Singing Life: The Cultural Change Research Of The Zhuang People’s Liao Songs In Pingguo

Guangxi is known as “songs of the sea”, there are many kinds of folks and we can hear them on the mountain, in the field, around the house, and the melody also floating in the streets and market. As a representative of the original folk songs of the Zhuang people, Liao songs are regard as classical music works and encyclopedia. Liao songs are two-part folk songs, which are mostly performed along the mid-stream of the Youjiang Rriver(including Pingguo, Tiandong, Mashan County); it’s called fwen liuz in the Zhuang language, with the meaning of ‘sing for fun’. Liao songs may dates to the Spring and Autumn and the Warring States Period, and it were included in the national intangible cultural heritage list in 2008. Currently, there are many researches about Liao songs in China, but mostly from the perspective of literature and musicology. Take the anthropology and ethnology as a starting point, the studies pay more attention to Liao songs’ origin, the relation with religion,transmission and inheritance. With the development of the times, Liao songs present us a new look. On this background, my study tries to take the cultural change of Liao songs as the theme, utilize the cultural ecology theory by Julian Stewart, and focus on the changes of each level in Liao songs cultural ecology. Hopes my try may fill in certain blanks of the relevant research field. Besides, my study tries to discuss the relationship between Liao songs and economy, which was merely presented in previous studies, and this may be a new idea.