Nanguan
Encyclopedia
Fujian
' , formerly romanised as Fukien or Huguing or Foukien, is a province on the southeast coast of mainland China. Fujian is bordered by Zhejiang to the north, Jiangxi to the west, and Guangdong to the south. Taiwan lies to the east, across the Taiwan Strait...
(福建), and is also now highly popular in Taiwan
Taiwan
Taiwan , also known, especially in the past, as Formosa , is the largest island of the same-named island group of East Asia in the western Pacific Ocean and located off the southeastern coast of mainland China. The island forms over 99% of the current territory of the Republic of China following...
, particularly Lukang.
Fujian is a mountainous coastal province of China. Its provincial capital is Fuzhou
Fuzhou
Fuzhou is the capital and one of the largest cities in Fujian Province, People's Republic of China. Along with the many counties of Ningde, those of Fuzhou are considered to constitute the Mindong linguistic and cultural area....
, while Quanzhou
Quanzhou
Quanzhou is a prefecture-level city in Fujian province, People's Republic of China. It borders all other prefecture-level cities in Fujian but two and faces the Taiwan Strait...
was a major port in the 7th century CE, the period between the Sui
Sui
Sui can refer to:* Sui or mizu, 水, meaning "Water" in Japanese, one of the elements in the Japanese system of five elements and representing the fluid, flowing, formless things in the world....
and Tang
Tang Dynasty
The Tang Dynasty was an imperial dynasty of China preceded by the Sui Dynasty and followed by the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period. It was founded by the Li family, who seized power during the decline and collapse of the Sui Empire...
eras. Situated upon an important maritime trade route, it was a conduit for elements of distant cultures. The result was what is now known as nanguan music, which today preserves many archaic features.
It is a genre strongly associated with male-only community amateur musical associations (quguan
Quguan
Quguan are amateur clubs formed beginning in the seventeenth century for the cultivation of Taiwanese folk music.The Hoklo immigrated from Fujian starting in the 17th century, and brought with them informal folk music, as well as more ritualized instrumental and operatic forms, which were taught...
or "song-clubs"), each formerly generally linked to a particular temple, and is viewed as a polite accomplishment and a worthy social service, distinct from the world of professional entertainers. It is typically slow, gentle, delicate and melodic, heterophonic and employing four basic scales.
Styles and instruments
Nanguan repertory falls into three overlapping styles, called zui, po and kiok (zhi, pu and qu in Mandarin), differentiated by the contexts in which they occur, by their function, the value accorded them by musicians and by their formal and timbral natures. The Zui is perceived as the most "serious" repertoire: it is a purely instrumental suite normally more than thirty minutes in length, of two to five sections usually, each section being known as a cu or dei ("piece"). Each is associated with a lyric that alludes to a story but, although this may denote origins in song or opera, today zui is an important and respected instrumental repertory. However, the song text significantly eases the memorising of the piece.Kiok is a vocal repertory: two thousand pieces exist in manuscript. It is lighter and less conservative in repertory and performance than zui. Most popular pieces today are in a fast common metre and last around five minutes. Po literally means "notation" - these are pieces that have no associated texts and thus must be written down in gongchepu notation. It is an instrumental style that uses a wider range than zui and that emphasises technical display.
A nanguan ensemble usually consists of five instruments. The pie (muban (木板) or wooden clapper) is usually played by the singer. The other four, known as the dinxiguan or four higher instruments, are the four-stringed lute (gibei, 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...
(琵琶) in Mandarin), a three-stringed, fretless, snakeskin-headed long-necked lute that is the ancestor of the Japanese shamisen
Shamisen
The , also called is a three-stringed, Japanese musical instrument played with a plectrum called a bachi. The Japanese pronunciation is usually "shamisen" but sometimes "jamisen" when used as a suffix . -Construction:The shamisen is a plucked stringed instrument...
, called the samhen, (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...
(三線) in Mandarin), the vertical flute, (xiao
Xiao (flute)
The xiao is a Chinese vertical end-blown flute. It is generally made of dark brown bamboo . It is also sometimes called dòngxiāo , dòng meaning "hole." An ancient name for the xiāo is shùdí The xiao is a Chinese vertical end-blown flute. It is generally made of dark brown bamboo (called...
