The three-year "Campaign for Preserving China's Ethnic Folk Songs" was concluded in Beijing on March 16, 2004 during the "Fruits of Chinese Ethnic Folk Song Preservation" press conference.

Launched in December 2000, the campaign, an initiative for "Preserving the Intangible Cultural Heritage of China's Ethnic Minority Groups" began in early 2001. Under the auspices of China's Ministry of Culture and the UNESCO (the United Nation's Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) Office in Beijing, and executed by the Chinese Folk Artists Association, the campaign was hailed as a preliminary yet significant triumph in safeguarding one of the many Chinese ethnic minority folk traditions.

 Good results

Over the past three years, a team of Chinese musicians and folkloric specialists from the Chinese Folk Artists Association and Chinese Academy of Social Sciences have been working arduously in remote ethnic-minority villages in Southwest China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region and Northwest China's Gansu and Qinghai  provinces.

Liu Chunxiang, leader of the research team and vice chairman of the Chinese Folk Artists' Association, said that based on scholarly research and advanced audio-visual documentation, their work has yielded good results, including the transliteration of 385 recorded folk songs, 57 hours of filming, 42 hours of field recordings, transcriptions of complete song lyrics, a full-color brochure for young Chinese readers interested in China's cultural heritage and a 45-minute CD-ROM overview, as well as increased international cooperation and a heightened awareness among the media and general public.

All of the lyrics were printed in Chinese, English and in their original languages, with transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet.

"The initial work has succeeded in presenting living musical traditions as a social act between performers and the audience," said Yasuyuki Aoshima, director of the UNESCO Office in Beijing. "In addition, it serves as an invaluable example for our society in terms of international cooperation and as a source of inspiration for further work."

Page:

1

2

3

4