Shanglin Six-Four Couplet Zhuang Folk Songs

The Six-Four Couplet folk songs boast a long history and have been prevalent in Shanglin County and its surrounding areas. In the fourth year of the Wude reign of the Tang Dynasty (621 AD), Shanglin County was established and placed under Nanfang Prefecture. Central court and prefectural officials frequently visited this region and brought with them Han culture. The intelligent ancestors of the Zhuang people absorbed the four-six and four-seven sentence patterns from Han fu prose, especially the parallel prose of the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties. They blended these structures with indigenous Zhuang folk songs. Through long-term creation and refinement over centuries, the fixed form of Six-Four Couplet Zhuang folk songs gradually took shape.

This genre was basically finalized during the reigns of Emperor Taizong and Emperor Gaozong of the Tang Dynasty. The Tang stele Ode to the Solid Grand Mansion of Liuhe, erected in the first year of the Yongchun reign (682 AD) and carved beside the Qingshui River in Chengtai Township, Shanglin County, already contains lines of this folk song style: Blessed by rippling waves, harvest comes without ploughing.

Abundant peace endures, equal to the bounty of Southern Hills.

Like flowing waters in a pond…

I pen these brief verses to pour out my sincere feelings.

After that, the Six-Four Couplet folk songs kept evolving and finally settled into today’s fixed rhyme pattern with rhymes alternating between middle and end of lines.

First, they are written in Chinese characters but sung in the Zhuang language. Second, they follow fixed melodies and can be sung freely with new lyrics. Third, each unit follows a strict sentence structure: the first line has four characters and the second has six. These two lines add up to ten characters, regarded as an auspicious perfect number, forming the first half stanza. The second half stanza repeats the four-and-six pattern. Two half stanzas make one full stanza, and the number of stanzas varies according to the content. Fourth, rhymes appear alternately at the middle and end of lines, creating elegant cadence. Rhyme starts on the last character of the first line of the upper half stanza (the fourth character of the four-character line), which rhymes with the fourth character of the six-character line (middle rhyme). The final character of the second line initiates another rhyme, matching the last character of the third line. The fourth character of the third line then rhymes with the fourth character of the fourth line.

Integrating poems, odes and parallel prose, Six-Four Couplet folk songs feature elegant form and rich lingering charm. They rank among the finest treasures of diverse Zhuang folk music. Meanwhile, they represent the cultural infiltration of Central Plains civilization into ethnic minority regions.

Like other folk songs, their themes cover a wide range: joys and hardships of labour and daily life; praises of natural landscapes, rivers and mountains, pastoral scenery and townscapes; sacrificial rituals, wedding celebrations and festive banquets; courtship and friendship between young men and women; and social criticism exposing bad customs and social ills.