[Mary Meriam]

Wu Songs

Four lines, four beats per line.
http://www.chinastyle.cn/essential/i...e/wu-songs.htm
http://www.chinese-poems.com/lbe.html

Two samples by Linda Zeiser from her book The Melon-Carts Have Overturned:

The melon-carts have overturned,
ripe, red fruit falls everywhere.
The eaten and uneaten lie,
entwined, somehow, beneath the moon.


My purple robe is getting loose,
my hair grows whiter with the sun.
Our parting takes a heavy toll,
as I wane weary with the moon.


Anyone want to post a Wu Song?

[Jerry Glenn Hartwig]

Mary

I could not get the first link. In the second link, the first example seems to have 5 beats. Your examples are iambic tetrameter quatrains. What distinguisehes them as 'Wu Songs', rather than IT quatrains?

[Mary Meriam]

Hi Jerry
The link did work - maybe it will come back. If it does, you'll see a long explanation of what makes a Wu Song special. Too bad I didn't copy it while it was there. As for the examples, I don't think they're all Wu Songs. Wu Songs are hard to come by, it seems.
Mary

[Michael Cantor]

I think of you, the autumn moon,
the cormorants at Gifu; trapped
within the soppy ring of my
tetrameter, I pitch some Wu.

What Jerry said about the links. Possibly the original Chinese follows a pattern, but the translations in the second link are definitely not tetrameter. I know nothing about Wu poetry, but there's gotta be more to it than greeting card formulaics. The examples appear to feature reflections on an absent lover.



[This message has been edited by Michael Cantor (edited August 05, 2006).]

[Mary Meriam]

Thanks - I was hoping to be enlightened and dissed by you, Cantor

There appears to be progress at the China link. First it said Error (or rather it looked like one of those error pages). Now it says Server can't be found. I'll keep trying to catch it at a good moment. Meanwhile, someone I know is contacting someone she knows who says Li Po wrote Wu Songs. Maybe I can get some of those.
Mary

[This message has been edited by Mary Meriam (edited August 05, 2006).]

[Patricia A. Marsh]

Go to google.com and search for "Wu songs". Then, instead of clicking on the chinastyle.cn link, click on google's "cached" link.

BTW: Would you believe that, after going through the trouble of typing the lon-n-ng URL for that google "cache" link, it won't work here . . . because, somewhere in that URL, there is a ":" followed by a "D" which puts a into the link and, despite disabling the smilies in the post, well . . . [**shrug**]

LOL

All best--
Patricia

[Mary Meriam]

Thanks Patricia! Here's what I found in the cache. I'm still trying to find out where Zeiser got four lines, four beats per line.

Wu Songs refer to folk songs sung in local dialect, including shange (mountain songs), xiaodiao (small tunes), and haozi (work songs), popular in the whole Yangtze River Delta. The beautiful jiangnan area (south of Yangtze River) is the hometown of Wu Songs, while the vast Taihu Lake is known as the art form's birthplace. It is said that during the 13th century BC, at the end of the Shang Dynasty (1600-1100 BC), Emperor Zhou sent his eldest son to found a capital in today's Wuxi of Jiangsu Province and to help develop the area's culture using music.

Amazingly, the tradition of singing Wu Songs has lasted for 3,000 years.

According to its musical form, Wu Songs fall into two types: short and long songs. The short include mountain songs, short tunes, and working songs. The gentle local dialect and sweet tunes allow listeners to relish the songs. Each has a touch of the particular region’s clear and delicate flavor.

In the past, mountain songs prevailed in almost every village of Jiangsu and Zhejiang province s, and local farmers used to refer to them as a good way to get over fatigue and irritations. Of all the mountain songs, those in Jiashan County of Zhejiang Province are the most popular. Even today, people can still sing a few of them.

There is an interesting legend concerning the Jiashan mountain songs.

A long time ago, a young man named Zhang Liang, who was good at mountain songs, came to Jiashan.

As a lover and good singer of mountain songs, Zhang Liang's singing spread wherever he went. A local girl, fascinated by his voice, fell in love with him, and soon, they got married. Poverty stricken, Zhang Liang, with his son, bid farewell to his wife and daughter to purchase waxberries with view to sell them at a higher price.

While rowing the boat, Zhang Liang kept singing all the way, and his smart son, having nothing to do, carved the lyrics all over the boat. After nine years and nine days, Zhang Liang returned home. However, everything had changed in his hometown. Both his wife and daughter failed to recognize him. He sang a love song to a local girl, who turned out to be his daughter. Embarrassed and ashamed, he burned the boat that was carved with lyrics. This is the reason it is said that local farmers of today can't sing a complete mountain song.

Love is the lingering theme of most Wu Songs, different from the theme of xiqu (the West Tune) and the northern rustic folk songs, which mainly center on the hardships experienced by businessmen on their trips or parting sorrows, Wu Songs have always been seen as an exotic flower in the literary history.

The most well known short song is entitled "Ziye Song," said to be written for a woman with the same name during the Jin Dynasty.

Like the flowing water, the short Wu Songs also have ups and downs. For instance, the songs representing the harsh lives of the poor laboring people in feudal times sound low and grave.

The mountain songs are sung at a particular time and on special occasions. Usually, the time duration spreads from the transplant of rice seedlings in spring to the harvest in autumn, and mountain songs are not sung in winter. It is really a toiling experience, plowing or weeding under the scorching sun, but singing may soothe the fatigue and help the farmers refresh themselves.

The long Wu ballads are in fact an enriched re-creation of the short songs. As the local people mainly lived on rice, in a busy farming season, they had to work long hours in the fields. In order to alleviate their fatigue, they often blended a well-plotted story into a mountain song, and sang in the fields. Besides, since wooden boats were the main traffic tool in the river-ridden area, passengers dispelled their loneliness and boredom by turning anecdotes into songs.

[Mary Meriam]

This looks like a Wu Song. Possibly more here: http://cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/Poetry/Li_Po/

The Jewel Stairs' Grievance

Li Po
The jewelled steps are already quite white with dew,
It is so late that the dew soaks my gauze stockings,
And I let down the crystal curtain
And watch the moon through the clear autumn.

(tr. Ezra Pound,

who adds the following
NOTE: Jewel stairs, therefore a palace. Grievance, therefore there is something to complain of. Gauze stockings, therefore a court lady, not a servant who complains. Clear autumn, therefore he has no excuse on account of the weather. Also she has come early, for the dew has not merely whitened the stairs, but has soaked her stockings. The poem is especially prized because she utters no direct reproach.)

[Jerry Glenn Hartwig]

So it's a song sung in a local dialect? Hmmm... can I use Kentuckian, since I don't know how to use a Chinese dialect in English?

I also have difficulty writing the melody down, here *grin*

Thar's a b'ar up in the mountains
done took mah love frum me
cuz she had plum fergotten
that b'ars kin climb a tree...

Well, it's short and has a mountain in it *grin*.

[Jerry Glenn Hartwig]

I do not hesitate to add these critical notes to this book, because it has so many excellent qualities. Undoubtedly, this book and the accompanying CD will be an important source for the study of Wu songs for many years to come. I whole-heartedly recommend it.

- WIM VAN ZANTEN


audio - wu song