A Study On The Music And Dance Of The Sogdians In China From The Northern Dynasty To The Sui Dynasty

From the Northern Dynasty to the Sui Dynasty,the Sogdians in Central Asia who were active on the Silk Road played an important role in the exchanges and trade between China and the West.Some of them settled in China and were buried in China.Through the basic methods of archaeology,combined with various methods such as iconology,this paper makes an all-round comprehensive study on the music and dance of the Sogdians who entered China from the Northern Dynasty to the Sui Dynasty.Sogdian music and dance mainly has three themes: entertaining gods,feasting and traveling.Entertaining God Music and dance is an important part of the daily sacrifice and funeral rituals of Zoroastrianism,which has a large scale.The band is composed of six to sixteen people.It has a bilateral symmetrical layout and has certain religious rituals.Banquet music and dance is one of the daily life scenes of Sogdian settlement.It can be divided into festival,home,reception and field banquet music and dance.Most of them are small Sogdian people’s self-entertainment music and dance,ranging from single person to ten people.The performance forms are diverse and the arrangement and combination are free.In the travel team of Sogdian caravan,there will also be a guard of honor playing music,which constitutes a mode similar to the "banquet + travel" in the tombs of the Northern Dynasty.Among the three music and dance themes mentioned above,entertaining gods and feasting are common,center on feasting and dancing,while travel only occurs only once.The musical instruments in Sogdian music and dance mainly include plucked instruments such as pipa,Five-String Pipa and Vertical konghou,wind instruments such as horizontal flute,bili pipe,Sheng,panpipe,shell and horn,as well as percussion instruments such as waist drum and cymbal.Pipa and Vertical konghou are the basic combination of musical instruments.Sogdian music and dance pay attention to the image of the singer.The dances include huteng dance,huxuan dance,zhezhi dance,and the traditional long sleeve dance in China.After entering China,Sogdian music and dance collided,exchanged and integrated with Chinese music and dance.It was collected and compiled into court pop music in Sui and Tang Dynasties,which contributed to the transformation of Medieval Chinese music and dance style and had an important impact on the development of ancient Chinese music and dance.