Notes Of Filial Piety

Keening with lyrics, as an old art. to mourn the passed relatives and friends is part of an old traditional Chinese funeral ceremony. It expressed not only the sorrow and missing to the passed but also the loyalty and filial piety which consists of the core value of Chinese culture. More important, keening with lyrics is an ethnic musical phenomena of China with thousands of years verbally spreading among folks. It varies in tone, lyric content, modal and significance with the society changes. Based on investigation around Ningbo area, the historical origins, the musical modal, the keener and the social function have been studied and presented in this article to recover the essence of keening with lyrics. How the keening with lyrics, as symbol of filial piety, is inherited and maintained up to now can be seen in the text. How the keener has created, continued and influenced the old art, keening with lyrics, can be observed in the text. Also the relation to nature, society and history has been studied and described in the text besides keening itself.