Shuangzhou Folk Song

3.Shuangzhou Folk Song

Nominating Unit: City of Yunfu

Luoding City, located in the western part of Guangdong Province, is also called Shuangzhou or Shuangshui in ancient times. It is from these names that Shuangzhou Folk Songs are made known. During the Reign of Emperor Qianlong in the Qing Dynasty, when scholars conducted education quality inspection there, they described “the song humming in the vicinity”, which means that more than 240 years ago, Shuangzhou Songs are already popular with lots of song salons and poetry salons nearby and they are even more prosperous at the end of the Qing Dynasty.

Shuangzhou Folk Songs are produced during the singing contests organized by various poetry salons and are promoted via chanting and singing. Usually hosts of the salons define the theme for each contest and then distribute it to each salon. Contestants contribute to the salon enclosed with small funds for the event. Outstanding works are then selected and published in two lists, sometimes as in many as five, depending on the contributions.

Shuangzhou Folk Songs have assimilated genres of both Shuangzhou’s water and Folk Songs and Gu songs and their lyric characteristics to produce its own style of an integration of the song and the poetry. Therefore, it is unique in terms of genre, syntactical structure, rhyme and tone, which distinguishes itself from other traditional metrical verses. The Song is of sevencharacters per line with four lines in total. Normally there are five types of rhymes: Type One “level-level-three rising and falling -level (or rising)-level (or falling) tone; Type Two “two levels-three rising and falling-level (falling)-level (rising) tone”; Type Three “two rising and falling-two levels (falling)-level-rising and falling-level(rising) tone; Type Four“two rising and falling-two levels (rising)-two rising and falling-level(falling) tone; Type Five “two rising and falling-three levels-two rising and falling tone”. Meters from Type One to Type Four; Line Two is either Type Two or Type Three; Line Three Type Five; Line Four either Type Two or Type Three. Line One, Two and Four should rhyme with one another while Line Three is optional on condition that the character not rhymed is on the rising-and-falling tone.(https://www.daowen.com)

Composed in local dialect mingled with ancient prose, Shuangzhou Folk Songs does not stress on rhetorical devices such as antithesis; it can repeat same characters and phrases; it can even place function words in front of notional ones. With its plain style, the Songs suit well both refined and popular tastes, with the spreading of its influence through singing. In this manner, they are full of local flavors and worthy of literary appreciation.

Though short in length, themes of the Folk Songs are so broad that they reflect various aspects of life such as living, love, marriage, and current political issues. The use of rhetorical devices such as metaphor and hyperbole are commonly found, too.

Different from Other Folk Songs, Shuangzhou Songs’ style is closer to Bamboo Branch Gamut while retaining its folksy style. Hence, it is excellent reference material for study on ancient prose combined with dialect and on regulated verse coupled with folk songs.

Due to financial problems, most of the salons no longer exist except Tan Bin Poetry Salon in Luoding City that is still struggling to survive. And composing Shuangzhou Folk Songs requires metric feet, which proves that it is rather difficult to cultivate talents to carry on the tradition. Therefore, it is urgent to take measures such as searching, rescuing and protecting the existent songs.