A study of the music tradition and its contemporary change of the Theravada Buddhist Festival ritual performance of Dai ethnic nationality in Yunnan

The Daizu is one of ethnic nationalities of China. They live mainly in the Xishuanbanna Daizu Autonomous Prefecture and the Dehong Jingpozu-Daizu Autonomous Prefecture of Yunnan Province in Southwest China. Outside of China, they also distribute over several Southeast Asian countries, including Burma, Thailand, Vietnam and Laos. Dai's religious culture is Theravada Buddhism. Dai people once practiced many religious ceremonies and festivals such as the Varsika festival and Sankan festival. Owing to political-economic reasons, majority of these religious ceremonies and festivals have become secular activities. The Varsika festival, however, in still surviving as a purely religious festival, and the rich contents of its ritual music have been well preserved.;This dissertation consists the following: (1) a brief description of the author's field work experience and the state of research in this subject area; (2) an ethnographic account of ritual music of the Dai festivals; (3) an analysis of the music repertory and regional stylistic traits of the Varsika ritual festival; (4) discussion of the diachronic relationship between the Varsika ritual tradition and an ancient ritual music; (5) an investigation of the culture relations among Buddhist ritual music of minorities such as Blan, Dean and Acan. This leads to a discussion of the transtegional musical elements of Dai Buddhist ritual music, as well as its multi-layered identify; (6) a analysis of the process and factors of change from the historical geographical tie with Burmese Buddhist ritual tradition to the present economic tie with Thai Buddhist ritual tradition and; (7) a discussion of influence exerted to the Varsika ritual tradition by contemporary social and economic modernization.