The songs of Dong

In any document to which we approach to know the cultures of the minorities of China, invariably we are a series of affirmations that seem common to all of them; his beliefs in the ancestors and spirits of the nature in the paragraph of religion; his sexual freedom before the marriage in the chapter of the marriage; his love for the hospitality in the chapter of his customs; and in his cultural life he always emphasizes his love for the music and the singing.

These characteristics, like other all that who might stand out realizing a more meticulous analysis, are not common places, but the reflex of a reality that spreads over a wide territory in which the national minorities live and about which he pushes us to wonder: What relation does the music and the dance have with the life of these peoples?

A saying of Dong seems to give us the answer:

The body needs food
The heart needs songs.

In fact, in some of these peoples, like Dong, the songs are intimately tied to the life of every person. From the severest blunders in the most important religious ceremonies to lighter that they accompany the festivities of the wine or the different stages of the affectionate relation, the whole life of Dong seems to be accompanied of a certain rhythm. It is for it that between them, big emphasis puts itself in teaching to the children the ancient songs.

The wide common scale of songs can gather together Dong in five different types:

1. Stories of big events.
2. Songs on customs and rituals.
3. Big songs
4. Songs of the children
5. Songs on the feelings of the people.

The most typical of Dong there belong to all these guys the called Big Songs. In fact, in every village they usually organize groups of volunteers to teach this type of songs to the youngest, which usually are usually provided with the presence of a soloist and a choir that accompanies him.

According to his legends these songs are a reflex of the sounds of the birds in the nature, since his origin goes back to one day at which Dong was employed, and during a rest they began singing. The birds and insects of the mountain, it remained so agreeably surprise, that answered them in turn, with a few songs in which the music of each one was getting together to the perfection.

On having listened to the choir of the animals, it was the men who, astonished, tried to imitate his sounds, arising with the time the Singing of the Frog, the Singing of the Bird and others that are a part of the repertoire of these Big Songs.

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