Tibetan Epic Singer Pad-dgav and his Gestures in Performance-IEL HomePages English

Tibetan Epic Singer Pad-dgav and his Gestures in Performance

Pad-dgav is a talent Tibetan epic singer, recognized in 2003. He was born in 1970, Nagchu County, Tibet. As an illiterate herdsman, he learned epic King Gesar via dreams and spirits (vbab-sgrung), and has mastered 18 branches (rdzong) of the Gesar storytelling repertoire.

The following installment of 22 images is a running series from a performance of Pad-dgav’s epic King Gesar singing and storytelling on May 11, 2004.

As these photos show, IEL epic scholars found diverse gestures in his oral performance this earlier summer. It believes that there will be expanding rooms open for close studying traditional way and individual style of epic performance by focusing on the multiple connections between epic plot, narrative line, melody, intonation, voice, tone, and singer’s gesture that reveal both paralinguistic features (vocal characterizers, voice qualifiers, articulation, emphasis, pitch, pauses and kinesic features (combinations of finger alphabet, body movements, facial expressions).

IEL epic scholars have set a target field study on epic singers’ gesture in situated performance.

Photos by Bamo Qubumo
Oral Traditions Research Center (OTRC)
Institute of Ethnic Literature (IEL)
Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS)


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