Baisha xiyue

Baisha xiyue, 'Baisha Fine Music', is the ceremonial suite tradition of the Naxi people of Lijiang in Yunnan, China: a body of song, dance and instrumental movements performed for weddings, funerals and honoured guests. Tradition holds that it arrived in 1253 with the entourage of Kublai Khan and was preserved at Baisha village, the old Naxi capital, by hereditary musicians. A large company of plucked and bowed strings, flutes and percussion plays stately, archaic-sounding movements, some of them sung. It has no independent discography: it survives as one component of the Naxi 'ancient music' revived since the 1980s by the *Dayan Ancient Music Association*.