Chinese song genre that mixed verse and prose
Tanci is a narrative form of song in China that alternates between verse and prose. The literal name "plucking rhymes" refers to the singing of verse portions to a "pipa". A "tanci" is usually seven words long. On some occasions the length is ten words. Some scholars refer to "tanci" as "plucking rhymes," "southern singing narrative," "story-sining," "strum lyrics". The local forms of Tanci encompasses Suzhou Tanci, Yangzhou Tanci, Siming Nanci, Shaoxing Pinghudiao, etc.
"Tanci" consists of both spoken storytelling and sung ballads. Another distinct narrative style is "pinghua", a storytelling art form which is purely spoken. The word "pingtan" is used as a collective term to refer to "tanci" and "pinghua".
History.
Historically "tanci" was a popular art form with women in the lower Yangtze River Valley, specifically the Jiangnan region. It originated as a popular literary genre in the Ming dynasty. In the mid-to-late Qing dynasty it became popular with educated women who wrote and performed the music and who were the genre's audience and reader base.
Women's "tanci" often are about their philosophy of literary creation, the sentiments of the author, and descriptions of seasons. Lingzhen Wang, author of "Personal Matters: Women's Autobiographical Practice in Twentieth-century China", wrote that "some scholars have even suggested that Chinese women consciously seized upon "tanci" to express their gendered experiences and to create a female literary tradition different from the male-dominated genres of novels and stories."
During the Qing dynasty it was not only used for entertainment but also for political and social propaganda. The "Gengzi Guobian Tanci", a "tanci" by Li Baojia (Li Boyuan) written about the Boxer Rebellion, is an example of a political "tanci".
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