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Nanguan music

Nanguan music
Chinese 南管
Literal meaning southern pipes
Alternative Chinese name
Chinese 南音
Second alternative Chinese name
Chinese 南樂
Third alternative Chinese name
Chinese 南曲

Nanguan (Chinese: ; pinyin: Nánguǎn; literally: "southern pipes"; also nanyin, nanyue, or nanqu) is a style of Chinese classical music originating in the southern Chinese province of Fujian, and is also now highly popular in Taiwan, particularly Lukang on west coast, as well as among Overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia.

Fujian is a mountainous coastal province of China. Its provincial capital is Fuzhou, while Quanzhou was a major port in the 7th century CE, the period between the Sui and Tang eras. Situated upon an important maritime trade route, it was a conduit for elements of distant cultures. The result was what is now known as nanguan music, which today preserves many archaic features.

It is a genre strongly associated with male-only community amateur musical associations (quguan or "song-clubs"), each formerly generally linked to a particular temple, and is viewed as a polite accomplishment and a worthy social service, distinct from the world of professional entertainers. It is typically slow, gentle, delicate and melodic, heterophonic and employing four basic scales.

Nanguan was inscribed in 2009 on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO.

Nanguan repertory falls into three overlapping styles, called chí, phó· and khiok (zhi, pu and qu in Mandarin), differentiated by the contexts in which they occur, by their function, the value accorded them by musicians and by their formal and timbral natures.

A nanguan ensemble usually consists of five instruments. The pie (muban (木板) or wooden clapper) is usually played by the singer. The other four, known as the téng-sì-kóan or four higher instruments, are the four-stringed lute (gî-pê, or pipa in Mandarin), a three-stringed, fretless, snakeskin-headed long-necked lute that is the ancestor of the Japanese shamisen, called the sam-hiân, (sanxian in Mandarin), the vertical flute, (siau (簫), also called tōng-siau), and a two-stringed "hard-bowed" instrument called the jī-hiân, slightly differing from the Cantonese erxian. Each of the four differs somewhat from the most usual modern form and so may be called the "nanguan pipa" etc. Each instrument has a fixed role. The gî-pê provides a steady rhythmic skeleton, supported by the sam-hiân. The siau, meanwhile, supplemented by the jī-hiân, puts "meat on the bones" with colourful counterpoints.


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