The Memory and Reconstruction of Sound: The Recording Practice of Audio Archives of Tujia Sheba Festival Ritual Music and the Attempt of "Technology and Art" Dual Track System Archives

Abstract

This paper presents the creation and analysis of a high-fidelity audio archive documenting the complete ritual music of the Tujia Sheba Festival, recorded in March 2024 in Guzhang County, China. Facing the critical challenge of cultural erosion and the advanced age of key inheritors, this project constitutes an urgent act of salvage ethnomusicology. The study’s primary subject is 90-year-old national inheritor Xiang Hanguang, the sole individual capable of performing the full suite of chants in the Tujia language. The recording was conducted in a professional studio using 24-bit/192kHz resolution, adhering to international archival standards (IASA-TC03). A key methodological approach was the production of two distinct versions from the same source: a pristine, unprocessed archival master for research, and a second version with 1.5 seconds of added reverberation to simulate the acoustic environment of the actual ritual ground, intended for practical use during community celebrations. The paper argues that this dual-output strategy successfully navigates the core tension in audio archiving between objective preservation and contextualized application. It demonstrates how the studio environment can yield a “reference-grade” document while technically managed enhancements can serve living cultural practices. This project provides an invaluable, authoritative resource for the study of Tujia language and ritual music, establishing a “techno-artistic” model for safeguarding the intangible cultural heritage of non-literate communities.