*Long Drum Dance of Yao Minority

42.*Long Drum Dance of Yao Minority

Nominating Unit: Liannan Autonomous County of Yao Minority, City of Qingyuan

Long Drum Dance of Yao Minority, or “Ai Wang Du” in Yao language, is also called “side drum”or “styled drum tone”. It is mainly distributed among Pai Yao communities in Liannan Yao Autonomous County in the mountainous areas of northern Guangdong Province. Pai Yao people got their name from the shape of their villages. Pai Yao people build their houses along the mountain in lines and the village itself is called “Pai”, which means “line” in Chinese. According to local folklore, Long Drum Dance was brought in by their forefathers who migrated to Liannan from the Dongting Lake area of Hunan Province in the Sui and the Tang Dynasties over 1000 years ago, and was originated from a moving love story: in ancient times, there was a young, handsome and hardworking Pai Yao man called Tang Dongbi, who fell in love with a fair who went under the alias of Fang Sha 13. However, the heavenly emperor forbad this union and split the two. Afterwards, Tang Dongbi, as story goes, played the long drum that he made himself on a singing festival party and narrated his arduous journey to the South Mountain to get timber for making the Qin, a musical instrument. After 360 movements, he ascended into the heaven and reunited with the fairy and never came back. To memorize Tang Dongbi and the fairy, they copied the making of long drums and his movements and performed long drum dance on singing parties ever since and the dance got inherited in the Yao community.

The long drum——the main prop used in Long Drum Dance——was already recorded in ancient books from both Song and Qing dynasties. It was called “Tong Drum” in the Song Dynasty, or long big waist drum. In the Qing Dynasty, it was already called long drum. The shape and features of today’s long drum still retains its ancient look. The drum is normally 3 feet long, thin in the middle and big on both sides, like two trumpets placed back to back. Its body is made up of tung wood, hollow inside and covered with lamb skin or bull skin on both ends which are tied up with strings. When it is played, the performer would carry it on his neck and back with a gallus, so he can bang the drum and dance as well.

There is no limit as to the number of dancers for the long drum dance, as long as the number is even. Two dancers would make a pair, and stay 3 to 4 steps apart, with their left shoulders facing each other. Each dance consists of a combination of certain routines. Under the drum beat of the dance lead, all the pairs sometimes cross each other, sometimes go in circles. The formation can take horizontal or diagonal positions, and there are small grid and big grid changes. Sometimes there would be lined up formations where the troupe will tour the whole village. The scene is changeful and amusing.

The dancer would put his hands on both sides of his body, and slightly bend his elbow with his hands facing down, mainly to bang both ends of the drum. The dancing movements are mainly concentrated on the waist and legs, with the dancer’s torso leaning slightly forward most of the time and his knees slightly bent. The basic moving pattern is to stretch and bend the dancer’s knees rhythmically so his body can vibrate up and down as well. This basic pattern and movements would persist throughout the performance. However, some villages specialize in jumping and spinning movements which show power from rigid yet flexible movements. Some villagers specialize in half-squatting movements, with the torsos of the dancers moving up and down in rhythms.(https://www.daowen.com)

The long drum dance goes under the rhythms which are produced by banging the drums. The dancer will bang the head of the drum with his five fingers or palms to produce a “Dong” sound, and bang the tail of the drum with a bamboo strip held in his left hand to produce a “Pa” sound. The combinations and changes of these three sounds make the score for the dance. There are two styles of drum beats: one is to bang the drum simultaneously, while the other is to have a lead and a followup. For example, when using the “Big Circle Drum” score, the simultaneous playing is needed, and the beats from all the dancers need to be in concord, so are their dancing movements; when using such scores as “Drum Head”, “Qi Huan Tang”, “Quan Bei Kao”, etc., the beats would have a lead and follow-ups, meaning one person would lead with half-beat ahead, and the others would follow up, and the dancing movements would go in concord with the drum beats. No matter which kind of score is used, drum beats act as a director in the long drum dance, so even when a lot of dancers are involved, the movements and formation can be directed in order.

Long Drum Dance demonstrates Yao people’s bravery and unyieldingness with its unique drum beats, powerful yet agile dancing movements, and special artistic styles. It is the crystallization of thousands of years of Yao people’s wisdom accumulated from daily life and working activities. It is also the cultural icon and renowned cultural brand of Liannan Pai Yao culture, and provides material in studying Pai Yao’s origin, its production and working styles, its cultures and arts, as well as its customs, beliefs, etc. It possesses great academic research values.

There are 36 routines in the long drum dance, which include from mimicking working scenes as“tree planting drum”, “tree cutting drum” to narrative “Stories of 12 Surnames” which tell different stories of Pai Yao’s different surnames. There is also “Cockfi ghting Drum” which amusingly depicts Pai Yao people’s marital customs. There is also “Song Hall Drum” which expresses Pai Yao people’s merriness, and “King Pan Gu’s Drum” which pays tribute to the ancestors. During traditional festivals such as Spring Festival, Lantern Festival, Wish Fulfillment Festival on the 3rd of March, God of Land Festival on 6th of June, Singing Festival on 16th of October, Fragrant Singing Festival, etc., welldressed young male drummers with red hood and pheasant feathers on their heads can be seen dancing around Pai Yao villages, and sounds of guns, gongs, horns, trumpets can be heard together with long drum beats.

With social and economic reforms and changes in production and living styles, Yao people’s Long Drum Dance has been severely affected. Also, due to the fact that Yao people don’t have their own written language, many performance routines, prop making techniques, and dancing skills are already or nearly lost. Urgent rescuing measures are called for.

It was enlisted into the second batch of state-level intangible cultural heritage in 2008.