The Sound of Yunnan

Preface - Fetal Tones

The "bowl", which is the household furniture of monks for eating, is treated as a musical instrument! This is a first. The bowl is used to play the prelude to "The Rattle of Yunnan" because the sound emitted by the bowl is the sound of the ****ing of man and man, of God and man, of heart and mind. It is the fetal sound that every new life makes in the mother's womb. In the middle of the stage there was a huge tree, coiled with roots that climbed over the pool of music and hung down to the front of the audience. As the lights dimmed, countless people wrapped in lama-red cloths entered the theater from all directions, each carrying a Tibetan mantle with a small lamp that illuminated the face of each of the red-robed men. The red-clothed man began to grind the bowl in his hands, the bowl gradually reached **** vibration, the space was filled with a mysterious sound, that is, an agitation in the mother's body of the fetus to save enough strength, ready to head to the door of life before the door to crash open, the heartbeat gradually accelerated sound. The first to hear this sound was a large tree that symbolized the powerful force of life. The great tree began to move backwards! All the people in red gradually came together as the sound of the mantle diminished and disappeared.

Scene 1 - The birth of a child

In the days when there were no antiseptic medicines or instruments to stop bleeding, a woman giving birth to a child was a matter of uncertainty, life and death, and often it was a matter of passing through a ghostly gate, and the death rate of both the mother and the child was very high. A priest was praying to heaven and earth to bless the safe birth of a new life. A door to life opens at the root of a large tree. A woman about to give birth comes out of the tree door and walks down a path paved with drums toward an altar. The women gently beat their hands on the drums, making the sound of a heartbeat with a rapid rhythm similar to the sound of a fetus. A tear-jerking sad song was sung? All the townspeople used the drums to comfort and pray for the pregnant woman. The woman walks across the drum-paved path to the altar. Several drums separate and move, surrounding the altar. The pregnant woman's man sings a heart-rending song. The pregnant woman dances solo on the altar. The crowd cheers the woman: "Make the breath! Make the breath! Breathe again!" Several drums anxiously urge with increasing intensity. The woman about to give birth is struggling in agony between the realms of yin and yang. Covered in blood, the pregnant woman writhes and tumbles on the altar. The priest cries out to the heavens and to the gods. The child was finally born, while the child's mother exhausted her strength and was dying. The people around them chanted in unison: "Life is human, fear is dead! The mother ran to her death,

The poor woman, who had not yet had time to see her child's face, who had not yet had time to be a mother, shed her last drop of blood, took her last breath, and exchanged one of her lives for another in her womb. The old one left, the young one came, the mother left, the daughter came. A few hans set up the dead pregnant woman with bamboo poles, and the tear-jerking sad song was sung once again. The priest held the child in one hand and removed a string of necklaces hanging around the mother's neck as the only memory left for the child.

The priest placed the child in a cradle surrounded by a group of bent men, and a bullhorn flute played a lullaby for the newborn baby.

The second scene - the sun rain

The people who seek rain call for wind and rain, and they imitate the sounds of nature realistically, hoping not only that the heavens have eyes, but also that the heavens have ears, and that the heavens can hear the people who seek rain, and that they can get wind when they want wind, and get rain when they want rain. However, the sky is very interesting, often the sun and rain.

(Children's voices)

The sun is raining, but it can't rain; it is raining again, planting yellow rice seedlings and eating white rice; the frogs are coming out to reason. A group of women begging for rain, kneeling on the wheat with dustpans in hand, gazed intently at the sky. The wind is picking up! The wind gusts tighten. After the lightning came the rumble of thunder. One point, two points, the rain grew denser and crackled down. Another muffled thunder, and finally it rained, harder and harder. All the sounds were from the people who were begging for rain. The woman holds up the wheat and funnels it down between her hands, and it falls into the dustpan, making the sound of rain from small to large. The man rains the wheat onto the woman's two outstretched palms. With her head on the dustpan, the woman dances a prayer for good weather in the coming year. The mountains and the water are not soundproof, and being sisters and sisters should be sincere. Men and women with a dustpan in the wheat to express the heart of the incomparable joy of the mood, the wheat raised to the mid-air, the sieve rows into a curve, such as the waves roll, a moment of song, laughter, cheers into a piece.

