Yichang Silk-and-Bamboo Music

Also called "fine music," Yichang silk-and-bamboo is the representative instrumental form of the city's folk music—unique to Yichang within Hubei's folk-instrumental taxonomy—and takes its name from its leading silk-string and bamboo-wind instruments. It is centred on Yaquling and Longquan in Yiling District and reaches out to Zhijiang, Yidu and Dangyang, transmitted for nearly two hundred years across seven generations of musicians. It entered the first national ICH list in 2006 under traditional music (code Ⅱ-47).

Long used at folk weddings, funerals and festivals, the ensemble pairs silk strings such as erhu and yueqin with bamboo winds like flute and suona, its tunes clear, refined and long-lingering, with a surviving repertoire of sixty pieces. Yaquling township alone has more than sixty bands and over seven hundred musicians, the most active heartland of the tradition.

Yichang silk-and-bamboo is a precious heirloom of folk instrumental music in the Chu region, holding real value for the study of how folk ensembles formed, evolved and served ritual life along the middle Yangtze, and is hailed as a cultural emblem of Yiling District.