Song And Life

Kam Grand Choirs, also called "Galao" in Dong minority, is an ethnic music of strong territoriality and originality, which is in the south of Dong ethnic group. Since Kam Grand Choirs was found by some musicians in 1950s, it become more and more popular to the public with its glamour of natural choir without any musical accompaniments.It has been 60 years when Kam Grand Choirs comes into the mainstream culture from the south of Dong minority. At the same time, the field domain of Kam Grand Choirs has been changing dramatically. Especially after 1980s, the inheritance and development of Kam Grand Choirs has changed profoundly due to the development of tourism, the development of modern communication, the involvement of other viewpoints and the transformation of communicative environment. On the one hand, the development of Kam Grand Choirs shows the unique charm of the Dong culture with the acknowledgement of others; on the other hand, the involvement of other viewpoints also changes the criteria of Kam Grand Choirs as the community music of Dong. The development of tourism pushed by the local government has transferred Kam Grand Choirs from the self-satisfied ethnic culture to the symbol of local culture. The inheritance and protection of Kam Grand Choirs in modern society have to face the change of this cultural field domain. At the micro-level, this change may be the various way of inheritance. At the macro-level, this change is just the conscious or unconscious diversion of the Dong ethnic group itself and the culture they have created. Therefore, it is undoubtedly vital to have an overall inspection with the viewpoints of cultural anthropology in order to explore the inheritance and protection of Kam Grand Choirs in this modernized and global world.There are six chapters in this dissertation besides the introduction and conclusion.There are three parts in the introduction. Firstly, Kam Grand Choirs is defined with the brief introduction to its geographical distribution. Meanwhile, the author analyzes the Kam Grand Choirs in terms of cultural geography, the customs of Dong and its aesthetic characteristics. The second part is about the literature review of previous studies about Kam Grand Choirs. The third part is about the research methodology, innovative points and the shortcomings.TheChapter one discusses the development of Kam Grand Choirs. The geographical distribution of Kam Grand Choirs, the historical development and the current situation of Kam Grand Choirs, and the tendency of Kam Grand Choirs have been analyzed with the time and space dimension, especially to explore the regional structure and humanistic dimensions of Kam Grand Choirs in space. This chapter also discusses the difficulties of Kam Grand Choirs:the lose of language environment and cultural consciousness, the broken of the inherited generation and the destroy of the ecological space.The Chapter two deals with the ecological environment of Kam Grand Choirs from the four aspects, the natural environment, the social environment, cultural environment and innovative environment. The ecological environment of Kam Grand Choirs is the core gene of the existence of Kam Grand Choirs. The symbolized, abstract and conceptualized Kam Grand Choirs is actually losing its growing anddeveloping soil when it is separated from the living environment. Protecting the whole existence of its ecological environment should be the prime task in inheriting Kam Grand Choirs.The Chapter three explores the singing content of Kam Grand Choirs. The main contents of Kam Grand Choirs sing about the display of the natural sense, the oral narration of the memory of Dong, the showing of their marriage customs, thepraise of human relations and family affections and the description of daily routine. The complex integration of the nature, life, history and society of Dong reflect the collective sense of the whole Dong ethnic groups. Therefore, Kam Grand Choirs has become the aesthetic reflection of the life of Dong and the representation of their cultural identitywith its natural sense and life characters, in which Kam Grand Choirs has been rooted in the inner mind of every individuals of Dong with its value of constancy.The Chapter four discusses the rhyme of Kam Grand Choirs. Kam Grand Choirs becomes the unique folk heterophony of polyphonic music with the perfectly combination of the soft and graceful lyrical melody and coordinate harmony. Kam Grand Choirs shows its artistic glamour to the world with the romantic transition of rhyme, the vivid simulation of the nature, the harmonic and graceful presenting style, the well-arranged tone transition, the poetic expression of dialogue and the rising and natural choir. The most important characteristics of Kam Grand Choirs is the musical naturalness, the conversational poetry, the singing conformity, the harmonic hierarchy, the tonal softness and rhyming interactivity. This chapter also provides some real examples of the rhymes of Kam Grand Choirs by investigation.The Chapter five shows the social functions of Kam Grand Choirs. The creation, development and maturity cannot be separated from the need of the special ethnic groups. The Kam Grand Choirs originates from the social life of Dong and is closely related to the material production live and the social life. And at the same time, the Kam Grand Choirs affects deeply the productive and social life of the Dong people, especially the stability and development of Dong. This chapter discusses the social function from the following five aspects:group entertainment, social interaction, aesthetic education, religious believe and ethnic identity.The Chapter six is about the inheritance of Kam Grand Choirs. Some realistic problems in the process of the inheritance, such as psychological accepting change, the stereotyped artistic form, the aesthetic transformation and the change in inheriting mode, are presented in terms of the cultural field domain, symbolic narration, modern language context and contemporary viewing angle. We think the Kam Grand Choirs should be restructured from the ecological dimension. The Kam Grand Choirs is not only the existence of artistic aesthetic, but also is the art based on real living running. It is more important to protect the closely interaction with the living community.The conclusion analyzes the cultural structure and the cultural domains of Kam Grand Choirs. The author finds out that the isomorphism of the traditional culture and society of Dong is everywhere in the deep structure if Kam Grand Choirs, which makes a kind of cultural domain in the ethnic group of Dong with the sense of geographical space and spiritual field. Both the time consciousness and the cultural consciousness are absolutely necessary in the inheritance and development of Kam Grand Choirs. The time consciousness asks us regard Kam Grand Choirs as a lively cultural existence, but not a static cultural view. This is the outside condition of the continuation of the culture. And the cultural consciousness asks us views Kam Grand Choirs as a special cultural unity, whose life is rooted in the ethnic identity of their cultural value. This is the inner gene of the special culture that defines its life or death.