Yishan Eagle Band: Happy Yi Year MV

▌Source: Tencent Video

Traditional Yi sacrifices and celebratory festivals. "Kus" is generally selected in the 10th month of the lunar calendar, the season when the harvest is completed. The Yi year is 3 days. After the end of the 3-day Year, the Yi people will carry large pieces of pork on their shoulders (generally divided into three, five, seven pieces), wine, sugar, mille-feuille cakes, fried noodles, eggs and so on to the father-in-law's and mother-in-law's home to visit the New Year, and the Yi people are immersed in the joy of the New Year throughout October. The Year of the Yi people is a traditional festival of the Yi people and is a characteristic Yi culture.

There is no fixed or unified time for the Yi Year in various regions, and most of them are held around the middle of November in late autumn and early winter. The specific New Year's time needs to be determined by local elders who are familiar with the astronomical calendar and are highly respected. The earliest must not be earlier than the October of the new calendar, and no later than the end of January of the following new calendar, in short, the Year of the Yi must be celebrated before the Spring Festival of the Han Nationality.

The Yi people have originated from the sacrifice activities of the ancestors of the Ancient Yi people. The earliest record of the year of the Yi in Han literature is the Tang Dynasty. During the Nanzhao period, the "Star Hui Festival" had "no sense of twilight, feel the polar star hui festival." Yuan Chang has the same heart, and his descendants can be yiyi". The Five Dynasties of the Yuxi Chronicle also records: "Nanzhao celebrates the festival with the stars on December 16. ”

The yi annual festival cycle is three days, but before the official New Year, the ceremony of paying homage to ancestral spirits and inviting ancestors to return home for the New Year begins. This ceremony is called "Nine Dragons", due to the difference in transliteration, some of them are written as "Jue Long Ji", "Jiong Loki", "Jue Loki", etc., and some people translate it as "New Year Sacrifice" or "Ancestor Welcoming Ceremony". As the ancestral ceremony held on the day before the official New Year, the "Kowloon Kiku" is presided over by male parents, and the participants are all members of the family, usually held in the evening. Its core content is to welcome the ancestors and children and grandchildren together, express the filial piety of the descendants, and pray for the blessings of the ancestors to celebrate a happy and peaceful Yi New Year Festival. The Yi people believe in the animism of all things, and the family worships the ancestral spirit card "Madu". At that time, every household dusts off the dirt, puts on new clothes, gathers at the fire pit, and the host holds chicken, pork and wine and other sacrifices to recite the sacrifice to the "Madu", and then the sacrifice is dedicated to the ancestral spirit. The content of the sacrifices varies from place to place to place and from house to house, with some slaughtering pigs, some killing chickens, and some using tofu, bacon and other sacrifices. The Yi believe that if their ancestors were many generations of craftsmen, heroes, and bimos, they would become protectors and blessed people. If these gods are displeased, they will also be embarrassed for their families. Therefore, during the New Year Festival ceremony, it is also necessary to return the items they have used in time to their places, place them on the home offerings, and enjoy the sacrifice together.

On the morning of the festival, young people fired guns and set off cannons; women sang auspicious songs, scooped sticks, and made bitter buckwheat buns; after everyone ate fin and bitter buckwheat buns, they cleaned the courtyards and houses, slaughtered pigs and sheep, prepared lump meat and other food, and "welcomed" the ancestors home for the festival. After the meal, middle-aged men flocked to each house to celebrate the New Year. Every time I arrived at a house, I roared a few times, which meant telling the owner that the people who visited the door had arrived. Entering the courtyard, everyone roared a few times, and then entered the master's room, the master wanted to take out the wine to entertain everyone, after drinking, the host took out the liquor, and everyone roared happily to express their gratitude. If the master brings out a good wine, people will cry out and praise the master's generosity. Women stay at home to entertain visiting relatives, friends and guests.

During the Festival, the young man wears a black cardigan with a papal cloth over his head, a hero knot, and yellow or red ear beads on his right ear. The girls wore cardigans, long pleated skirts, multi-layered colored cloths, and square paws on the head or the top of the head. Everyone gathered together, accompanied by the harmonica, the moon organ, the huqin and the reed sheng, swinging the swing, turning the "Mo'er Qiu" (a pillar about fifty centimeters in diameter and about one meter high on the ground, with a smaller top. Then take a crossbar that is as large as a wooden column and about six meters long, drill a round hole in the middle, and place the crossbar on the top of the wooden column. At the top of the crossbar, one or two people sit on the ground, pedal to the ground with their feet, and use the pedaling force to rotate the crossbar. People borrow the moment they bounce up when they step on the ground, and do actions such as rolling, rolling, riding poles, etc., crouching bucket (Yi called Wabuji), which means fighting. Those who participate in the competition can only crouch, their palms folded in front of their chests, like a rooster with their heads held high, and the two collide hard, whose arm lands first, who loses). At the same time, horse racing, archery, wrestling and other activities are also held on the flat slopes of the village. The Yi people, who are tens of miles away, help the elderly and their children to come and watch.

The Year of the Yi people is a living witness to the ancient civilization and ancestor worship of the Yi people, which shows the respect of the Yi people for their ancestors. The ideological concepts of abundant grain, prosperous six animals, peace for people, respect for the elderly and love for children, joy and peace are fully reflected in the festival. The rich and complex folk customs of the Yi year reflect many cultural contents such as the history and culture of the Yi people, economic life, human ethics norms, customs and etiquette, clothing and folklore, aesthetic tastes, taboo matters and so on. Through these simple and vivid life scenes and humanistic information, which have been inherited from ancient times, the trajectory of the economic and social development and cultural and historical changes of the Yi people can be explored, which is of great value for the study of humanities such as religion, anthropology, folklore, and sociology.