The Buyi Funeral Dance Studies

This paper takes the cymbal dance as an example for research about Buyi nationality's funeral dance. On the basis of huge historical records and previous achievements about this subject, the author also did field research in Jiuzhai Village,Luodian County about the funeral events there and then observes it on the background of the funeral as a whole. The author makes efforts to do research on Buyi people's funeral dance culture by making clear of the origin,form,function of the cymbal dance and its relation with funeral rites.There are there parts in this paper, they are as follow:Preface: The author narrates the object, the meaning, research materials and methods of this paper and introduces some relative achievements on this subject.Chapter one: Make research about the origin of Buyi people's funeral rites and the origin and different kinds of funeral dance from the historical and cultural angle of Buyi people. It is to be found that the funeral dance originated with people's belief of eternity and came into existed in remote antiguity.Chapter two: Make an analysis of its origin, gesture form and characters of the cymbal dance and do research about its relation with funeral rites. It is thought that the strong, vigorous style and clearvariations of tone of the cymbal dance has heavily to do with the religious sacrifices. And of course these people's usual and customary gesture could be conveyed through the motions of the cymbal dance directly or indirectly, because it's these people who dance with the cymbal.Chapter three: Analyses the function of the cymbal dance and concludes it as amusing both the soul and the self, expressing emotions, driving the devil and uniting people together. Besides, people's mentality interacts with the cultural environment which surrounds them, thus, the cymbal dance also reveals or reflects the accumulation of Buyi people's various traditional culture.Chapter four: Raise the significant meaning of protecting funeral dance in the aspect of reforming funeral custom and constructing harmonious society and make suggestions on how to protect it.