*Foshan Percussion Music
17.*Foshan Percussion Music
Nominating Unit: City of Foshan
Foshan Percussion Music, a folk music, belongs to the gong and drum type. The music mainly distributed in ancient Foshan downtown areas and its surrounding areas. According to stories passed down by senior performers, the Foshan Percussion Music was introduced to Foshan from Anhui, Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces about two hundred years ago. The original Foshan Percussion Music was of two types, namely “the pure Foshan Percussion Music” and “the mixed Foshan Percussion Music” which is a musical ensemble composed the gongs and the drums. The existing Foshan Percussion Music is closely linked to South Suzhou multi-repetitious wind and percussion music that still keeps the names of the tunes in the Yuan Dynasty. Therefore, speaking of historical origin, Foshan Percussion Music is almost six to seven hundred years old. In its development, it has absorbed the play methods of flying cymbals and regular musical instruments applied in the local Eight-Tune Drums and Gongs of Foshan Percussion Music, and integrated itself with folk customs to produce music of strong local characteristics.
The musical instruments for Foshan Percussion Music can be divided into two categories: the conventional and the unconventional. The former refers to cymbal, high-edged gong, center-lifting gong, sand drum, assembled drum and ringing conch and later to wind and percussion instruments, flying cymbal and gong. Certain musical instruments are different in each category. Currently only two sets of tunes have complete sound recordings and music books: one is in Dajiwei Village where the repertoire includes Hanging the Brass Plate, Long Gong and Mosaic Brocade; the other in He Guangyi Hall of Chaji Village with Playing with Money, Assembled Drums Prelude and Drum Trapping listed in the repertoire. When demonstrating, the parade is in line with the tune. On top of that, the most striking feature of Foshan Percussion Music is the way light-and-thin cymbals are struck. The performer, one hand holding the cymbal crown, the other swinging the string that goes through the other half of the cymbal, strikes the cymbal on the edge. When ten to twenty people stage the show simultaneously to carry out feats such as“yang cymbal”, “yin cymbal”, “single flying”, “twin flying”, “backhand flying” and “overhead flying”, the scene is spectacular. That’s why the Foshan Percussion Music is honored as “Flying Cymbal”. This unique creation was added to the list of the second batch of state-level intangible cultural heritage.(https://www.daowen.com)
Foshan Percussion Music is often staged on festive occasions like the Dragon-Boat Festival, the Chinese Valentine’s Day and the Mid-Autumn Festival, and birthdays of divine gods and the advent of autumn. There is even a saying that “no Foshan Percussion Music performance, no arrival of autumn”. In Chaji Village, the Foshan Percussion Music continues to follow the traditional practice of “sound mimicking” as evidence of passing on the teachings to the next generation. As the living fossil of folk gong-and-drum music, the Foshan Percussion Music is of great practical and academic value.
In its heyday, there were around twenty to thirty societies giving the performance. In 1938, however, when Japan invaders occupied Foshan, those societies ceased to be operational. It was not until the victory of Anti-Japanese War that Chaji Village, Qingyun Village and Xiajiao Village revived the practice. In the next decades, though “Stars Casting” in Daji Village has its descendents, but it has no permanent organization, so the art is losing its grandeur in Qingyun Village. In Xiajiao Village, senior artists of “Su Small Cymbals, Drums and Gongs” have passed away, leaving current performers to play from memory. The most preserved one, the “He Guangyi Hall” in Chaji Village where seniors who are still living have cultivated apprentices to carry on the tradition, is far from the original state of development and urgently needs to be rescued and protected.
