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De/re-construction of Zhuang shamanic songs in cultural festivals

Ya-ning Kao (Department of Ethnology, National Chengchi University, Taipei City, Taiwan)

Asian Education and Development Studies

ISSN: 2046-3162

Article publication date: 3 September 2019

Issue publication date: 6 January 2020

105

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to examine the performance of Zhuang shamanic narrative songs at three festivals to explore how and why a narrative song genre that originated with Zhuang shamans is separated from shamanic ritual contexts and re-contextualized at festivals under the cultural policies instigated by the People’s Republic of China in the post-socialist era.

Design/methodology/approach

The research is based on a review of publications on Zhuang performance art and fieldwork data collected in southwestern Guangxi, China.

Findings

The de-construction of Zhuang shamanic narrative song melodies dates back to the late nineteenth century, when southwestern Guangxi literati used the melodies to compose popular songs. By the 1950s, the religious elements of these narrative songs had already been obfuscated, leading Chinese scholars to select them as representative of Zhuang performance arts. Since the enactment of China’s Intangible Culture Heritage (ICH) Law in the early twenty-first century, local Zhuang elites have re-constructed and re-introduced shamanic elements to narrative songs as they are performed at festivals as a means to further highlight the ethnic characteristics of the Zhuang people.

Originality/value

The paper provides detailed documentation of three cases of the restoration of shamanic elements to narrative songs sung by the Zhuang people. However, the research is limited to one community, inviting comparison with other cases, both inside and outside China, of how ICH policies impact grass-roots cultural practices.

Keywords

Acknowledgements

The full name of the funder is “Hong Kong SAR University Grants Committee” and the full name of the grant is “Areas of Excellence (Fifth Round): The Historical Anthropology of Chinese Society.”

This article was revised from a paper entitled “Doing Religion and Doing Culture: Performing Ritual Specialists (Memoeds) in a Zhuang Folk Culture and Art Festival,” presented at the International Conference on Remaking Communal Festivals and Social Boundaries in Socialist/Post-Socialist Societies, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong, December 16-17, 2013. I would like to express my gratitude to Dr Cheung Siu-woo for his invitation; to my discussant, Dr Ho Ts’ui-ping; and to all of the participants for their insightful comments, which helped me to revise this paper. I am also grateful to my Zhuang friends for their generous hospitality during my follow-up fieldwork in Ande, Guangxi, China in the summers of 2014 and 2015.

Publishers note: The publisher would like to inform readers that this article was mistakenly labelled as a regular paper instead of a special issue paper as part of a themed section called “Ethnicity, Ritual and Festivals in Asia”. This error was introduced as part of the editorial process, and the publisher sincerely apologizes for this error.

The following article was originally intended to publish as part of a themed section of AEDS 9.1 called “Ethnicity, Ritual and Festivals in Asia” guest edited by Professor Oscar Salemink and Dr Siuwoo Cheung:

Kao, Y.-n. (2019), “De/re-construction of Zhuang shamanic songs in cultural festivals”, Asian Education and Development Studies, Vol. 9 No. 1, pp. 46-55. https://doi.org/10.1108/AEDS-01-2018-001

Citation

Kao, Y.-n. (2020), "De/re-construction of Zhuang shamanic songs in cultural festivals", Asian Education and Development Studies, Vol. 9 No. 1, pp. 46-55. https://doi.org/10.1108/AEDS-01-2018-0017

Publisher

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Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2019, Emerald Publishing Limited

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