【Go to the new era and new world・ Guard folk songs】
Spring solstice blossom day Folk songs are just in time
——A dreamer who innovates and explores on the road of folk song development
Guangming Daily reporter Peng Jinghui Li Danyang
Under the lights, on the stage, Humai went from the singer's throat to the listener's eardrum, and the sound was like the top of the firmament, like the bottom of the Han Sea, like the roar of a horse. The post-90s folk singer Proud Riqi opened his voice and brought people to the grasslands of Inner Mongolia, and his thoughts returned to a small stage more than twenty years ago: at a family gathering, the shy 5-year-old boy stood in front of everyone and plucked up enough courage to sing a folk song. In the warm applause, the boy felt the value of his voice for the first time, and quietly planted the folk song dream "like a small sapling in his heart".
This dream boarded the train of years and came to the "big stage" - Hunan Satellite TV's "Spring Flowers Will Bloom" program. On the same stage, a few meters away from the proud day, another child who dreamed of folk songs lifted the microphone. The high-pitched Uyghur singing voice of the post-90s young singer Mai Mai Ti Jiang Mai Chi Mu collided with the sound of Hu Mai. In contrast to the strong styles, the two voices merge in one song without any violation.
"A small song with a European style, "Olive Tree", let people feel that it is China's grassland pastures and Gobi deserts, and the young people play the taste of Chinese folk songs!" The audience sighed.
In the past few years, a folk song fever has been set off among young people, and a group of folk song youth have continued to explore, trying to combine traditional folk songs and modern music, so that the original ecological state inspiration and academic technical style collide with each other. The creators of the "Spring Flowers Will Bloom" program paid attention to this phenomenon early on, and they concluded: "Young people have made folk songs show a different style, with richer expressions and stronger communication. ”
According to Hu Tingjiang, associate professor of the Composition Department of the China Conservatory of Music, as a representative of the excellent traditional culture of the Chinese nation, an important feature of Chinese folk songs is inheritance, and the innovation of young people conforms to the essence of folk songs and can obtain sustained and long-term vitality.
1. Folk songs have not been lost in their hometown
For decades, with the process of urbanization, people have moved from the countryside to the city. For a long time, folk songs that were mainly "grown" in the soil of agricultural production and pastoral life seemed to have been preserved in their hometowns. In the 1990s, when proud and Mai Mai Tijan Matikasmu were born, popular music had already begun to occupy players and headphones in people's hands, and folk songs gradually faded from the vision of many people.
"I liked it since I was a child, I can't give it up, and I have never changed." In his concise and powerful words, he expressed his different views, "In fact, many young people around me who come to the big city together have never left the folk song complex. ”
In the inner Mongolian steppe where he was born and raised, he was accompanied by folk songs for his various experiences in the world, such as birth, old age, illness and death, marriage and funeral. "Grandparents and fathers can sing, and any mood can be expressed in song, natural, innocent and profound." When he was a teenager, he was determined to take the road of folk songs, and he never doubted whether this life path could be followed.
This self-confidence comes from his understanding of the vitality of folk songs, and also from the real feelings that folk songs bring him - happiness. After coming to the city development, he did not forget the "grassland behind him", the stage, the subway, the street, the place he walked, the background sound of the grassland folk song was always haunting in his mind. Together with many young people, he guarded the desire to pass on folk songs.
His partner, Maimaitijan Matikasmu, "defected" to folk songs for a short time, and even today, he still positions himself as a rock musician, "but folk songs are too glamorous to learn.". In 2011, at a foreign music festival, folk songs from a Chinese band combined with rock and roll songs "ripped off" his heart.
"It turns out music can do that!" Maimaitijan Matikasmu, who has devoted himself to rock and roll, saw that foreign music fans responded with "almost crazy applause" for such songs with strong Chinese overtones. As a result, in his "musical experiment", the fusion of various ethnic music began. While studying, while contacting more and more people, when sorting out the mobile phone address book, he found that colleagues who studied the combination of folk songs and modern music "turned several pages and could not finish it."
In the program "Spring Flowers Will Bloom", the two people also jointly chose the Mongolian folk song "Heaven", one with a Mongolian singing voice, the other with a Uyghur singing voice, expressing a common wish: "Tell all young people who go out, just as folk songs have not been lost in their hometown, our nostalgia will not be lost in urban life." ”
Xinhua News Agency
Photo courtesy of interviewees Ao Riqi (left) and Mai Mai Tijang Mai Ti Kasmu
Courtesy of Gong Shuang interviewee
Photo courtesy of Guo Qu interviewee
2. The same work, the singer gives it a different era imprint
Gong Shuang, a young professional singer, is now studying for a doctoral degree in vocal music at the China Conservatory of Music, and in the past ten years, she has been looking for more ways of Chinese vocal expression and detail processing in singing, "collecting" the biggest "emotional intersection" that can be gathered in a singing method and a song.
