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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.
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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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