(簫), also called dongxiao), and a two-stringed "hard-bowed" instrument called the lihen, slightly differing from the Cantonese erxian
Erxian
The erxian is a Chinese bowed string instrument in the huqin family of instruments. It has two strings and is used primarily in Cantonese music, most often in "hard string" chamber ensembles...
. Each of the four differs somewhat from the most usual modern form and so may be called the "nanguan pipa" etc. Each instrument has a fixed role. The gibei provides a steady rhythmic skeleton, supported by the samhen. The xiao, meanwhile, supplemented by the lihen, puts "meat on the bones" with colourful counterpoints.
These instruments are essential to the genre, while the eixiguan or four lower instruments are not used in every piece. These are percussion instruments, the chime (hiangzua), a combined chime and wood block called the giaolo, a pair of small bells (xiangjin) and a four-bar xylophone, the xidei. The transverse flute called the pin xiao (dizi in Mandarin) and the oboe-like aiya or xiao suona
Suona
The suona ; also called laba or haidi is a Han Chinese shawm . It has a distinctively loud and high-pitched sound, and is used frequently in Chinese traditional music ensembles, particularly those that perform outdoors...
are sometimes added in outdoor or ceremonial performances. When all six combine with the basic four, the whole ensemble is called a zayim or "ten sounds".
Diaspora
From the 17th century the HokloHoklo
Hoklo can mean the following:* The Hoklo people, a geographically widespread cultural-linguistic group originating in southeast China , also called Hokkien.* Min Nan, the Chinese language group spoken by the Hoklo....
immigrated from Fujian
Fujian
' , formerly romanised as Fukien or Huguing or Foukien, is a province on the southeast coast of mainland China. Fujian is bordered by Zhejiang to the north, Jiangxi to the west, and Guangdong to the south. Taiwan lies to the east, across the Taiwan Strait...
to Taiwan
Taiwan
Taiwan , also known, especially in the past, as Formosa , is the largest island of the same-named island group of East Asia in the western Pacific Ocean and located off the southeastern coast of mainland China. The island forms over 99% of the current territory of the Republic of China following...
and took with them informal folk music
Folk music
Folk music is an English term encompassing both traditional folk music and contemporary folk music. The term originated in the 19th century. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways: as music transmitted by mouth, as music of the lower classes, and as music with unknown composers....
as well as more ritualized instrumental and opera
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
tic forms taught in amateur clubs, such as beiguan
Beiguan
Beiguan is a type of traditional music, melody and theatrical performance between the 17th and mid-20th centuries. It was widespread in Zhangzhou and Taiwan...
and nanguan
Nanguan
Nanguan is a style of Chinese classical music originating in the southern Chinese province of Fujian , and is also now highly popular in Taiwan, particularly Lukang.Fujian is a mountainous coastal province of China...
. Large populations of similar background can also be found in Malaysia, Guangdong, Hong Kong, Philippines, Singapore, Burma, Thailand and Indonesia, where they are usually referred to as Hokkien, ("Fujian" in the Min Nan
Min Nan
The Southern Min languages, or Min Nan , are a family of Chinese languages spoken in southern Fujian, eastern Guangdong, Hainan, Taiwan, and southern Zhejiang provinces of China, and by descendants of emigrants from these areas in diaspora....
language). There are two nanguan associations in Singapore
Singapore
Singapore , officially the Republic of Singapore, is a Southeast Asian city-state off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, north of the equator. An island country made up of 63 islands, it is separated from Malaysia by the Straits of Johor to its north and from Indonesia's Riau Islands by the...
http://soch.wordpress.com/2006/05/ and formerly there were several in the Philippines: Tiong-Ho Long-Kun-sia is one that is still active. Gang-a-tsui
Gang-a-tsui
Gang-a-tsui is a nanguan music ensemble from Taiwan. It was formed in 1993 by Chou Yih-chang, and in 1997 it received a commission by the National Center for Traditional Arts in Taiwan as part of the Nanguan Opera Transmission Project. The ensemble has toured Japan, Korea, Indonesia, France, Poland...
and Hantang Yuefu have popularised the nanguan ensemble abroad. A Quanzhou Nanguan Music Ensemble was founded in the early 1960s and there is a Fuzhou Folk Music Ensemble, founded in 1990.
External links
- Nanguan Music
- http://www.nanyin.cn/ (Chinese)
- Lâm-im Hui-sī-góan (南音 非是阮)