Ancient Shamanic Music in Chinese Musical History: Origins and Sacrificial Functions
Journal of Education Humanities and Social Sciences March 7, 2026 Yuheng Sun
Shamanic music, emerging from Neolithic animism, represents the earliest organized sound in Chinese civilization. It functioned as a psychological technology for inducing trance, a social mechanism for group cohesion, and a cosmological instrument for maintaining universal harmony. This paper traces its trajectory from seventh-millennium-BCE bone flutes through partial institutionalization in Shang and Zhou state sacrifice to marginalization in folk and non-Han traditions. Synthesizing archaeological data, oracle-bone and bronze inscriptions, transmitted literary sources, and comparative evidence from living Manchu, Daur, and Hezhe performances, the analysis shows that features later regarded as quintessentially Chinese—the five-tone scale and music as regulator of qi—originated in shamanic practice long before Confucian systematization.