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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Friday, March 19, 2004

UN organizes salvation of the Chinese folk songs

On March 16, the stillness in the conference room of the Beijing International Club was rent by a folk song, "going to Sichuan". The mellow voices of Hui and Yugu Singers from Gansu impressed every one of the audiences in the room.


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On March 16, the stillness in the conference room of the Beijing International Club was rent by a folk song, "going to Sichuan". The mellow voices of Hui and Yugu Singers from Gansu impressed every one of the audiences in the room.

Yet this was not a singing contest for the minority singers. It was a press conference of the "protection project for the Chinese ethnic minority's intangible culture heritages��protection of folk songs", which represented the formal completion of the project. Starting in Dec 2000, the project was part of UNESCO's project of protecting intangible culture heritages. The project was funded by the Japan Trust Fund of UNESCO, guided by the Chinese Ministry of Culture and implemented by the Chinese Folk Literature and Art Society. In the past three years, staffs working with the project had interviewed 235 folk songs singers in Guangxi, Qinghai and Gansu. A total of 385 folk songs were recorded. 42 hours' tape and 57 hours' video were recorded. Folk songs of 10 ethnic minority groups were collected in the project.

But the outcome of the salvage action is just like a drop of water in a boundless ocean if compared with the sea of the Chinese ethnic minority's folk songs. The work of protecting folk songs needs to be carried out promptly in China. Of the 91 singers interviewed in Qinghai and Gansu, the oldest one is 93 years old now. In Bagentun, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, none of the young people below 20 years is able to sing traditional folk songs. According to Lan Zhengxiang, an expert of the Yao nationality's folklore, in 1990s, there were still about 20 old people of Yao nationality who could sing "Kangbazong", a Yao folk song. By April 2000, only seven of them were still alive. With the urbanization, environment within which the folk songs exist has changed. A large number of folk song types have lost. Secondly, most of the younger generation of minorities cannot speak their own language or local dialects, not to mention singing folk songs. Although the project goes to completion, the course of protecting folk songs still needs more people's effort and assistance, only in this way can the valuable folk songs be handed down from generation to generation.

By People's Daily Online


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