The Miao people in Xiangxi, China have competed in singing during feasts and evaluated and criticized the excellence of their singing. This kind of song competition and criticism must be the main element of the mechanism of deepening and upgrading of song expression in their reciprocal singing culture. This study deals with the feast for marriage and birth in central Fenghuang County and discusses their evaluations and criticisms.
In the ‘Song for Blocking the Gate,’ which is preceded the feast, songs were sung by not only professional singers, but also many other groups of singers. Among them, there are some songs that the professional singers and local researchers evaluate as poorly sung. They pointed out the song’s lack of literary embellishment (“too much direct expressions”), many repeated words, inadequate rhyming, and few metaphorical expressions.
Therefore, specific confirmation of these points was made and compared with the songs of bride’s and groom’s professional singers.
As a result, it became clear that the poets used complex rhymes in their songs, that they included a variety of objects in their metaphorical expressions, taking into consideration their own position and the relationship of the other singer’s song, and that they sought to achieve excellence in expression during the singing of their songs. The separation of the songwriter and the singer in the poet’s songwriting may have contributed to the deepening of the expression of the song in terms of securing time for the songwriting.
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