Mosuo Song Journey/寻找母亲的歌谣

In mid December, I attended a screening series of Yunnan Villager Film Project on the theme of bio-diversities. The film series was opened by Mosuo filmmaker Erqin’s second documentary” Grandma’s Home Away From Home” which tells a controversial story on the preservation of a Mosuo traditional house.

In Mosuo traditional culture, the most powerful women in the household live in the living where the fireplace is. The fireplace is the center part of the house for daily life and ceremonies. Mosuo people usually call the room Yimi(the grandma’s room). An American artist was interested in purchasing the grandma’s room (the living room) from Mosuo youngman Erche’s family and wanted to bring the house to her project site in Beijing to represent Mosuo culture. Despite the grandma’s disagreement, Erche agreed to sell the room to the artist. The filmmaker Erqing followed Erche’s process of taking apart the grandma’s room, sent it to Beijing and have the room set up in a Beijing art space.

The ending of the film was controversial by showing people were celebrating for the new room built for grandma. Some of the audience felt that the ending confused the message: what did the filmmaker wants tell? Is it good to take apart your traditional house and sell it for a newer house? Erqing said he would consider this feedback for another cut of this film.

The Other Film by the filmmaker Erqing: “What shall we do? Change in Luoshui Village”

It is a collection of interviews on change in Luoshui. The once relatively isolated and impoverished village has undergone tremendous changes in living conditions, ideas and lifestyles. Among these changes, some are positive; others are negative and worthy of concern. The Mosuo people of Luoshui are reflecting upon and discussing these issues, and this film functions as a fire around which the villagers get together and talk openly about the problems they face as a community. The film includes five aspects of their discussions: tourism, morals and virtues, consumerism, marriage and family and traditional language. The film reflects the sincere thoughts of the villagers, opening a window for the outside world to get to know the Luoshui Mosuo better.

More info about Yunnan Villager Film Project:
�Village Biodiversity Films� is a project sponsored by Baima Mountain Culture Research Institute, Yunnan Academy of Social Sciences, together with Shan Shui Conservation Center and The Snowland Great Rivers Environmental Protection Association of Qinghai, Gastodchobo Sacred Mountain Environmental Protection Association, Nyanpo Yuzee Environmental Protection Association. Which lasted from September 2009 to December the same year. Funded by EU-China Biodiversity Programme, 10 community participators from Qinghai Province and Yunnan Province filmed natural and cultural diversities of their homeland. They are representatives from Tibetans, Lisu, Miao(Hmong) and Mosuo community. 8 films were completed, through which people from outside could share with local people their ideas and practices concerning eco-environment knowledge and folk cultures. The project team had also recorded the implementation process, and made it into a short subject, providing a model case for village film study.

This Saturday, I will present �Mosuo Song Journey� to 25 teachers who are teaching about Asia in the US. I hope to learn from the teachers how this documentary may help them teach. I am developing a study guide for teachers to use this documentary in the classroom settings. I Will post my thoughts and progress another time.Presentation info:

Time: 2:30 pm, Nov 1
Location: Library Media Room A, Nazareth College.
The registration is closed now.(Sorry I should have posted earlier. I have been having some problems managing the site). You may try to write to the program, if you are in case you are interested. Here is the full program:

November 1, 2008 – Religious, Geographic, and Ethnic Diversity in China
Geographic and Ethnic Diversity in China – Stephen Vermette, Buffalo State University
Religious Diversity in China -Nevan Fisher and Lili Zhang, Nazareth College
Mosuo Song Journey- A Documentary on an Ethnic Minority – Diedie Weng, Director
Materials for Bringing Chinese Diversity in to Your Classrooms – Terry Noonan, NCTA seminar leader

November 15, 2008- East Asia Today
China: 60 Years After the Revolution- Nevan Fisher, Nazareth College
Family and Gender in Contemporary China and East Asia – Kristin Stapleton, University of Buffalo
Roots of Contemporary Japan’s Economic and Political Crisis – Lawrence Fouraker, St. John Fisher College
Socio-Economic Developments in Contemporary East Asia-Tze-ki Hon, Geneseo SU

If you have any questions about the program, please contact Terry Noonan, NCTA seminar leader, (tcnoonan@frontiernet.net)

Hey!
Culture Unplugged partly based in India has recently launched this online film festival that include a great collection of films of different genres and from all over the world. Most of the time film festivals are too local. If you don’t have the money to fly over and stay, you can’t make it to most of them. So this online film festival format is quite interesting. You may find films more easily on this page.

