A Case Study Of Miao Wedding Songs In Qijiang

This thesis is a case study of Miao wedding songs in Qijiang, Chongqing. Our research firstly studies a specific case of Qijiang wedding songs, collects songs used in Miao Wedding Ceremony and analyzes their musical forms to reveal the functional importance of wedding songs and illustrate them in a perspective of Qijiang Miao wedding song inheritance.This thesis contents three parts. The first part is the introduction. Recent status of wedding songs, research significance and the main research methods on wedding songs are included in this research.The second part is the main body of the thesis and includes four chapters. The first chapter combs origins, migrations and living environments of Qijiang Miao. Through this sort, we roughly determined the time that Miao moved in and summarized their living and production status. A brief summery was given on the wedding customs of the Miao nationality.The second chapter is a detailed description and record to the process of Qijiang Miao wedding ceremony. The wedding song is a ritual song, the wedding ceremony is the background and the carrier of the wedding song. This chapter reflects the original appearance of the wedding through ethnographic writing method and put wedding songs inside the wedding ceremony to study, which will leave a first-hand material for Miao wedding study.The third chapter is the analysis of the form of wedding songs. Using “ "nuclear cavity" theory, we simplifies and restores the rhythm of the wedding songs to find out the essence of them. The melody of the wedding songs are comparatively complicate, which not only follow the regularity but also possess their own unique form. By learning from rhythms of traditional musics, we are trying to investigate the characteristics of wedding songs. In the meaning time, we analyzed the wedding song mode and their structural characteristics. We also performed detailed analysis on specific songs to study the form of wedding songs.The fourth chapter is the analysis of the function and inheritance of the Miao wedding songs. Firstly, wedding songs not only have entertainment function but also possess educational and social functions, which is determined by its own attribute. Secondly, we analyzed the facing problems of the wedding songs in the aspect of inheritance.The third is the conclusion part. In order to lay the foundation for future research, we analyzed the research main points and conclusions of the study, and discussed the the problems that need to be solved.