The Revitalization of Indigenous Music: Musical Transformations of Miao Youth in the Church Community in Northwest Guizhou

Revitalization of Indigenous Music: Shifting Music by the Miao Youths in the Church Community
of Northwest Guizhou
Shujin Zhang

The Miao people who speak the western Miao dialect belonged to northeast Yunnan sub-dialect area
call themselves “Ad Hmaob”, and mainly live in the Wumeng mountainous area on the border of
Sichuan, Yunnan, and Guizhou. They had their traditional belief for worships. However, a group of
foreign missionaries represented by J. R. Adams (1863-1915) and Samuel Pollard (1864-1915) entered
Southwest China and began to preach Christianity from the turn of the 20th century. As a result, this
ethnic group was converted to Christianity, and its traditional music was almost extinct. In the current
complex context of globalization, a small group of young Ad Hmaob people who grew up in Christian
families of northwestern Guizhou is reviving Lusheng music (a Miao reed-pipe wind instrument) and
Feige (Miao folk songs) to construct the Miao indigenous music at present. L and N, as
representatives of those young Ad Hmaob, whose musical life will be tracked in this paper, to explore
the Christian environment they were raised up in, the musical concepts and actions (performances)
they’ve acquired, the collision of multi-level cultural identities currently exhibited on them, and
therefore to deeply observe the historical and cultural implications behind.

原住民音樂的復興：貴州西北教會社群中苗族青年的音樂轉變

張書瑾

位於東北雲南的次方言區，說著西苗族方言的苗族人稱他們自己為「Ad Hmaob」，主要居住在四川、雲南及貴州邊界的烏蒙山地區。他們原有自己的宗教崇拜，直到20世紀，J. R. Adams （1863-1915）及Samuel Pollard（1864-1915）為首的傳教士進入中國西南地區帶來基督教思想，至此之後，苗族改信基督教，而原來的傳統音樂近乎絕跡。現今複雜的全球化趨勢下，Ad Hmaob族，一個年輕的小規模團體，發跡於貴州西北區域的基督教族群，將蘆笙（一種笙樂器）及Feige（苗族民俗歌曲）音樂再次發揚光大，在現代重新構築苗族的原住民傳統音樂。本文將要追溯L和N－－Ad Hmaob族年輕族人中的兩位代表－－的音樂生涯，探討他所生長的基督教環境，他們的音樂概念及行為，展現在他們身上的多重文化身分的衝突，最終深入探討其背後的歷史及文化暗喻。