Research On The Singing Art In The Tongshan Tea-leaf Picking Drama

As a historical and cultural heritage, Tongshan Tea-leaf Picking Drama which is full of local flavor and reflects the native life, is a great local opera and paly, of extreme cultural value in Hunan province. The traditional Tea-leaf Picking Drama has more than one hundred plays, with four main types as Sheng, Dan, Jing and Chou. It consists of aria and accompany. The lyric, rhyme and singing are all in dialect. The singing which takes in some folk arts like ballad, hillbilly songs, feil songs etc, is of great local features.This research begins with exploring and analyzing the arias, the singing characteristics of various characters, and corresponding singing techniques in the Tea-leaf Picking Drama, which results in the present study on the singing art in the Tea-leaf Picking Drama of Tongshan County. Since Tongshan Tea-leaf Picking Drama was inducted into Hubei Provincial Intangible Cultural Heritage Directory in 2013, the government of Tongshan County and the Provincial Department of Culture have put in a lot of effort in promoting the drama. The researcher in the present study was born and raised in Tongshan County. This gives the researcher an advantage in understanding and analyzing the local geographical and cultural conditions, which makes the research on the Tea-leaf Picking Drama a bit easier.The present study is built on work done by previous researchers. Based on the large amount of available literature, using the method of field study in combination of other methods, the present study has been carried out in six parts:The first part is introduction, which outlines the purpose, the current status, and the methodology of the research. The second part is a comprehensive review of Tongshan Tea-leaf Picking Drama. The review is done through several perspectives, namely, the geographical environment, the geographical distribution, historical origins, early artists, and inheriting family tree of the Tea-leaf Picking Drama. In the third part, the researcher combines the literature and information obtained through field study to analyze the arias and character characteristics of the drama, mainly in the following areas:There are two arias in Tea-leaf Picking Drama, the thematic aria, and the color aria, with the thematic aria further divided into four sub-categories:the north aria, the Tan aria, the Han aria, and SiPing, which are the most widely used arias. The color arias is rich in color, with a light and lively tempo. Its tune is composed of upper, lower sentences, or squared-four-sentences. The color aria can be used in both the big play and small play, but mostly in small plays. Additionally, there is a so called Kezi aria, belonging to a kind of narrating fast tempo. These arias have an integrated structure with strict rules on rhythm and lyrics, which can be used to great dramatic effects. In the performance of Tea-leaf Picking Drama, large amount of dancing movements are utilized in combination with singing. This is evident throughout the performance of the characters. The Tongshan Tea-leaf Picking Drama is accompanied with a rich variety of musical instruments. The most commonly used are gong and drum. Other instruments often used are:Biangu, Tangu, Dabo, Xiaobo, and Yunban, etc.. More recently, Sixuan, Erhu, and Banhu were added. The fourth part is about the singing techniques. The researcher made an in-depth investigation on the language and lyrics, on the breathing and resonance control, and on the emotional expression, in the Tea-leaf Picking Drama. In the fifth part, the researcher focuses on the inheritance and protection of Tongshan Tea-leaf Picking Drama, covering the value, the current status, and the measures that have already been adopted to protect and preserve the drama. The sixth part is the conclusion. This is to summarize the major part of the thesis and to reinstate the significance of the present study. Through this work, The researcher hopes to contribute in the promotion and further development of the singing art of the Tongshan Tea-leaf Picking Drama.