With twenty tracks ranging from 1 -6 minutes each, Songs of the Naxi of Southwest China has traditional folk songs of a Tibeto-Burman ethnic group (numbering about 320,000) concentrated in Lijiang, where their culture has endured in part due to their rural lifestyle and geographical isolation until the 1990s. Mostly sung a cappella (and in some cases enhanced by multi-tracking), the songs reflect the love of the region, its traditions and heartfelt feelings of residents. There are references to the mountains, rivers, flowers, wildlife, daily life, labor, farming, drinking, sorrow, joy, celebrations, and the fun that children find in everyday activities. Their traditional music reflects the uniqueness of this community.

A daughter of farmers, singer He Jinhua is a national first-level artist with the Yulong County Song and Dance Troupe of Lijiang, performing with them since 1986. She has been recognized as a Chinese National First-grade Performer and has received various awards for her singing. She has also performed at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in the U.S. It’s quite amazing what she does with her voice in an offering like “Ail Jiuq BBV Ddaq Pil (Dawn Lament)” that is sung with sobbing sounds at dawn while a relative’s coffin is resting in the house. As the cocks crow, the singer is communicating with the soul of the deceased, inviting the soul to rise, take refreshment and journey to the land of the ancestors.

The music is quite entrancing, and He Jinhua’s voice even approximates the sound of an end-blown flute at times. A 48-page booklet provides song titles and lyrics in three languages, Naxi, English and Chinese, indicating when vocables (syllables with no semantic meaning) are also sung.  Two songs, “Ceeli Ceemu (Tsheli Tshemu)” and “GGV Zzeeq Mil BVL Bee (Tibetan Marriage Lament)” are sung in the Tibetan language, and a general translation of the songs’ messages are provided. Kudos to singer He Jinhua, scholar Yang Fuquan, and ethnomusicologist Helen Rees for their collaborative work in this regard.

It’s fascinating to experience the different evocative feelings and moods in the variety of songs. For example, a song sung for plowing (“Ee Leeq Bee”) or threshing  (“Keel Lee Lal Bee”) certainly conveys a different mood than one for a wedding (“Mil BVL Bee”) or drinking (“Ree Bee”).  Five tracks near the end of the album incorporate instrumental sounds of plucked bamboo jaw harp, string-activated jaw harp, carved wooden frog scraper (to imitate croaking), piano or ukulele (by Daniel Ho) and recorder (by Helen Rees). The album actually includes two versions of “Labeq Gguqqil (Gguqqil Song from Labeq)” one sung a cappella (at track7) and another sung with ukulele and recorder (at track 19). So listeners can hear the spoken Naxi language, the project closes with He Jinhua’s spoken self-introduction about her love of singing, dancing and how she learned folk songs as a child from her elders as they herded cattle and pigs.     

An important project to preserve and pass on the traditional songs of the Naxi people, it is a very timely release as China’s traditional arts suffered during the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, influx of modern media and pop music since the 1980s, and the continued passing of the elders. With thanks to the Smithsonian Folkways record label, the documentation of these songs will allow them to be preserved and performed by future generations. (Joe Ross, Roots Music Report)