Dongting Fishermen's Songs

Dongting fishermen's songs are the collective name for the folk songs of the lake-country fisherfolk, rooted in the Warring States period and already widespread in the old Yueyang area by the Northern Song, captured in Fan Zhongyan's line from "Yueyang Tower," "the fishermen's songs answer one another, what joy is boundless." It entered the first Hunan provincial ICH list in 2006 and the fourth national ICH list in 2014, the city's only national ICH item in traditional music.

The songs are made and performed orally by the fisherfolk, passed down in groups or families, their inner forms including boat songs, lotus-picking tunes, the re-re-dong and drum tunes, sung in styles from humming onward; the melodies draw on local Dongting ditties, the words often improvised feeling or fishing lore, bright and lively.

Dongting fishermen's songs record in detail the origins, migrations, livelihood, customs and beliefs of the fishing communities, a distillation of lake-country wisdom of real value for studying the Dongting ecology and oral folk tradition.