Danzhou tone

Name of China's national intangible cultural heritage: Danzhou tiaosheng

Applicant: Danzhou City, Hainan Province

Item No.: 45

Project No.: Ⅱ - 14

Time of publication: 2006 (the first batch)

Category: Traditional Music

Region: Hainan Province

Type: new item

Applicant: Danzhou City, Hainan Province

Protected by: Danzhou Cultural Center

Introduction to Danzhou tone

Applicant: Danzhou City, Hainan Province

Danzhou Diaosheng is a folk song with unique regional style which is only popular in Danzhou, Hainan Province. Danzhou was daner county (110 BC) during the reign of Emperor Wu of Han Dynasty, and it has been known as "Gehai" since ancient times. Su Dongpo, a great writer of the Northern Song Dynasty, once praised this place for its prosperous singing style with the sentence of "Yisheng never stops all night". When Mr. Tian Han visited Danzhou in 1962, he called Danzhou Diaosheng "a wonderful work in the Southern music world". Recently, Danzhou has been named "the hometown of Chinese folk art" by the Ministry of culture for its rich folk art forms and cultural connotations, including "Diaosheng".

Diaosheng is the most popular variety in "Gehai" and an indispensable spiritual food in people's life.

The tunes are mainly sung during the leisure time or during the Spring Festival. Young men and women gather in the mountains to sing songs. Especially the annual "Mid Autumn Festival" is particularly lively, with tens of thousands of participants. When singing a tune, young men and women are arranged in two rows or in a circle. They hook their fingers to each other, and their hands and bodies swing with the rhythm of the song, singing and dancing. Diaosheng has several common tunes, which can be developed and changed to create more new tunes. Over the years, more than 600 Diaosheng tunes have been collected, and some representative tunes include "the collapse of heaven and the earth is not lost", "a hundred flowers of the motherland", "three dull times when you don't see them", "beating drums with a single hammer doesn't sound", etc.

As a good form of self entertainment and self-education for the masses, Danzhou municipal government has decided to designate the 15th of August every year as the "Mid Autumn Festival" to fully protect the tune.