Home Coming: A Record of Soundscape and Livelihood of Spring Festival in a Kam Village

Abstract

I would like to give a presentation with talk and image on the diaspora of music and rituals originating from East-Africa across Indian Ocean. At the Spring festival (Chinese New Year)’s Eve, Fengyun finished the work in a zipper factory in Dongguan and goes back to her birthplace. She is from Xiaohuang village of Congjiangxian, Guizhou Province. The village is famous for Kam “big song”. Every woman in this village has her singing troupe from birth to marriage and later. Through singing, they acquire knowledge, search for spouses, and interact with other villages. Their songs overlap with their life, maintaining the relation between individuals of Dong nationality and the community. Since China entered the reform and openness period in the 1980s, due to the requirements of economic development many rural people went to cities to find jobs, forming a special social group - rural migrant workers. In the most recent decade most young adults left Xiaohuang village to work in cities. While separating from their original environment, they encountered huge cultural difference. Nowadays, the Xiaohuang village, where only elderly and children live their ordinary lives, experiences grand gatherings at each Spring Festival. How do they identify? How do they work and live at the crossroad of their traditions and foreign culture? In this film, Feng Yun is taken as the contact of Xiaohuang village and does the audio-visual ethnography during the Spring Festivals of Xiaohuang Village from 2015 to 2017. The film won the first ICTMD Best Film/Video prize in 2020.