The Defintion of Folk Musical Assemble in Northern Shanxi and the Interpretation of Their Slang

WU Fan


Within the local system of knowledge among people in Yanggao County in northern Shanxi Province, yin yang troupes perform folk Taoist rituals wherein, through the chanting of prayers and the singing of hymns accompanied by the blowing of reeds and pipes, they pray for good fortune and perform sacrifices for the avoidance of calamity.  Occupying a position between these performers of folk religious rituals and ordinary people also participating in the rituals are the gujiang. Through the beating of drums and blowing of loud wind iinstruments, they expand and amplify the ritual’s efficacy or the expression of filial piety. Both the yin yang troupes and the gujiang show and make up the area’s individual tradition with their own highly differentiated music, “language” and narrative accounts.. In addition, music troupes like these who live in social symbolic space and time also compose their own special symbolic linguistic system – i.e.cryptic speech (like “jive” or “black speech”) – in order to: 1) indicate their low status which is distinct from those of ordinary people; 2) to counter other constructed argots circulating among specific groups, thus keeping implicit any antagonisms that they have in their hearts and dare not speak about.