Dongjing (music)
Encyclopedia
Nakhi
The Nakhi are an 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....
people of Yunnan
Yunnan
Yunnan is a province of the People's Republic of China, located in the far southwest of the country spanning approximately and with a population of 45.7 million . The capital of the province is Kunming. The province borders Burma, Laos, and Vietnam.Yunnan is situated in a mountainous area, with...
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History
Prior to the establishment of the People's Republic of ChinaPeople's Republic of China
China , officially the People's Republic of China , is the most populous country in the world, with over 1.3 billion citizens. Located in East Asia, the country covers approximately 9.6 million square kilometres...
, most Han towns and cities in Yunnan contained Dongjing associations, exclusive religious societies oriented around worship of the Taoist deity Wenchang
Wenchang
Wenchang is a county-level city located in the north east of Hainan province, China. It was promoted from a county to a city on November 7, 1995, and had a population of 86,551 in 1999...
. The term Dongjing is an abbreviation of the title of the Taoist scripture Dadong Xianjing (大洞仙經), or "Immortals' Book of the Great Grotto". The Dongjing associations also performed highly regarded music during their ceremonies. The most prominent Dongjing associations were located in Dayan, Baisha
Baisha
Baisha Town , Bak-sa in the Taishanese language and "White Sand" in the English translation; in Taishan County, Guangdong province.-History:Baisha town was the ancestral home of many of the first Canadian-Chinese...
, Shuhe, and Lasha
Lasha
Lasha, meaning fissure - a place apparently east of the Dead Sea . It was afterwards known as Callirhoe, a place famous for its hot springs....
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From 1949 to 1978, the Dongjing associations were suppressed under Communist rule. In the 1980s, when this grip was loosened, there was a major revival of dongjing music.
Performance
Unlike most Naxi music, dongjing uses Chinese titles, Chinese instruments, heterophonic sizhu style, and Chinese gongche notationGongche notation
Gongche notation or gongchepu is a traditional musical notation method, once popular in ancient China. It uses Chinese characters to represent musical notes. It was named after two of the Chinese characters that were used to represent musical notes, namely "工" gōng and "尺" chě...
. Often, the orchestra will include the wooden muyu fish, the pipa
Pipa
The pipa is a four-stringed Chinese musical instrument, belonging to the plucked category of instruments . Sometimes called the Chinese lute, the instrument has a pear-shaped wooden body with a varying number of frets ranging from 12–26...
, sugudu, and sanxian
Sanxian
The sanxian is a Chinese lute — a three-stringed fretless plucked musical instrument. It has a long fingerboard, and the body is traditionally made from snakeskin stretched over a rounded rectangular resonator. It is made in several sizes for different purposes and in the late 20th century a...
lutes, the reed pipe
Reed pipe
A reed pipe is an organ pipe that is sounded by a vibrating brass strip known as a reed. Air under pressure is directed towards the reed, which vibrates at a specific pitch. This is in contrast to flue pipes, which contain no moving parts and produce sound solely through the vibration of air...
, and the guqin
Guqin
The guqin is the modern name for a plucked seven-string Chinese musical instrument of the zither family...
and guzheng
Guzheng
The guzheng or "gu zheng", also called zheng is a Chinese plucked zither. It has 18-23 or more strings and movable bridges....
zither
Zither
The zither is a musical string instrument, most commonly found in Slovenia, Austria, Hungary citera, northwestern Croatia, the southern regions of Germany, alpine Europe and East Asian cultures, including China...
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In the pre-1949 rituals, participants had to be male, virtuous and honorable (usually this meant that membership was hereditary), and they had to donate to the association. Because of these requirements, and as evidenced by the Sinicized repertoire, performances and rituals could be seen as asserting the Dongjing members' elite status within the Naxi community. Semiannual sacrifices were made to Confucius
Confucius
Confucius , literally "Master Kong", was a Chinese thinker and social philosopher of the Spring and Autumn Period....
, and biannual rituals were performed for Wenchang and Guan Yu
Guan Yu
Guan Yu was a general serving under the warlord Liu Bei during the late Eastern Han Dynasty of China. He played a significant role in the civil war that led to the collapse of the Han Dynasty and the establishment of the state of Shu Han during the Three Kingdoms period, of which Liu Bei was the...
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