creation epic. He also involved his young daughter in the performance. I hope he is doing well.

I just found a cool article about Brendan Fairbanks's Ojibwe language immersion class at the University of Minnesota: ictnews.org/archive/heart-ojibwe-language

I'm glad you enjoyed it. I'll post a few more videos about this tradition in the coming days.

You're welcome, and I'm glad you found it interesting. You can read the "Shijing" in English translation here: ctext.org/book-of-poetry/ens And I've collected the lyrics of the "Shijing" songs that refer to music here: earlychinesemusic.blogspot.com/2018/09/poems-about-music-zhou.html

@@dbadagna Thank you again❤️

Қытайдың Сычуань қаласынан шыққан Цян этникалық тобы. Олар туралы толығырақ қазақтілді Уикипедиядан оқи аласыздар.

"Distortion" would seem to involve an alteration of the original melody, but Li Shutong has reproduced the "Lao Liu Ban" melody faithfully in this piece. Also, this version, although it uses piano accompaniment and triadic (Western) harmony, adds lyrics, bringing this melody back to its roots in "Xi Diao"《西调》singing of Shaanxi and Shanxi, which enjoyed great popularity in China in the 18th century.

You're welcome. You may also find these resources useful: 1) Article about Chinese chanting by Mr. Xu Jianshun (徐健顺, b. Qingdao, 1969): chinakongzi.org/zt/ys/kecheng/201706/t20170609_136993.htm 2) yinsong8_com KZfaq channel (focusing on chanted Confucian texts): www.youtube.com/@yinsong8/videos 3) Historic recording of Yuen Ren Chao (赵元任 1892-1982) chanting an ancient Chinese poem: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/jrdylKyd1NTKkmQ.html

Suzhou is a developed city on the east coast of China. I would think that it is just western style conducting. The reason why the ‘accent’ is hard to understand at all is that they are not singing in Mandarin.

As @user-iq9pe4ls2j said, they're singing in the Suzhou dialect of the Wu language, which is similar to Shanghainese. If the singer in the middle had a Western-style musical training, her vocal style doesn't reflect it.

@@dbadagna Is there any documentation on the 4/4 beating in China? She moves exactly like a modern Western conductor. This could be a coincidence, or a kind of convergent evolution, or a consequence of Western influences in China, or a consequence of the Chinese influences in the West. The last case would be very interesting if there is evidence for it. Especially since this kind of beating the tempo ordinario didn't exist (or wasn't popular at all) in the Rennaissance before the Jesuit missions

@@josephzaarour6649 I haven't paid close attention to it before. In Chinese narrative singing, the beat is usually kept by some type of clapper (sometimes along with a drum), and sometimes a folded-up fan is used. All you can do is examine many videos of traditional Chinese narrative singing and see if you see anything similar. It's hard to know why this particular performer chose to move her hand in this way without asking her directly. It seems that she's simply marking the three beats of rest between her downbeat strokes, since the pengling plays on beats 3 and 4.

On the left? It's a sanxian (三弦), an instrument that was formerly essential in a great many traditional Chinese musical genres, though fewer young musicians have been taking it up in recent decades.