Cucurbit flute(also can call bottle gourd silk, bottle gourd xiao, hulusi, and the Dai language call it as bilangdao) is the instrument of the Yunnan Province national minority.It exists in Dai, Yi, Achang, Deang national minority.Its tone is soft but fine and smooth, round but plain, and full of expressive power/

More Chinese people like it and will very much like to enjoy it at home and then they will be likely a peaceful environment.You can hear the cucurbit flute not only in the national music but also in the public stage.

Dai national people are versatility,good at singing song and dance.You can hear the music in some festival, like Dragon Boat Festival.Gao Sheng Festival, and Gai Bai(all of them are at the festival in the Dai nation)

Story about Cucurbit flute

Those are two beautiful story about this instrument as follow:

Story One: This instrument’s history is very old and it can be found in the pre-qin period(Chinese history).There is many story about it.According to the legend, Meng Riverside had a flood and had drown many people on one occasion.A brave Dai national boy embraced a big bottle gourd and went through the terrifying waves before he saving his lover.

God was touched by his uncompromising honesty to love and then stick the bamboo into the bottle gourd which he gave the brave boy.So the boy played the bottle gourd and the instrument played a great musical sounds.Suddenly all of the wave and the wind were placid and the flowers opened.The peacocks show its tail hope the couple lovers have their great life.After then, cucurbit flute silk began its play in more area.

Story Two: The other story is that there was a wild beast in the ancient time.The wild beast always went down the hill and had people at dinner.At that time, one hero who called Tai went to the palace of the goddess in Chinese mythology after hard working.The goddess was touched by his honest mood and then gave him a bottle gourd which can beat down the beast.Tai came back to his home and waited for the beast’s coming.

He got bottle gourd and grasped the beast finally.However, the beast still knocked in the bottle gourd.So Tai sticked one bamboo in the bottle gourd.Finally the beast was dead and never revives again.For remaining in Tai’s brave story,people copied and modified bottle gourd with the bamboo to invent the bottle gourd silk.That’s why the instrument exists nowadays.

Sometimes people perfectly like to call the cucurbit flute as the bottle gourd silk(including us).In fact, cucurbit flute a famous song which is played by the cucurbit flute.So most people use the complete song to represent the instrument.

Construction 

The instrument is made of a full of natural bottle gourd, three bamboo tubes and three metallic reeds.All of the bottle gourd is just an air box.The floor of the bottle gourd sticks three different length bamboo tubes.Every part of bamboo has covered a copper or silver reed.The middle tube is the best sturdiest one with seven tone holes and is the main tube.The other two be the same tube with a reed and not tone hole.The three pipe instrument shown above is pitched in C and plays the scale G A B C D E G A, with the drone pipe playing a high E.

After this article in the page cucurbit flute, we will offer more music videos for this instrument.You can enjoy it and see the detail in every video.All of those songs are the Chinese traditional songs with no lyric (Yes,also in Chinese music).Chinese music download is free,Just enjoy it!

Your Thought 

We like to hear your problem.Give me a comment if you want to ask for something or share extra thing with us.