Song King: Tradition, Social Change, and the Contemporary Art of a Northern Shaanxi Folksinger.

摘要

This dissertation explores the life and songs of the "Folksong King of Western China," Wang Xiangrong, looking at how both elements are intricately tied to social changes in China during the last few decades. Building on extensive fieldwork and interviews with Wang and other folksingers from northern Shaanxi province, it shows how a "traditional" art form has interacted with and been affected by economic development, new media forms, government policies, commercialization of art, TV singing contests, and the rise of Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) preservation. At the same time, it gives voice to an individual's interpretation of that tradition (an individual who has been declared one of two "national bearers" of ICH for this tradition), thus personalizing the tradition within its broader social and historical context. By fusing together both performer-centered and tradition-centered approaches to oral literature, the songs and the speeches surrounding them are shown as serving to negotiate relations with real people, imagined characters, and gods from the past, present, and future.