Chuanjiang Boatmen's Chants

Introduction

Call-and-response work songs of the Chuanjiang boatmen, sung as upstream and downstream chants

Chuanjiang boatmen's chants are call-and-response songs in which a lead caller sings and the crew answers, heard along the Jinsha, the upper Yangtze and tributaries such as the Min, Tuo, Jialing and Wu rivers. In the Ming and Qing periods boats were often kept in time by a steersman's drum, and the chants are said to have arisen around the middle of the Qing. On a winding river full of rapids, they passed on orders, kept the rowers and trackers in step and lifted their spirits. They fall into two broad groups, upstream chants such as the tracking and mast-raising calls and downstream chants for spotting, running and descending the rapids. The chants were heard at the Avignon Festival in 1987 and entered the first national list of intangible cultural heritage in 2006.