Songs of Zhongshan Boat Dwellers

Songs of Zhongshan Boat Dwellers

Nominating Unit: City of Zhongshan

Songs of Boat Dwellers, also called Salty-water Chant, Chant of the Brothers or Chant of the Aunt, is a kind of self-amusing songs sung by Danjia People. Danjia People in Tanzhou Town, City of Zhongshan, Guangdong Province, has long had the custom of antiphonal singing for a debate or competition while working or sailing. Especially during such rituals as marriages or funerals, people would be so touched by the happiness or sadness that they compose and sing impromptus songs. Songs of Boat Dwellers of Zhongshan can be mainly classified into Changduanju Songs of Boat Dwellers (the lyrics are constituted by five or seven characters in a sentence), Gaotang Songs, Dazeng Songs, Gumei Songs and Chant of the Sisters.(https://www.daowen.com)

Songs of Boat Dwellers constitute a literary form sung and passed along orally by Danjia People. Since ancient times, many Danjia People from far and near come to the alluvium plains in coastal areas of the Pearl River estuary and they are distributed in coastal areas and river networks in Zhongshan, Zhuhai and Shunde. With its longest history and greatest popularity in Tanzhou, Zhongshan, Songs of Boat Dwellers spread far and wide. They have preserved the traditional way of singing, for example, adopting the Zhongshan sub-dialect of Cantonese, using ornamental words like “ahlie” and “ahluo” and ornamental sentences like “mei hao ah lie” and “di hao ah lie”, and singing always improvisationally accommodates itself to the tune. The representative works of Songs of Boat Dwellers are Duihua (antiphonal singing) and Haidi Zhenzhu Rongyi Wen (which means “it’s easy to find the pearls in the sea”).

At present, there are no fewer than 10 persons, mostly advanced in years, who can sing the Songs of Boat Dwellers. The biological environment has changed greatly with the import of foreign culture and the shift of the young generation’s cultural awareness and value system. Now as most local people have no idea about what Songs of Zhongshan Boat Dwellers are, it could be imagined what danger the Songs of Boat Dwellers are in.

Songs of Zhongshan Boat Dwellers was selected into the list of the first batch of state-level intangible cultural heritage in 2006.