The organizer found me through youtube. So “Mosuo Song Journey” is part of it.
You can visit my documentary page in the film fest here. You can watch some more clips from my documentary site.

You can vote for the films. If you like, you can vote for me. So it’s like I am promoting my documentary…But then it’s kind of tricky to ask people to vote for friendship not for the quality of the story…:) There are so many interesting pieces on the site.

Anyways, enjoy!

Diedie

Dear all,

As Mother’s Day is coming, I want to share two short video clips of field recording in which Mosuo villagers sing with their love for their mothers in Southwest China.
(You can download the uncompressed versions here.)

Clip 1: Songs for the Mother at Gujia’s Yard

Clip: Songs for the Mother at the Rice Field

I am currently trying to promote the DVD of my documentary “Mosuo Song Journey” to gather money to hold local screenings with a discussion panel on tourism and cultural preservation in Mosuo Villages. If you are interested in buying a copy of the DVD for your mother as a gift, I appreciate your love and support. It’s $15 per copy plus $5 mailing fee. It’s ready for order now. You can visit the dvd section on my documentary website:
http://butterflybutterfly.info/mosuo_song_journey

If possible, I want to collaborate with local cultural and research centers to make the Mosuo local screenings part of a bigger event with different speakers from the community, the government, the research and education field, organizations and funding agencies. I was inspired by the organization Asia Catalyst recently screening my film with a panel on tourism and Chinese ethnic culture. You can read a note from their director on the screening from here:
http://butterflybutterfly.info/mosuo_song_journey/?p=122

If you can, please help me spread the word and the love for the mother in the Mosuo singing. Thank you for your support!

Sincerely,
Diedie

Link to the flyer in bigger size

Meg Davis Thu, Apr 24, 2008 at 8:54 AM
To: Diedie Weng
Dear Diedie,

Just a note to thank you again for allowing us to screen your film at Columbia last night. We had a good crowd of 30-40 people and everyone enjoyed your film. Both our speakers, Prof. Barnett and Khanan Sam Sao, commented on it in their remarks.

I enjoyed watching the film a second time also. There is a lot of food for thought — I especially like the way you allow everyone to speak for themselves without a lot of commentary or interpretation. And about 5 minutes into the film, Prof. Barnett leaned over to me and said, “We’re 5 minutes into a film about Lugu Lake and she hasn’t mentioned sex yet. This is a really great film!”

all the best,

Meg

–
Sara L.M. Davis, Ph.D. (”Meg”)
Executive Director, Asia Catalyst
PO Box 20839
New York, NY 10009
www.asiacatalyst.org
www.songandsilence.com

It was my great honor to have Ms. Nora Yeah, an ethnomusicologist working for the American Folklife Center in the Library of Congress, present at the screening of ?Mosuo Song Journey? in the Mid-Atlantic Chapter of the Society for Ethnomusicology Annual Conference in New York City on March 28, 2008. Out of approximately 100 conference participants, about half came to this screening event. Ms. Yeah kindly forwarded me the commentaries of the ethnomusicologists from the conference. I would like to share Ms. Yeh?s report with you:

?At the end of showing the documentary, the entire audience applauded and many told me how much they enjoyed and appreciated seeing it.

One commented that we should regard both the Mosuo songs and pop songs and any other “modern” performing arts as part of Mosuo culture, not the dichotomy of real and fake music. This is another way of looking at the current situation.

Another viewer said that the playfulness of showing authenticity and fakeness of culture (e.g. the Han girl dressed in Mosuo costume) is well presented and has conveyed the message.

