Yangzhou Ballad Singing

Yangzhou ballad singing, formerly called “singing by the string”, is a local opera in Yangzhou . It is popular is Yangzhou , Zhenjiang , Nanjing , and Northern Jiangsu Province .

In Yangzhou ballad singing, the main form is story-telling with the playing of the string accompanying it. The performance of it resembles that of the singing of the stories. What is different is that, firstly, Yangzhou ballad stresses that the singer should sing or speak with a clear and rich tone and emphasizes the lasting appeal, and secondly, the action is conducted on a lesser scale, the movement of the hands is limited to the minimum while the facial expression is underlined.

Yangzhou ballad is presented in the local dialect. Sometimes the dialects of other areas are used to distinguish and portray the characters. When the singing is acted by two people, the two will cooperate with each other and carry out conversation in different manners and accents according to the characters they play. The one on the left is mainly responsible for narration and the one on the right the singing.

Yangzhou ballads are arranged according to the structures of the poems. The most common tunes are Three-seven Pear-flower , Trifling Southern Branch , Sinking in the Water , the Song of the Sea , daoqing , and so on. In Yangzhou Ballads, the “re” and “la” in traditional Chinese musical notation are most often stricken. The note is plain, antique, and there are few changes over the years. The ballads are sung either in the first-person perspective or the third-person perspective. There is usually a sentence with three or seven characters, with addition and reduction possible. Usually the sentences of the even number rhyme. The two singers will cooperate with each other in tacit agreement. One plays samisen, the other pipa . The former will be the theme, and the latter the flowing notes. As the old saying goes, samisen is the bone and pipa the flesh.

The Yangzhou ballads that are often performed include The Jaded Dragonfly, The Pearl Pagoda, The Double Gold Ingot, The Fallen Gold Fan, The Shrew Liu, Phoenix with Double Pearl, The Double Haircut, The White Snake , so on and so forth, while The Gold Signet, The Plum that Blossoms Twice, The Pirate's Cloak, The Red Cloak, The Map of the Heavenly Treasure, Kylin Leopard do not survive. The traditional ballads mainly deal with the joys and sorrows, partings and reunions of the talented scholars and beautiful ladies, the familial and social life, the punishment of the evil and the promotion of the upright. Therefore are often called “books of little importance”. Each ballad will be performed in 15 to 20 acts. The only two long ballads are The Jaded Dragonfly and The Double Haircut , each of them can be played in 60-odd acts. The script is adapted from the printed version of the fiddle ballads. However, they are different from each other and the script is richer in contents.