Audient iD14 helps to preserve Dong culture
Published: ASIA
CHINA: As traditional Dong songs risk extinction due to an influx of modern Chinese culture coupled with the growing trend of young people leaving the Dong villages of southern China to live and work in big cities, a project has been launched to record and preserve the music. To assist with this recording project, Audient’s iD14 USB audio interface was employed due to its portability and reliability.
Music is highly symbolic to the tribe’s culture, as legend has it that long ago the Dong were unable to sing. When a villager named Xi Ai heard a mountain bird tell of a singing tree in heaven, he decided to go up and steal some songs which grew as fruit on the tree. The songs were taken back to the village and planted in the ground, where they grew into a new singing tree. The Dong people have passed their history, legends and practices down through the medium of song for generations since, with singing playing an integral part in daily life: during meals, while courting and for education.
Furthermore, an orthography has not been widely adopted in Dong culture and although tangible artefacts such as woodwork and architecture have been protected and anthropologists have kept records of some Dong songs in writing, the recording project serves an important role in maintaining the Dong heritage.
The project reportedly brings together local singers and musicians and is supported by international partners, with the two main goals being to record traditional Dong songs in audio form and to make them accessible to the wider world. In traditional form, Dong music can comprise a solo vocal, choral vocals and at times, accompanying instrumentals.
‘We’re mostly working with a single vocal or two-mic vocal/instrument setup,’ explained Noah Krieg, a cultural anthropologist working independently on this project, having recently earned a master's degree in Dong Culture from Hunan University and with a background in pro audio. ‘The iD14 is just right to capture those core elements. The I/O is brilliant, and the preamp quality guarantees a track that won’t need a lot of production.
‘When I moved to a Dong village in Tongdao upon completion of graduate studies in Dong culture at Hunan University, I was met with the beauty of the singing but also the fragility of its continuation,’ Mr Krieg mused.