Another viewer asked if the words stating something like “Words at the beginning of songs have no meaning” were actually part of the sung text? I told her that I didn’t think so. So she suggested to put parentheses around these words in the documentary so the audience would know for sure that these are editor’s notes, not texts sung by the singers. In ethnomusicology, these are considered “non-lexico” syllables.

So, congratulations to you for the film you worked so hard to put together. THANKS for giving me the privilege to show it.”

–Nora

(From weekly Art Voice, Buffalo, April 9, 2008)

Some people think of China as a monolithic, homogenous society. Lately, turmoil in Tibet has brought attention to ethnic minorities within the country. Minorities comprise almost 10 percent of China?s population, or about 130 million people. The Mosuo are one such group.

The Mosuo are considered exotic in China. Many myths and misconceptions persist about their matrilineal society, which has existed for more than a thousand years. Their language developed without a system of writing and instead relied on an oral tradition, singing folk songs that spanned generations.

To study the Mosuo, documentarian DieDie Weng (her first name is pronounced DEE-yeah DEE-yeah) accompanied anthropologist Carol Bliss and music professor Lamu Gatusa to Yunnan Province in southwest China. Their first stop was Lugu Lake. There they recorded interviews with the locals and tourists.
Diedie Weng’s Mosuo Song Journey @ Squeaky Wheel

Tourism is a major source of income for the villagers around Lugu Lake. Locals hawk souvenirs and sing campfire songs for the visitors. Each family in the village has one member participate in the evening festivities put on for tourists and the profits are then equally divided.

Many of the tourists are from other parts of China, a measure of the rising affluence of the middle class from coastal urban areas. Increasingly, tourists come from outside China.

Up until the 1980s the Mosuo would entertain themselves with folk songs and dances. Things started to change in the 1990s when traditional songs were replaced by songs sung in Mandarin for guests. Today, the younger generation is more interested in modern pop ditties with playlists that change every year.

Mosuo songs were rural, visual creations. Love songs were sung back and forth between men and women working in the fields, fishing in the lake, or tending the farms. They were sung to ease the loneliness of the mountains and forests. Now the Mosuo are surrounded by tourists.

A common complaint is that the younger generation still sing the songs but with less feeling and understanding of their meanings. The newer songs reflect a shift in composition, too. They have a clear beginning and ending. ?This is a complete structure as would come out of a music school,? Gatusa says.

One episode in the film illustrates the cross-contamination of cultures: Some of the songs the documentarians were studying, believing that they were of traditional vintage because they were sung in the Mosuo language, turned out to originally be Mandarin. It would be akin to believing that fortune cookies were a Chinese concoction because they are served in Chinese restaurants, when they originated in America.

China?s Han majority perceives the Mosuo as carefree, primitive people. The Mosuo are renowned for not having the strictures of marriage, although they may cohabitate. Women choose their partners; should children result from such unions, they are raised with the mothers. The Mosuo pragmatically do not believe in the comingling of material issues with the emotional bonds of love. Love, they believe, is too fragile a thing to go mucking it about with the quandaries of daily survival.

Because of these unorthodox social arrangements, one of the misperceptions promulgated by tourism agencies is that Mosuo women are promiscuous. As a result, a seedier element has sprung up to cater to those who visit Lugu Lake under the mistaken belief that Mosuo women will entertain them.

To find Mosuo less influenced by modernity, the filmmakers journeyed into mountainous areas, accessible only on foot or horse. There they discovered songs less tainted by the outside world, sung with much passion and feeling.

One man sings about his mother, long dead, and the villagers gently tease him: ?You?re getting choked up about your mother even though you have grandchildren.? Lullabies are sung to infants and toddlers. Mothers and daughters sing to one another.

In these remote villages the filmmakers came across a song challenge, people singing across distances in attempts to outdo one another.

There are ballads with romantic overtones, while some are about the bonds between generations. Others have an instructional tone. There are morality tales, songs about respect for one?s elders and virtues such as diligence. All these were once sung and passed down from one generation to the next. The film chronicles how these village rites and their singers are in the process of change.

