Telling-and-Singing

The performing art known as jiangchang 講唱 (telling-and-singing) combines various musical and performative elements, including tunes, unaccompanied songs, acting, and story-telling, with its defining feature being the integration of both spoken and sung components. Thanks to the discovery and collation of Dunhuang manuscripts, studies on telling-and-singing during the Sui, Tang, and Five Dynasties, along with its associated literary tradition, have gained access to two invaluable sources. First, popular literary works preserved in Dunhuang manuscripts, serving as the textual foundation for telling-and-singing performances. These texts are categorized under names such as ciwen 詞文 (libretto scripts), fu 賦 (rhapsodies), hua 話 (stories), bian 變 (transformation texts), yuanqi 緣起 (origin tales), jiangjing wen 講經文 (sutra-preaching texts), and yazuo wen 押座文 (seat-settling texts). Second, tune lyrics found in Dunhuang manuscripts, which may be either Buddhist or secular in nature. From the perspective of performative arts, even within prose-based story scripts, traces of musical elements can be discerned. Likewise, in tune lyrics intended for preaching or story-telling, remnants of interspersed spoken passages remain evident. These characteristics allow them to be reasonably classified under the broader category of telling-and-singing art. The predominance of Buddhist content in these materials can be attributed to two key factors: first, the Dunhuang Library Cave’s function as a repository of Buddhist texts, and second, the large-scale adoption of various folk arts in Buddhist preaching. In order to present a comprehensive picture of telling-and-singing literature during the Sui, Tang, and Five Dynasties and to establish a clear understanding of the relationship between Buddhist singing and folk singing, both Buddhist and secular texts are examined under the overarching category of telling-and-singing. Regarding the classification of telling-and-singing, this study adopts criteria based on artistic techniques and performance settings rather than conventional literary genre distinctions.