Wumudi is a village about two hours' drive from central Beijing.
Its name means "a land of five mu" (five mu are 0.33
hectares). Located in rural Beijing's Miyun County, it looks no
different from any other village in north China.
Low-level brick houses dot the landscape, most with dried corn
stalks stacked in the courtyard. The area has few outside
visitors.
However, anyone who happens to go to the village on a Sunday will
surely hear an ensemble of a peculiar timbre coming out of a house
in the middle of the village, with a man singing.
The ensemble members usually do not have an audience.
The ensemble, with its five members aged between 57 and 76, is the
only group in the village that performs wuyin dagu, a
traditional form of singing-storytelling performance that was
popular among country people in north China's Hebei
Province and Beijing.
In
the first half of the 20th century, there were many
semi-professional musicians in Wumudi, who often toured nearby
villages to perform wuyin dagu during the slack season.
There was a time when Wumudi and its musicians had won such renown
that roaming performers from other places would usually bypass the
village. "They were afraid of us critical villagers," recalled
57-year-old Li Maosheng, whose father Li Jinyi was a famed wuyin
dagu singer.
Li
Jinyi, who was born around 1900, became well-known at the age of
15.
Li
Maosheng said his father was good at performing long works that
would last weeks or even months. They were mostly adapted from
historical novels, such as Warriors of the Yang Family of
the Song Dynasty (960-1279). The main characters of such works are
usually legendary heroes whose lives have been retold again and
again for generations.
Folktales are another textual source for wuyin dagu. Works
of this kind are usually of medium length, lasting several hours,
and include Shuiman Jinshan (Golden Mountain
Flooded), part of Baishe Zhuan (The Legend of the
White Snake), and Santang Huishen (Joint Inquest by
Three Judges).
There are also short pieces in wuyin dagu. In Li Jinyi's
time, they were often performed before long works as an opening
program.
Such pieces are either humorous stories of everyday life or ballads
with a moral tale.
As
with most genres of Chinese folk music, traditional wuyin
dagu singers adopted an oral method of teaching and studying,
using neither scores nor books of lyrics.
By
listening to and imitating his father, Li Maosheng learned the
melodies, songs and stories. But he said he couldn't perform any of
the long works in full.
Nowadays, no one is sure about the history of wuyin dagu.
The unnoticed school of shuochang -- category of traditional
Chinese folk music in which speaking and singing are blended and
mutually influence one another to strengthen the narrative --
scarcely can be found in any textbooks on the history of Chinese
music.
We
only know that it originated in the 19th century in the countryside
of present-day Hebei Province and Beijing.
Wuyin dagu is part of the wider dagu family, a
division of shuochang or singing-storytelling performance in
which the singer accompanies himself or herself with a drum and ban
-- a percussion instrument made of two wooden boards.
The most famous other schools of dagu include jingyun
dagu and xihe dagu, where the performer sings and talks
in local Beijing dialect.
In
the early 20th century, jingyun dagu and xihe dagu
became established in Beijing and Tianjin. However, wuyin
dagu remained based in the countryside and untouched by modern
methods of distribution.
Wuyin dagu has not left behind recordings or stories of
well-known performers as have its urban brothers and sisters.
"My father used to tell me that a singer of wuyin dagu
should send every word to the ears of the audience," said Li
Maosheng. "And the sound of each of the five instruments should be
distinctive from each other."
Like Li Maosheng, his four partners in the ensemble all have their
own stories to tell.
His daqin (dulcimer) partner is 76-year-old Qi Dianzhang,
who used to play with Li Maosheng's father.
The daqin that Qi now plays was bought in 1949 from a nearby
village for 37.5 kilograms of rice.
Qi
said the original owner was said a distant relative of the imperial
family and instrument collector, but Qi did not know how old the
daqin was.
In
1950, Qi made his own sihu (a four-stringed bowed
instrument) with a bomb casing and cow bones. He gave it to his
younger brother Qi Dianming, who, now 68 years old, plays the same
sihu in Qi Dianzhang and Li Maosheng's group.
The other two members of the group are 60-year-old Jia Yunming, who
plays the sanxian (a three-stringed plucked instrument), and
59-year-old Chen Zhenquan, who plays the waqin (a bowed
instrument that developed from the zheng, a traditional
plucked instrument.) Their instruments have been passed down to
them from their fathers or grandfathers.
Qi
Dianzhang said his was the fourth generation in his family to
perform wuyin dagu, as far as he knows.
When he was a young man, he toured with other musicians to perform
not only in Miyun County but also in the neighboring mountainous
Xinglong and Luanping counties and Chengde city, all in Hebei
Province.
In
every village where they went, they would build a stage on empty
ground to put on their show. Their performance was always warmly
welcomed and the villagers paid them in money and crops.
Some farmers came from dozens of kilometers away to see the
performance.
Half a century has since passed. Qi Dianzhang, Qi Dianming, Jia
Yunming, Chen Zhenquan and Li Maosheng are now practically the only
wuyin dagu performers in Miyun County.
In
his youth, Qi Dianzhang used to study wuyin dagu in
Dashimen, another village in Minyun, but the sound of wuyin
dagu can no longer be heard there.
Young people in Wumudi village have various entertainment options
but no one seems to consider performing wuyin dagu as a
vocation.
The five old musicians are occasionally invited to perform at
farmers' weddings or birthday parties. Otherwise, they gather at Qi
Dianming's home every Sunday to play together just for fun.
"My father performed wuyin dagu to earn some crops and
clothes," said Li Maosheng. "Now, we don't worry about earning a
living but I often feel guilty that we are not able to pass on our
tradition to the young generations."
Li
Maosheng has been noting down the lyrics that he can remember,
fearing that the works will become totally lost.
A
wuyin dagu piece usually starts with an opening poem.
Now Li Maosheng has a new opening poem to recite. It was written in
rhyme by Jia Yunming, the sanxian player:
"An old art born among the folks
Passed from generation to generation to this day
We
are the fourth generation to learn it
But we don't know when it began
As
our ancestors didn't tell us
And the history book lacks this page
The five performers are old
Hoping there will be successors."
(China Daily January 13, 2003)