Ethnic music awarded at American film festival

Sun Bird Mother, a Zhuang ethnic musical piece presented by southeast Yunnan’s Xichou County, has won the award of Best Original Film Song at the 2018 Universe Multicultural Film Festival (UMFF) in the American city of Los Angeles on April 9, according a recent Chinese report.

40 original musical works from 28 countries completed during the 2018 UMFF, and eight pieces from six countries survived the first round of selection by film and art juries. Besides Sun Bird Mother, A bird tribe -- The Soul of a Dance, another 8-minute film from Yunnan’s Xichou County, was chosen for the second round. A total of 1000 plus films from 43 nations were presented to this year’s festival. 

Sun Bird Mother is originally an ancient myth of the Zhuang ethnic group in Xichou, from which local beliefs and rituals are derived. Named after the Zhuang myth, the awarded Yunnan music is made up of seven songs.

The Zhuang traditional festivals are also related to the old myth, and some have been listed among the Chinese Intangible Cultural Heritages. Of these, the Women's Sun Day, dating back to the primitive matriarchal society, is deemed by anthropologists as a unique cultural phenomena in the Yunnan-Guangxi Zhuang ethnic regions. 

Source: yn.people.com.cn and umfilms.org; trans-editing by He Lin and Wang Shixue