Ritual Music Of The Folk Weddings And Funerals In Shang Qiu

Shangqiu is located in eastern Henan province, Central China. Shangqiu Suonamusic, also known as Yudong Suona, is one representative genre of Henan Guchuimusic. To research Shangqiu Guchui music is not only for the development ofChinese traditional music, for humanity scholars, it is also a mirror of Chinese culture,which especially shows the unique charm of Henan culture. This paper takes musicitems in Shangqiu wedding and funeral ceremonies as a starting point, detailed fieldsurvey as a basis, describes the local wedding and funeral rituals and the music flowon the ceremonies. To present the full view of the local ritual music, this paperincludes some theoretical discussion as well as detailed musical analysis of theGuichui music on the ceremonies.This paper is divided into four chapters.Chapter1Introduction. By collectingbooks, journals, papers, image and video recourses about wedding and funeral ritualmusic, readers can understand the history, current situation and the results of thisresearch subject. And then this chapter describes the basis and significance of thisthesis topic, the purpose and the main content of the study.The second chapterintroduces the geographical environment and the human environment of theceremonies. The direct researching target of ethnomusicology is the music which liesin the folk and the society, therefore this chapter is the basis for the research work,that is, understanding of the human environment of a given population or region, andin turn making a macro understanding of the overall characteristics of the musicperformed on wedding and funeral ceremonies. The third chapter explains in detailthe local ritual customs and the music procedures applied. Although the focus of thestudy is the music performed, it is also very necessary to understand the occasions ofthe music, which are the Shangqiu weddings and funerals. Through fieldwork,Shangqiu folk wedding and funeral ceremony customs as well as the use of Guchuimusic in the ceremony process were summarized in this chapter. Chapter4summarizes and analyzes the musical characteristics of the Shangqiu Guchui musicon the basis of Yuexue theory. This chapter mainly explains the music performers andthe ritual music sound. It also summarizes the current status of the ritual musicperformers: the continuation, composition and functioning of contemporary suona class. This chapter elaborately discusses the instrumental music and musical featuresof the ritual music sound. In addition, it also analyzes the forming factors of the twomusical styles with the ritual behavior.