A Brief Account of Dongba Music
This article examines the role of Dongba music within Dongba culture, the traditional religious-cultural system of the Naxi people. While Dongba culture's history, mythology, religion, philosophy, folklore, and astronomy have attracted scholarly attention, its music has been largely overlooked. The author argues music is inseparable from Dongba practice in three ways: (1) scripture chanting relies on singing to convey emotional and religious meaning; (2) rituals such as wind and dragon worship depend on singing accompanied by bells, drums, and conch-shell horns, plus props, to enhance persuasive and dramatic power; (3) different scriptures are matched with distinct melodies—joyful tunes for auspicious texts, mournful, variable rhythms for narrative ones like "The Origin of Horses." The article also highlights how Dongba priests collected, preserved, and developed Naxi folk music, tracing music's origin to imitation of nature, labor rhythms, emotional language, and primitive shamanistic ritual.
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