"The emotions of each of us are like a drop of water, the emotions of a group of people can gather into a wave, and the emotions of countless people are together, there are rivers, there are rivers, and there are common hearts of Chinese sons and daughters." Born in Hubei and raised on the Yangtze River, Gong Shuang regards her singing as a drop of water in the Yangtze River, and she hopes to cross the river, cross the lake, go farther away, and stir more people's ears; she also hopes that in her singing career, she always understands where she came from and where she went.
"We praise the Yangtze River, you are the source of infinity; we are attached to the Yangtze River, you have the feelings of a mother..." In the songs of Singers such as Yin Xiumei, "Song of the Yangtze River" reaches the chorus part, and it is like a huge wave. Gong Shuang, who grew up in the era of rapid economic and social development, used another way of dealing with choruses - smooth and gentle like a trickle.
"It's like a child lying in her mother's arms, whispering softly to her mother." Gong Shuang said, "We live in a stable and happy age, and the mother river I usually see is like this. Like her perception of the growth of a drop of water, the whole song slowly progresses, the emotion gradually thickens, "the trickle continues to gather", until the end of the emotional eruption, "to the sea". This is the Yangtze River that girls who grew up by the Yangtze River tell with their songs.
Similar attempts, Gong Shuang began a few years ago. "At that time, I sang the theme song of the movie "Shangganling" "My Motherland" in a performance." Gong Shuang recalled that in the past, the chorus part of this song was the rhythm of the march, because it was necessary to show the smoke and fire and the battle scene, so it was high-spirited and passionate.
Gong Shuang adapted it into a lyrical passage and sang it in a "stretching long line" singing style. "The 'beautiful motherland' and 'strong motherland' in the lyrics have long become a reality, and our contemporary young people have entered the new era with a calm and confident attitude." So I want to use songs to express our true feelings about the motherland. Gong Shuang said that in the same work, singers can give it different era imprints.
And such exploration is not easy. In today's fierce collision and blending of cultures in various countries, many young singers like Gong Shuang hope that more people with this idea will participate, think together, and try together, "only in this way can we find more development paths for Chinese vocal music and Chinese folk songs."
3. Respect every note from real life
Young music producer Guo Qu has also recently joined the "folk song family". "There are two emotions for folk songs, one is liking, the other is awe." Having the opportunity to dabble in folk songs and try the fusion of folk song elements with electronic music and popular music, Guo Qu did not hesitate at all.
"Among the young people I came into contact with, there was an aesthetic gap in folk songs." Guo Qu introduced that in some of his works, the elements of songs such as "Jasmine" and "Where the Peach Blossoms Bloom" can awaken the memories of many parents, but some young people are difficult to resonate.
Some scholars also emphasize the same problem, compared with popular songs, the communication channels of folk songs are more limited, and folk songs originally from the folk are gradually "high and low".
"Maybe I can do a little bit of something to solve this problem." Guo Qu soon discovered that the fusion of folk songs with various music was not a process of "packaging", and no listener would pay for the works of "simple grafting". To solve the problem of aesthetic faults and let folk songs be accepted by more young people, it cannot be achieved overnight.
"The biggest difficulty is how to accurately grasp the scale, so that the work not only retains the spiritual core of classical music, but also has the appropriate musical language." Guo Qu sees this as the biggest challenge, he said, "We must have the principle of prudence and restraint, and if we can't do this, don't rush to innovate." ”
In the adaptation of "Ussuri Boat Song", Guo Qu almost completely maintained the musical appearance of the whole song. "In fact, not much has changed in terms of temperament and so on. The original work shows people's free happiness vividly, and there is no need to change the 'painting snake and adding feet'. Guo Qu earnestly practices his principle of "prudence and restraint", and also pays attention to understanding the background of the birth of folk songs and paying attention to collecting style in the field.
Such a view was agreed by Hu Tingjiang, who in his view was not only a melodic presentation, but also a reproduction of life. If young people want to inherit and carry forward folk songs, they must take root in the soil of the folk, go deep into people's lives, and experience, excavate and condense. "The more convenient the internet, the easier it is for us to search for a melody, and the more we have to respect every note from real life." Hu Tingjiang said.
"Don't be deliberate, be spontaneous." On the stage of "Spring Flowers Will Bloom", Guo Qu was proud of a peaceful and warm trumpet sound in the song "Listen to Mother Talk About the Past". Guo Qu said: "There is no specially formulated mood, no specially preset emotion. Let the note itself communicate with the audience, let it become a stage, let the audience put the real emotions they want. ”
Guangming Daily (2022.04.12. 12th edition)
Source: Guangming Network - Guangming Daily