Wen 丨 Hedgehog Commune, author 丨 Xiaohan, editor 丨 garden director
Likes to follow controversy.
The Peking Opera song "Exploring the Window" sung by five girls from the Shanghai Theater Academy surrounded their ears, and they looked back with a smile and a smile on their clothes.
They are college students of the Shanghai Theater Academy, named Bian Jingting, Yang Huai, Cheng Xuechen, Crested Ibis, and Zhu Jiayin. They are called "416 girl group on the opera", and after the cover of "Exploring the Window" and "a song became famous", songs such as "Wanjiang" and "Qingsi" were also covered out of the circle.
Professional singing, ancient style appearance and appropriate gestures in place let netizens can't help but like, in the Internet set off a trend of Peking Opera cavity, the topic "post-00 drama girls sing pop songs in Peking Opera cavity", "Peking Opera Sister sings again to explore the window" and "416 window exploration" once appeared on the hot list.
These five girls are called "beautiful drama cover songs", which makes young people sigh that "it turns out that listening to plays can also be addictive". Questions also arise, "Shangju 416 Women's Group" uses professional Peking Opera to cover modern songs, is it not to regard traditional culture as a traffic tool?
possibility
When the dormitory becomes a stage and five people sing songs together in the same frame, they will use subtitles to mark the characters such as Lao Dan and Qing Yi.
Unlike traditional opera dialogue and monologue performances, they are one lyric per person and then sing in chorus with their own singing methods.
In the chorus, you can still feel the characteristics of different professions of singing, and the differences between professions are also embodied in the five girls, forming a distinct personal temperament. Lao Dan Bian Jingting's voice is thick and loud, and it is matched with ancient rhymes and songs, which not only breaks the established rules of the girl group, but also adds a bit of heroism to the beauty of the ancient style; Cheng Pai Qingyi Yang Huai and Mei Pai Qingyi Zhu Jiayin interpret two Qingyi singing methods with sighs and sweetness respectively; Hua Dan Cheng Xuechen and Crested Ibis's voices are sensitive and well-behaved, and the high-pitched part is extremely penetrating.
What is the level of performance of the "416 Girl Group"?
In the uneven circle of drama songs, the emergence of the "416 women's group on the opera" is called "dimensionality reduction strike".
In the professional opera circle, although they are only newly graduated, shallow performers, the professional skills are very solid, even in the short video cover song, there is no lack of action beauty of the opera standing, steps, fingers, with "happy eyebrow dance, like laughing haha" expression and eyes to give the song agility. "Pear Garden Stroll" is a Jiangsu Radio and Television opera program, and its official Douyin account "Liu Lu |Liyuan Stroll" released and reprinted the video of the "416 Women's Group on the Opera" singing "Exploring the Window", which received nearly 400,000 likes. People's Daily, China Youth Daily, and the Central Committee of the Communist Youth League issued articles praising him. Professionalism also allows the "416 Girl Group" to explore a variety of possibilities for integrating drama and songs.
In September 2019, Bian Jingting began to release videos to share songs. Now, the "416 Women's Group" has settled in a number of network platforms such as Douyin, b station, Kuaishou, Xiaohongshu, etc., skillfully using disguises and hot topics in the Internet content ecology to put on "new clothes" for the dissemination of professional drama. When Bian Jingting and Yang Huai sang "Under the Sea", the first half was divided into Lao Dan opera, Qingyi opera and popular singing; the second half was a two-channel form of low voice and high voice, and Bian Jingting and Yang Huai used pop and drama at the same time, which was called "Left Ear Sea General, Right Ear Sea Dragon Girl" by netizens.
"Shangju 416 Girl Group" also uses the form of "drama + cross-dressing" to burn a number of national style songs. The five girls wear cheongsam, Hanfu, and cosplay two-dimensional image, headdress, clothing, makeup are exquisite in place, integrating Chinese style, ancient style, two-dimensional and other current young people's favorite culture.
Doubts
This video of burning the national style song has made the "416 girl group on the drama" into a public opinion storm, and it has been questioned that it has signed a packaging company and is about to achieve commercialization.
In the spread of traditional culture, the word commercialization seems to mean that it is about to go downhill and will "change taste".
