Taoist Ritual Music

Taoist ritual music is the chant and instrumental music of Taoist liturgy in China, performed by ordained priests to structure rites of offering, repentance, salvation of the dead and cosmic renewal. Its core is the faqi percussion battery of great drum, bells, qing stone or metal bowls and the muyu wooden fish, which punctuates and paces antiphonal chanting by the cantor and congregation of priests. Melodies are drawn from regional tune families shared with local folk and theatrical music, so that Wudang, Suzhou, Shanghai and Xi'an traditions differ in colour while serving the same ritual grammar of the Zhengyi and Quanzhen schools.