Scene 3 - Male Tigers Female Tigers

Today the tigers seem to be preparing for a convention. This is the world of tigers, and today is a soft time for tigers. The stage is covered with wheat. A group of male tigers and a group of female tigers, like monks, meditate on the wheat. All the tigers play their whiskers as if they were mouth strings. With claws, teeth and tongues, they play strange music around their mouths. A male tiger couldn't help trying to kiss a tigress, and was stepped on by another male tiger, screaming in pain. One after another, the tigers made their own strange comments: Tigers don't grind their teeth, do you think they are sick cats? Hmph! Now these tigers are just sheep in tiger's skin! Calm down! Calm down! Calm down! The colorful clouds fly on the mountain tops, the fish swim in the river, your fur and my claws, the raindrops hit my face, I don't look at the sky, I don't look at the earth, I only see the moon in a ball. A tigress sang an emotional song: tiger skin is like a flower, tiger eyelids are double, tiger butt can't be touched, tiger is always too soft. When everyone was touched by the song, a peasant woman with a whip drove a male tiger from the front of everyone's eyes, the tigers could not help but make a dissatisfied voice: all: "not!" The farmer's wife with the whip in her hand said sternly: "What's unreasonable?"

The crowd: "It just doesn't fit!" A male tiger said, "That's too much!" A female tiger said, "Hmph! These tigers nowadays are totally paper tigers!" Another male tiger says, "Take it easy!" A tiger led the chorus of tigers: "On the fifteenth day of the first month, I waited for you in the street, and waited for you at the end of the street, but I didn't see my little sister jumping. The more they sang, the happier they became, and they raised their paws and danced with their hands. The tigers continued to sing in chorus: "I can't let go of you, I can't leave you, I can't leave you! A few male tigers even carried the tigress on their shoulders. One male tiger danced with his belly on the spur of the moment! The tigers have stood up, singing and dancing the Nu tribe's "OuDeDe": Suddenly there came a large group of birds chirping It turned out to be each male tiger's waist hanging a bird cage, inside the cage there is really a chirping bird. Male and female tigers in pairs, in the sound of birds chirping down.

The fourth scene - bird God strange bird

"Bird God strange bird": Yunnan language, strange and weird meaning. For thousands of years, people pulled a bamboo by hand, digging a hole can be played; randomly pick a leaf, two hands rubbed, is a blowpipe, blowing on the throw. Many musical instruments are in the field on the ground, hand-made, improvised. Plant roots, stems, branches, leaves, flowers, fruits, seeds, and even the hand of the sickle hoe, the home of the altar pots and jars, stone mill waterwheel, anything that can make a sound, may become a musical instrument.

The wind blew the leaves of the trees and made a rattling sound. The sand in a bamboo tube makes a rustling sound like an hourglass turning upside down. The sound of a water tank being emptied and scooped up The man of four, making the characteristic gurgling sound of a water pipe being smoked, spits out his cigarette comfortably after taking a full drag and says, "It's too good to be true!" Someone strums a one-stringed bamboo zither. Someone strums a bamboo zither.

Someone pulled an old waterwheel, making a rattling noise. The stone mill rumbles and grinds the seeds. The scythe clanked and scraped over the nine teeth of the nail harrow. Someone struck a deafening cymbal, and after all the noise, there was a sudden silence, and the mountain people, in ancient times, were striking fire with flint, and the stones struck sparks. A boy plucked up a long piece of bamboo and played it as a flute, while a girl, with her mouth to the end of the same piece, also played, a man and a woman, using the same piece of bamboo to play their love song. The girls each plucked up a bamboo to accompany the two of them. People with a leaf in their mouths play a leaf symphony. A burly man, holding a cigarette box in one hand, dances the never-before-seen Cigarette Box Dance.

Lusheng Dance: "Fighting Cocks"

(Several large roosters fight over a young hen, who has her eye on a young rooster who can sing love songs.) A large group of girls kneeling on the ground, playing a dulcimer and singing. A group of girls, picking a flower with their hands, blew it like a trumpet. A boy named Little Peng sings two roles in a song - Brother Mouse and Sister Crow. Early in the morning, through the foggy sunlight, a large herd of cows came, and the cowbells around their necks (known as "cow dollo" in Yunnan) tinkled and tinkled. A few people covered with gourds, dancing limbs and body, so that the gourds rubbing each other collide with the sound of clattering. The gourd man took off his hat, which was shaped like a gourd sheng, and blew a familiar love song.

