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Grand Songs of the Dong Ethnic Minority

Grand songs, known as galao among the locals, are the most representative public chorus of the Dong people, and popular mainly in Liping, Rongjiang, and Congjiang of Guizhou Province, and Sanjiang in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. Grand songs have various types, mainly: the narrative style, mainly about story plots and persona dialogues; the lyric style, mainly about love between the two genders; morality style, mainly about religious and morality expostulations; and vocalist style, mainly showing the beauty of musical melody; There are also etiquette-and-custom, drum-tower, and local opera grand songs; According to different singers, there are grand songs for a male, female, and child's voice. Well-trained choruses perform all of these songs.

Traditionally, a chorus is made up of one family and the formal performing place of grand song is the drum-tower. Usually the host group would invite visiting guests to sing in the antiphonal style. But it should be between groups of different genders, and song groups of the same gender cannot invite each other to sing.
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