Understanding an Epic Song of the Hmong in Laos From The Perspective of Oral Composition

This article looks at an epic song performed by Hmong in Laos from a perspective of oral composition by analyzing a wedding song Leuangtengdong. Through detailed musical and textual transcription, several compositional devices are identified and discussed. My study explores oral composition of the s...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Asian-European music research journal 2021-06, Vol.7, p.77-90
Main Author: [张寻], Zhang Xun
Format: Article
Language:English
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:This article looks at an epic song performed by Hmong in Laos from a perspective of oral composition by analyzing a wedding song Leuangtengdong. Through detailed musical and textual transcription, several compositional devices are identified and discussed. My study explores oral composition of the song focusing on its material and structure. I argue that music plays an important role in its oral composition: material-wise, music functions both as formulaic music-text association/unity and by careful music-text interactions; structure-wise, the song is organized in a multi-layered framework realized by the hierarchical music-text formulas, with music-text ‘theme’ in critical structural positions.
ISSN:2701-2689
2625-378X
DOI:10.30819/aemr.7-6