The Parrot And The Myna Birds: A song improvised in the "Guqi" style. Consultant: M17.

This is a song improvised in the GuQi style. There exists a full transcription+annotation+translation. A similar song in the "Alili" style was recorded later on the same day. The recording session was arranged at the instigation of Pr. He Xueguang. Mr. He Xuemin (M17) was hosted full-time at the Naxi Culture Education Centre that he had founded at his own home: a small-scale training centre plus museum. This 纳西文化传习中心 later became an Association: 纳西文化传习协会. At the Education Centre, Mr. He Xuemin took part in training sessions; he also composed texts in Romanized Naxi, read and annotated books in Romanized Naxi published in the 1980s, and read publications in Chinese about Naxi culture. Mr. He Xuemin, a connoisseur of Naxi arts, readily accepted to record some songs, with two friends of his. The recording took place at the home of one of his friends, in a room that had little reverberation thanks to an abundance of rugs and bedding linen. The transcription of M17's documents is less reliable than that of M3 and M4's, because both the investigator and the language consultant were novice. Mr. He Xuemin's native dialect, Huangshan, is close to that of A-Ser (the mother tongue of M3 and M4), but not fully identical. As most of my work in 2002 concerned the A-Ser dialect, I was not able to undertake a study of the Huangshan dialect; I have not recorded other data from this dialect since.