Especially in the form of a women's group, the "416 women's group" has long been put on "colored glasses" and set the commercialization as its development trajectory. In this regard, Bian Jingting responded in the comment area: "What we can guarantee is that there is no signing of any packaging company, this video is also an experimental attempt, five people or those five people." In fact, this kind of doubt has a long history, from the popularity of singer Xiao Panpan to the circle of "416 girl group on the play", traffic monetization, packaging commercialization and other words that are inseparable from short videos provoke people's nerves. In Xiao Panpan's cover song, there is no body action of the opera performance, the single smile expression is not related to the meaning of the words, and the singing method is far from the real drama.
Like other songs, "Female Pony" is placed in Xiao Panpan's inherent cover singing template, and after the inherent singing method and expression processing, it is put on the shelves to obtain traffic, but it does not show the brave and intelligent image of the protagonist Feng Suzhen. Also in September 2021, Bian Jingting and Yang Huai of the "416 Women's Troupe" released a video singing "Female Horse", and said that their major was Peking Opera, singing Huangmei Opera was an attempt, and they were seriously learning from the teacher.
Although Bian Jingting and Yang Wei have professional singing skills, the Charm of Peking Opera revealed in the performance is still complained about by netizens. Peking Opera and Huangmei Opera are both opera genres, but they have different forms of artistic expression.
Peking opera is distributed in Beijing as the center, and it is best to be known for "martial arts singing", Huqin is the main instrument of the wenchang, and the wuchang is mainly drum board. Unlike the prairie-flavored huqin, the main accompaniment instrument of Huangmei opera is the soprano-like gaohu, which is euphemistic and fresh, and the pronunciation is accompanied by local dialect characteristics. There are also differences in the representative repertoire of the two types of dramas, "Farewell to the Overlord" of Peking Opera and "Tianxian Matching" of Huangmei Opera, which have differences in character characteristics, storylines, and performance emotions.
In the professional study of Peking Opera, Bian Jingting and Yang Huai's body and eye techniques have formed a standardized expression, and it is difficult to achieve no traces in the cover of Huangmei opera. At the same time, other ancient style songs sung by the "416 Women's Group of Shangju" have also encountered doubts about tampering with Peking Opera and using short videos to destroy Opera. In response to this, Bian Jingting responded: "The video is not opera, it is a drama cavity, the opera cavity is the song form of the ancient wind song added to the opera elements, we use the elements and tone of the opera to sing, hoping to use a more professional opera singing method to sing the opera cavity." ”
The video title of "Shangju 416 Girl Group" will almost always emphasize that it is a drama song, not a drama. For a time, the distinction between opera and drama became the "knowledge point" in the short video. In media reports, Wang Lili, an independent self-media person and a master of musicology at the Central Conservatory of Music, pointed out that the "416 Women's Group of Shangju" sang opera songs, and drama songs appeared a long time ago, such as "New Noble Concubine Drunk". "Peking Opera Rhyme Songs" can more appropriately summarize this kind of performance, since it does not belong to the art of Peking Opera, then the insult of "destroying Peking Opera" cannot be talked about.
A professional teacher of opera who has been teaching for many years told the Hedgehog Commune that the singing skills of the "416 Women's Troupe of Shangxi Opera" are professional, and the singing voice is only shown in the video, but xiqu is a comprehensive art, and it is inappropriate to evaluate it by the standard of opera, and their cover songs do not bring bad values, but let the public understand the charm of opera tone.
At any time the popularity of ancient style songs, the drama cavity has become an auxiliary artifact for musicians to produce popular songs and Internet celebrities to break through the homogeneous content: the pronunciation of pinching the nose, the lyrics of "five words and sentences" and "seven words and poems", playing the label of ancient wind and drama, and pushing it to the market, and then it is "sitting and collecting traffic". The cavity under the process manufacturing ignores the "word positive", and the power point focuses on the euphemism of the "cavity", which has a certain gap with the "word positive cavity circle" of professional opera.