Mosuo Song Journey will be screened along with Seth Wochensky?s Shoot the Moon, a film about rural Springville, New York. Weng and Wochensky will discuss their documentaries after the screenings.

Friday, April 11, 8pm. Squeaky Wheel?s Cinema at 712 Main Street (884-7172/squeaky.org). $4 members/$6 non-members.

March 28 2008 Mid-Atlantic Chapter of the Society for Ethnomusicology Annual Conference
noon, Columbia University, NYC

April 11 2008 Squeaky Wheel Screening, Buffalo, NY.
8pm, screening room.

April 23 2008 Asia Catalyst Screening, Columbia University, NYC.
7-8:30 Pm, location TBA. Film screening and discussions from hear from a leading Tibet expert and an ethnic Buddhist monk from China?s Yunnan province about the impact of Chinese mass tourism on local ethnic culture.Co-sponsored by Columbia University Asia-Pacific Affairs Council.

I am in D.C. for the screenings of the Mosuo doc. One of the screenings is the Society of Visual Anthropology (SVA) Film Festival. SVA film festival is a special event for the American Association of Anthropology (AAA) year conference. Thousands of anthropologists are gathering together in a huge hotel. It is hard to find anything. But I did run into Tami right before her presentation about the first Mosuo film festival she held in Lugu Lake.

It?s been over three years since we last met one another in Lugu Lake. I started filming my Mosuo documentary when she went for her research trip in the same area. ?Hehe. You inspired me to hold the film festival. You were one of the annoying filmmakers. You walked around the village with your camera asking people all these questions. You pointed the camera to Erche, and he took the camera from you and asked: ?Now tell me how you feel.?? I was a bit embarrassed and laughed. I should admit that I was learning and I am still learning. The making process of Mosuo doc is a great self-education on ethical dilemma in documentary filmmaking. Also I often encountered the local Mosuo children, who were interested in being like me as media makers. I became interested in community media, teaching locals to make documentaries about their own cultures and communities.

Back to Tami?s AAA presentation. Tami had run into so many film crews in Lugu Lake since she started her research in the area. So many filmmakers have made films about Mosuo people, but Mosuo people themselves seldom get a chance to see how they are portrayed in these films. So Tami collaborated with some local people to hold the first Mosuo Film Festival at Lugu Lake in 2006. She showed films mostly made about Mosuo by outside filmmakers in different Mosuo villages and the Mosuo county Yongning. She also some part of the footage shot by two local Mosuo young people, who actually started the Mosuo Museum at Luo Shui Village. Tami intended to provoke the local Mosuo voices on the Mosuo representation in mass media through the discussions after the film screenings.

It was challenging for Tami to collect and select the films for the festival. Some films about Mosuo really exhausted the ?exotic? views on the Mosuo walking marriage culture. Tami mentioned it was difficult to decide what films to be shown especially to what degree they should show the films that sexualize Mosuo culture. They ended up avoiding most of the films about Mosuo with sexual contents. Tami reflected that, if she did it again, she would choose to show those films with a note telling that the films may contain sexual content. So the Mosuo people can choose whether they want to watch them or not.

The Mosuo film festival traveled among different tourist villages and Youngning Township. In the tourist villages, local people often left after they watched the films. When the film festival did their event in Yongning township, the room was packed. Because people went there only to see the films. They didn’t have many other options for entertainment. The film festival generated good discussions on how to improve the education of Mosuo traditional culture for the younger generation. After Tami?s presentation, one audience suggested that it might be useful to try alternative way to show films for local discussions rather than a film festival. I think it is an interesting idea. I remember some Mosuo friends used to mention that Mosuo has a ?shy? culture. For example, brothers and sisters don?t talk about romantic relationship in front of one another or their elders at home. It must be uneasy to discuss how Mosuo culture has been sexualized in the films in the public film festival then.

Tami and her local Mosuo collaborators also shot some footage about the Mosuo film festival. I look forward to seeing the final film. Well, this is only what I can remember for now. Tami is in the process of writing about her experience of holding the first Mosuo film festival.