Ahaba La of the Mosuo in Southwest China: Performance, Representation, and Meaning
This article examines Ahabala, the folk singing and dance music of the Mosuo, a small ethnic group in Southwest China known for their matrilineal family system and the noncontractual, nonexclusive "sese" visiting sexual relationship. Called by the Mosuo their "primary tune" and an expression "fused into their blood and bones," Ahabala was frequently classified and functionally analyzed in Chinese scholarship during the 1980s–90s, but has received little ethnomusicological attention regarding its role in contemporary Mosuo life. Drawing on three fieldwork trips to Yongning township, Yunnan, the author—influenced by 1990s Western ethnomusicological shifts toward understanding folk song as performance rather than fixed item—analyzes Ahabala within two contexts: performance events (such as coming-of-age ceremony parties, festival singing competitions, and tourist performances) and interview settings. The study argues Ahabala is a fluid, multilayered, context-dependent concept whose meanings are shaped by diverse discourses, reflecting Mosuo social organization, gender consciousness, sexual relations, and ethnic identity, while revealing deeper cultural logic and emotional experience.
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