Music and Dance
5 min readSince ancient time Xinjiang has been famous for its music and dance. It was recorded in Volume 97 of History of North that “(people of) the state of Yanqi loved music and enjoyed dancing”. According to Volume 221 of New Book of Tang, people of Yutian “were good at singing and dancing”. The music-and-dance in Qiuci represented the highest level in the Western Regions. Huen Tsang said in Records of the Western Regions in the Great Tang that Qiuci”topped other states in music and dance”, which was a faithful record of that time.
During the Western Han Dynasty, the king of Qiuci, Jiangbin married daughter of Han Princess Jieyou, Dishi, who loved the Han people’s culture and used to learn music in Chang’ an. After becoming queen of Qiuci, Dishi travelled to Chang’ an again with Jiangbin in 65 BCto pay tributes to the Han court. Xuandi Emperor of Han “gave them carriages, flags and drums, tens of musicians, silk products and jewelry worth hundreds of thousands of money units”. The Emperor also “let them stay in Chang’ an for one year and gave them expensive gifts before they finally left”. The queen of Qiuci “later came to Chang’ an for a few more times and en joyed the costume and other institutions in the Han Dynasty”. The royal family of Qiuci brought back the dancing, musical instruments and musicians of the Central Plains through their contacts and interactions with the Han culture and music. With the influence of the music-and-dance of the Central Plains, Qiuci flourished in music and turned into a world-renowned Land of Singing and Dancing. The music-and-dance of Qiuci was a further development of local dancing with added elements from the fine culture both in the east and in the west. According to some research,”Qiuci music relied mainly on their national instruments as jie-gu (a type of drum) topped among the 8 musical instruments, despite the admission of sheng(a reed pipe) and xiao(a vertical bamboo flute) from the Central Plains, vertical harp and pi-pa from Egypt and West Asia and copper cymbal from India and West Asia”.”In composition, Qiuci music emphasized their national pieces as’ Sulek Salt’ was seen as the best of all, although Manichean and Buddhist pieces did exist.
As to the temperament, Qiuci music basically accepted the musical system in the pre-Qin period and adopted the Five-Tone Scale and Pure-Tone Law. By merging music from the Central Plains, India and West Asia, Qiuci music contributed to the brilliant civilization of the Western Regions.”
The development of Qiuci music had a profound bearing on its counterpart on the Central Plains. During the Sixteen-State period, Fujian, king of the Former Qin sent his general Lu Guang on an expedition to Qiuci with 70,000 troops. Stunned by the amazing culture and arts in Qiuci, General Lu returned home with 20,000 camels carrying musicians, dancers and other treasures from Qiuci after annihilating it in 384AD. On his way back, Lu Guang got the news that the Former Qin regime was overthrown, so he set up the Later Liang regime in Wuwei and built a huge singing and dancing troupe, which contributed to the eastward spread of Qiuci music and in the later stage, the formation of Western Liang music. Qiuci music spread massively to the east for the second time after the Northern Wei regime united the Central Plains after ending Northern Liang in 439 AD. The rulers of the Northern Wei Dynasty were very fond of Qiuci music. According to Volume 142 of Tong Dian, Xuanwu Emperor and those who came after him all “loved the northwestern music; when they moved to the new capital, they en joyed the Qiuci music played on pi-pa, five-strings, harp, Hu drum, copper cymbal and dashaluo accompanying the northwestern dancing, which was loud, resounding and awesome”. Later, the emperors of the Northern Qi Dynasty were so “fond of Qiuci music”that it was almost “like an addiction”. During the Northern Zhou Dynasty, Wudi Emperor, Yuwen Yong, sought for a marriage with the Turki khan family in 568AD. As part of the dowry, the Turk princess, Ashina brought with herahuge Western Regions music-and-dance troupe composed of 300 people from Qiuci, Sulek, Bukhara and Samarkand, thus introducing the fine art of music and dance of the Western Regions to the Central Plains once again. Many artists brought by the Turki princess later became significant figures in the Chinese music history, of whom the one with the biggest contribution was Sujup,a musical theorist from Qiuci. Sujup taught Han musicians the Qiuci musical theory of “Five Modes and Seven Notes”. The establishment and application of this theory improved the temperament system of the entire Chinese nation as it set up the standards for music and deeply impacted the music in the Sui and Tang Dynastiese.
During the Sui and Tang period, every household on the Central Plains “learnt northwestern music”and the court music was also dominated by minority repertoire. Wendi Emperor of Sui defined”seven music categories”, three of which were from the Western Regions.
Yangdi Emperor of Sui expanded the categories to nine, with five from the WesternRegions. In the Tang Dynasty, Taizong Emperor defined “ten music categories”, which included music from Qiuci, Sulek, Bukhara, Samarkand, Korea, Western Liang, Gaochang, banquet music, ancient Chinese music and Indian music. Among the ten categories, Western Regions produced six, or seven, if Western Liang music was also counted, which was a”variation of Qiuci music”Qiuci music was held in high esteem and called “top of the minority categories”. If we take into account other music spreading to the east from the Western Regions, such as that of Yutian, Yanqi, Turks, Yueban, Qirqiz, Maimargh, Kesh and Yizhou, then the music of the Western Regions definitely had an overwhelming dominance.
Another piece worth mentioning in Xin jiang music-and-dance is the Twelve Muqam,a classical work of folk music, dance and poetry that gradually and slowly came into beingon the basis of Qiuci, Sulek, Yutian and other ancient Xin jiang music, with complementary musical instruments and melodies from Islamic countries such as Arabia and Persia. The Twelve Muqam consists of twelve suites, each having three repertoires-Chong Naghma, Dastan and Mashrap, with lyrics made of famous poems, ballads or folk tale verses. In its long history, Muqam underwent two ma jor consolidations. The first was during the reign of the Yarkand Khanate, when Sultan Rashid Khan (1533-1560 in reign) and his wife Amannisa Khan rallied domestic musicians, singers and poets to collect and reorder the Muqam that spread among the people since the Tang and Song Dynasties. However, the Twelve Muqam they produced was only limited to Chong Naghma. The second consolidation was made in 1879 and presided over by Kashi artist Ali Salim and Shache artist Satiwald, who added the parts of Dastan and Mashrap, which were popular among local people, thus making the Twelve Muqam a larger set of suites of music, dance and poetry. The Twelve Muqam had n manuscripts as it had always been instructed orally to the students by older artists. After the People’s Republic of China was founded, the government sent experts twice to collect and tape-record the Twelve Muqam and officially published it in 1960, thus creating conditions for wider spread and preservation of this marvelous piece. In 2002, three sets of video-audio records of the Twelve Muqam were completed.
