Guo Youzhen – Representative Inheritor of Meige Project in Yao’an County, Chuxiong
Guo Youzhen(郭有珍) was born in Yao’an County, Chuxiong Yi Autonomous Prefecture in 1941. She was a representative Inheritor of Meige Project of in Yunnan.
Life Experience
Guo Youzhen was influenced by national culture since she was a child. She began to learn to sing Meige at the age of 9 and has been in business for more than 50 years. Under the teaching of the old artist and her own continuous efforts, after a long period of singing and accumulation, she can sing the songs of “Old Age Meige”(老年梅葛), “Middle Age Meige”(中年梅葛), “Youth Meige”(青年梅葛) and “Doll Meige”(娃娃梅葛) .
Guo Youzhen has participated in many provincial and state performance. She has also been interviewed, recorded and broadcast on video by domestic and international artists.
In order to carry forward the national folk traditional culture, she also organized a Meige singing team in the local area. She often volunteered to teach youth and students to learn to sing Meige, and contributed to promoting the inheritance and development of the local Yi Ethinc.
Meige Project
It is a ministerial epic of the Yi Ethnic, and a magnificent treasure and typical representative of the minority ethnic culture in Yunnan’s material and cultural heritage.
“Meige” is a transliteration of Yi Ethnic language and it means singing the past, whose content almost reflects the history and culture of the Yi Ethnic, the overall picture of production and life, which is regarded as the “root spectrum” of the Yi Ethnic family and the “encyclopedia” of the Yi Ethnic.
Meige has four parts:Creating the world(创世), Create everything(造物), Marriage(婚恋) and Funeral(丧葬).
Meige not only reflects the world view of the Yi Ethnic in ancient times and the rich imagination of the universe, but also reflects the evolution and development process of the Yi Ethnic production and life.
Chinese Version:
http://www.ynich.cn/view-ml-13110-3005.html