The fifth scene-tea and horse road

Today, in Yunnan tea and horse road along some of the townships through the ancient road with large green stone paved with the horse road, a deep horseshoe pits, is still clearly visible. We often say: walk to step by step forward, this point, the horse did; we also often say: to step in the footsteps of the forefathers forward, this point, the horse also did.

The old tea-horse road came a team of horse gangs. The long-distance song of the horse-driven people, floating in the blue sky and white clouds. A large group of horses leisurely strolling on the grass, lined up in a long serpentine formation, with the song, the horse head a high and low, up and down. The sound of the horses' hooves came from far to near, from sparse to dense, from weak to strong, and gradually converged into the momentum of ten thousand horses galloping, pushing straight toward the audience.

When the horses reached the front of the crowd, they suddenly separated in two directions. In a hoarse male voice, Horse Pot Leader sang "Open Road Scripture": a dazzling bamboo horse dance. A horse-driven little brother carrying a three-stringed shoulder, walking and playing, mouth singing "horse-driven tune" from the horse herd came. A sister ah!

My sister is a bird from the western mountains. I'm going to drive my horse to the headless mountain, where there is a path to the sky, and where the rock at the top of the sky is a slope cut by a knife, and where my little brother is going to look at my sister on the mountain! The horses rested for a while and chased freely on the grassland. The horses kept changing their formation, spinning and jumping. Horse pot head once again sang "open road scripture": the horse team once again on the road, the sound of horse hooves, horse bells into a long river.

Scene 6 - The Drunken Drum

When the wine is drunk at just the right place, the men become the most handsome, the women the most beautiful, the usually silent become eloquent, the usually sorrowful become joyful. In the forest of drums, almost all the people were almost drunk. One man was holding a wine jar and singing a drinking song. A couple of hans put their heads in a wine jar with a ****ing sound and sing a wine song. A man and a woman sat on a tall drum and rowed: a large number of men and women held hands and passed between the gaps in the drums singing and dancing.

Several men poured and drank from the wine drums as they beat them. All eyes were on a man who was frantically beating a cowhide drum, only to see him playing lightly, slowly and sharply, to a state of self-forgetfulness! Six men playing shoulder-backed drums and three men playing human-shaped drums competed and fought with each other. High drums stand up on top of a lead singer of the wine song to: where there is wine where drunk, where there is a store where to sleep ah Su Zeli Maiyo to Xi Su Zeli Maiyo to the wine song into the chorus of the crowd: like it, but also want to drink; don't like it, but also want to drink; tube you like it or not, but also want to drink it ah! Whether you like it or not, you have to drink -! The drum line began to move in the song, changing various formations, and gradually formed two large horizontal rows at the entrance of the stage. All of them, in a drunken state, beat the drums and sang. Drinking to the extent of hallucinations, drumming to the realm of forgetfulness, suddenly a cry, the whole audience quieted down. A mysterious sound came out, and the opening tearful song started again. People turned around and the woman who had died giving birth to a child came back to life. Everyone does not know if what is happening is reality or an illusion. The drums kept separating, and the woman walked through the crowd, searching for her child in the forest of drums. The woman finds a girl buried in the drums with her necklace around her neck. She recognizes the girl as her own flesh and blood that she traded her life for. Mother and daughter met and hugged and cried. The crowd was dumbfounded!

The woman said, "Am I interrupting? Once again, the people went into a frenzy. Dancers passed between the drums from all directions. The crowd staggered and staggered to the sound of the fierce drums, and some people fell to the ground in a drunken stupor. The more drunk people became, the more intense and exuberant the drums became. After a loud cymbal, everyone was drunk and sprawled out on the drums. Only the little girl was left alone still concentrating on the drum, playing, she realized that something was wrong, looked around, a quiet, fell beside her a drunkard, staggered to his feet, by her with a finger, the drunkard like a mountain, fell to the ground with a bang.

Ending - Singing

The primary and secondary schools in the mountainous regions of Yunnan have a habit of "singing and reading" texts in a unique language in unison, which is also a kind of "Yunnan ringing sound" that echoes every day among the mountains of Yunnan! Actor after actor came on stage to take the curtain call, repeating the text "Earth" over and over again.

Curtain call

Thirty-five,

Earth!

If the earth were square,

we'd have corners to hide in;

but,

the earth is round,

and we can only come and go to each other.