Traditional Music

From guqin elegies to Uyghur muqam — a millennial sonic heritage

China's traditional music ICH spans guqin art, Mongolian long song and throat-singing (khoomei), Uyghur muqam, Jiangnan sizhu ensemble, Quanzhou nanyin and Tibetan opera music. Guqin joined the UNESCO list in 2003; nanyin is called a "living fossil of Chinese music"; the muqam are large-scale song cycles shared across the Uyghur oases. Together these traditions — courtly refinement, Buddhist chant, Silk-Road feast music — form a soundscape crossing class, region and ethnicity, kept alive today through master-apprentice oral transmission.

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