Xintianyou
A Shaanxi mountain-song type with two-line stanzas, soaring lines and vivid imagery
Related
Xintianyou, also called Shuntianyou, is the signature song type of northern Shaanxi mountain song. Its typical shape is the two-line stanza: the first line sets an image, the second turns it to the point, both rhyming, and stanzas can be improvised one after another. The melody is high and long, often leaping a fourth or fifth and sliding, with figurative, colloquial and repeated words.
Lanhuahua, Sanshilipu and Ganshengling are all xintianyou. It is one song type within mountain song, not the whole of Shaanxi folk song, and not literally "roaming at will". On the loess plateau it is often a mule driver or shepherd singing alone to the sky; the voice needs the echo of the gullies before it becomes a note on the page.
Read deeper → Shange (Mountain Songs)
Sources
- 信天游的两句结构、比兴手法、代表曲目与流传地域，参《中国音乐词典》与 The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, "China" 相关条目；本文为原创表述
Used for fact-checking only; all prose is original.