The so-called "word positive" is that the lips, teeth, tongue and throat need to be used flexibly when biting the word, and the head, abdomen and tail of the word need to be clearly sent, and combined to form a complete word sound. But the abuse of the opera does not negate the feasibility of combining the opera with modern music. In 1982, "Husband and Wife Both Return Home", which entered the public eye, combined Huangmei opera with modern music. Murong Xiaoxiao's popular music "Huangmei Opera", on the basis of retaining the tone of Huangmei Opera "Female Horse", added modern lyrics and popular music singing methods.
Evolution and change
The extension of opera to the medium of short videos also means a change in the way of storytelling. In modern times, the unique content form of traditional opera has undergone an evolution from word of mouth to film, to radio and television, to digital media, and then to today's short videos and live broadcasts.
In the past, the narratives of stages, TV series, movies and other forms clarified the relationship between the characters and the timeline of story development, and there was a performance space to show the characteristics of the main and secondary characters. In the era of short videos, the classic fragments in opera have been disseminated, but the causes and consequences of dramatic conflicts have been gradually ignored; elements such as singing voice, body movements, costumes and makeup have been stripped from the opera as a whole, and integrated with the ecological integration of short video content.
The form of communication has also become more fragmented and fragmented from the overall narrative. In the short video, traditional opera art is subdivided into performance daily life, opera history, opera teaching and other content, and a variety of opera content blossoms in many ways.
According to the "2020 Kuaishou Intangible Cultural Heritage Ecological Report", in the intangible cultural heritage drama, the number of authors and audiences of Peking Opera short videos is the largest, the number of live broadcast anchors in Qin Cavity is the largest, the per capita live broadcast time of Yue Tun is the longest, the preference of post-00s is concentrated in Kunqu short videos, and the post-60s prefer Qinlu. As can be seen from the video of "Young Actor of Yu Opera, Liu Yang", since 2017, he has been recording performance clips in Kuaishou, and there was only one audience under the stage in February 2019, and by the rainy day in August 2020, the audience was full of people watching the play with umbrellas.
There is also "Sichuan Opera Boy Huahua", which records the daily learning of father and son, as well as "Tangshan Yuejie", a professional actor of Tangshan Commentary Theater, and "Huangmei Opera Perfect 619", a folk grassroots Huangmei opera actor, all of which extend the wonderful offline stage to online videos.
Before becoming popular, the "416 Women's Group on drama" opened a personal short video account for releasing cover songs, students' daily life and opera-related knowledge.
Bian Jingting defines her identity as a repeated jump between a Peking Opera actor and a music UP master. The video after the "group" adds the role cooperation and other elements of the opera to form a ritualized expression - a metaphor for the "sacred ceremony" of professional opera, realizing the summoning and aggregation of enthusiasts. After becoming popular, the "Shangju 416 Girl Group" extended the narrative method to a more professional "stage": launched the original song "Beauty Play", launched the Sword Net 3 New Year theme song "Song from All Over the World", and appeared on the New Year's Eve stage in 2022. The lyrics of the original songs correspond to the classic repertoire of Peking Opera, stimulating young people's interest in the traditional repertoire of Peking Opera.
For example, the opera people from the "416 Women's Troupe" class have always received public attention for their commercialization, and once they appear too much in the online world, they will raise questions about the monetization of traffic.
However, in the Internet era, after the representative characters gain popularity, the opera symbols on their bodies will also follow the circle, and there is an opportunity to break through the small-scale dissemination and attract more people to pay attention to offline performances, online audio and video. According to the data of the "China Statistical Yearbook 2020", in 2019, the performance income of art performance groups was 260 million yuan in Peking Opera and Kunqu opera, and 3.74 billion yuan in local opera. The national film box office revenue in that year was 64.266 billion yuan, which was 16 times the total revenue of various opera performances. The income of opera performances is like a stone thrown into the sea of the Internet, which can only stir up general ripples.
In the short video, the "Shangju 416 Women's Group" is a musician with great attention in the hot list; but outside the online world, they are members of the xiqu performing arts group, and the public's attention should focus on their efforts and achievements in practicing basic skills, performing on stage, and disseminating opera. In the disenchanted network environment, the "Shangju 416 Women's Group" innovates the integration form of Peking Opera elements and the Internet, produces original works, and extends its influence from the network to the offline stage, so as to effectively break the voice of doubt and obtain the transformation from popularity to long red.