The Function of Written Text in Oral Narrative: The Process of Composition in Laoting dagu

CHINOPERL Papers No. 27 (2007)©2007 by the Conference on Chinese Oral and Performing Literature, Inc. THE FUNCTION OF WRITTEN TEXT IN ORAL NARRATIVE: THE PROCESS OF COMPOSITION IN LAOTING DAGU* IGUCHI Junko 井口淳子 (Osaka College of Music, Japan) Laoting dagu 樂亭大鼓 is a genre of quyi 曲藝, one of the performed narrative arts with music in Hebei province. Though in rural China the yiren 藝人 [performer] has in general no written text, I found that the narrative performance is influenced by certain kinds of written texts. In the this genre, three kinds of text exist: 1) the printed and published guci 鼓 詞 [drum tales] and dagushu 大鼓書 [big drum tales] and hand written scripts (jiaoben 腳本) of these and other performed genres, 2) the locally written scripts of dagu 大鼓, and 3) texts written by the performers themselves. These three kinds of text are often integrated, and also the performers select and compose the text of their performance, called gaibian 改編, or composition-in-performance. In this paper I will clarify the process of composition by the performer and the function of the written text. In China today, there are believed to be 341 genres of quyi [performed narrative arts], with or without music. Dagu is a genre of quyi in Northern China; this style of performance is characterized by a gu 鼓 [drum] which the narrator plays while the accompanist plays a stringed instrument. It is popular mostly among people in the rural areas of Hebei province.1 Laoting dagu (or Leting dagu, in standard Chinese pronunciation) is one particular type originating in the Laoting district northeast of Tianjin (See map, Figure 1). The most characteristic feature of the performed narratives in rural areas is that the entertainment is stretched over a very long time and it may require several weeks, or even several months, to 1 Hebei province has twenty-eight genres of quyi, including nine subgenres of dagu. Each dagu has a performance area that is the same as a dialect area and includes several counties. CHINOPERL Papers No. 27 44 Figure 1. Map showing the location of Laoting County, Hebei Province. $GKLKPI .CQVKPI $QJCK)WNH .WCPPCP 6KCPLKP