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Journal of Undergraduate Research

Keywords

Chinese folk songs, oral history, music, Jiangsu, Xinjiang

College

Humanities

Department

Asian and Near Eastern Languages

Abstract

In the village of Taicang, a small dirt road community tucked between a Ming dynasty capitol and a famous silk city, nationally acclaimed composer Gao Xuefeng combs the countryside rich in rice and fish for century old folk tunes around which he weaves a tapestry of music based on simple, yet haunting melodies. Along the Silk Road where Central Asia meets China, professor Zhou Jie leaves his local home in Kashgar to trek into the harsh mountain climes and the vast reaches of shifting desert to record ancient mukamus—folk tunes—found also in Central Asia, the Middle East, and northern Africa. With strokes of luck and fortune, I ran across the tracks of both these sixty and seventy year old men during my own investigation on how physical, political, and social environments affect the content, style, transmission, and performance aspects of folk music, and through their efforts learned more about the preservation of folk music than I could have learned on my own.

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