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160genre sandunhuan, current in Shanglin and Mashan countries in Central Guangxi, themiddle voice is the principal one. The four-voice genre huanyue originated as a duosinging style in shamanic rituals; it too may be found in Shanglin and Mashan countries.“• Bi are found mainly in northern and northwestern Guangxi. They are variablein form, and the melodies differ from place to place. Some forms of bi are multi-part. Forexample, in Luocheng there are binongnai, a women’s duo song; and binongniang, amen’s duo – both sung antiphonally. This country also has biyewan, sung at night;bijiang, a narrative form; biyou, a fast bi; biyan, a slow bi; bidan, a bi with regulatedvocables; and bifuyin, bisangye, and bimaiwei¸ among other forms.“• Xi are found in Fusui, Daxin, Ningming, Longzhou, Jingxi, Debao, Napo,Chongzuo, and Tiandeng in Southwest Guangxi. Xi include many melody types, in whichsome are multi-part shan’ge folk songs.“• Liao are also called huanliao, from huan ‘song’ and liao, a vocable – thus thisclass of songs is named for its vocables. Huanliao can be divided into three categories:huanlei (long song), huanding (short song), and huanzhong (medium-length songs). Theyare found mainly in Tiandong and Pingguo in west-central Guangxi.“These multi-part songs include some characterized by harmony and somecharacterized by polyphony. Polyphonic songs are the most common and may useheterophony, imitation, or nonimitative polyphony.“Over the past decade or so, Chinese scholars have collected a wealth of multipartmusic and researched it in depth. The accumulated material proves that the multi-partmusic discussed here is an ancient and indigenous form of folk song, owing nothing tothe multi-part music introduced by Western missionaries in the nineteenth century andthe early twentieth century” (Qia, 2002:489-490).To this amazing variety and richness of traditional polyphony, present amongChinese minorities, we could add the relatively recent (1995) fieldwork discovery of aquite sensational polyphonic tradition, made by a Chinese scholar Zhang Xingrong fromthe Yunnan Art Institute. In the mountain village of Puchun (a village without electricityand roads) of the Hani people, located on the borders of Honghe, Luchum and Yuanyangcounties, they recorded five-part a cappella “Bridal Laments” and eight-part accompanied“Rice Transplanting Songs”, where all the parts are performed by individual singers andsinging is also accompanied by traditional instruments – an end-blown flute labi andthree-stringed plucked lutes lahe.Unfortunately almost no information is available on traditional polyphonicsinging in Tibet, although scholars note the presence of the tradition of table songsperformed in big communal groups, and rich traditions of antiphon singing in Tibetandance-songs, including antiphony between soloist and group, or between the men’s andwomen’s groups (Jizeng, 2002:477, 483). On the other hand, the famous Tibetan monks’chant is in fact a group singing (chanting), and should be considered among the differenttypes of group singing, although it is hardly an ordinary type of vocal polyphony.In his widely known book “Work and the Rhythm” Carl Bucher gives aninteresting example of two-part drone polyphonic singing from Tibet. This is tongskad,traditional work song: