"I was in bloom in June, and you watched the mountains full of flowers. I use a thousand wildflowers to make you the clothes of the flowers. I want to sing, sing the moon, hang it on the Seven Lotus Lake, I want to be between the flowers and the lake, singing for you the heavens and the earth..." The quiet of the Nu River Grand Canyon makes the sound spread far, and there are still tens of meters away from the Xiaohui Chuanxue Hall, and a song that combines the traditional rhythms of the Nu people and the expression of popular music will enter the ears. In Laomuden Village, Pihe Nu Nationality Township, Fugong County, Nujiang Lisu Autonomous Prefecture, the National Culture Transmission Hall founded by Jiang Xiaochun and his wife ChunLi Xiaohui is well known.
Located in the middle of the village, the two-story building decorated with bamboo is facing the Nu River Grand Canyon, near the naturally formed Longtan Pool, and under the mist in the distance, is the geographically recognizable Crown Mountain. How can there be no good music in such an environment? Influenced by his father, Jiang Xiaochun, who likes music since childhood, has been engaged in ethnic music creation since 2000, and has always had the idea of making Nu culture and Nu music, so he and his wife packed bags around searching for the music of various ethnic groups scattered in the Nu River Grand Canyon, and even looked for clues and inspiration from the ancient genealogy of the Nu people, trying to restore the purest ethnic minority songs.
In 2006, he wrote his first complete Nu song, "Nu Wine Song", which quickly swept the Nu River once it was played and sung, and is still the favorite song of the Nu people. In the face of the phenomenon that the song became popular in different ways, but because the national elements were too grand, the creators were often forgotten, Jiang Xiaochun laughed and said: "My works are sung out of the canyon, no provenance is not important, how much inheritance is left for future generations is the value of our two." ”
In 2015, the couple pulled together Deng Fusheng and Ayim, young people who also like music in the Nu River, to establish a wooden fire orchestra with the combination of traditional and popular music of the Nu and Lisu ethnic groups as the main creative methods, trying to present the classical music of the multi-ethnic integration of the Nu River Basin in a modern way. Since then, the orchestra has quickly become popular, and many representative songs have become film and television soundtracks and have been recognized by the international music market. Completed the cooperation project of the National Arts Fund, performed at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music and cooperated with the Shanghai Meilong Intangible Cultural Heritage Center to hold a special session on "Hearing the Voice of the Nu River", responsible for the soundtrack of the TV version and film version of the documentary "Falling to the Root" and participating in the China Golden Rooster and Hundred Flowers Film Festival as a guest of honor, and even exchanged performances with Grammy music masters to set the stage for the sound of the Nu River to go to the world.
"The national music of the Nu River was created together with our brothers and sisters of all nationalities who lived and lived in the Nu River for generations. Therefore, while our music is recognized by more people in the outside world, more people need to join in, inherit and carry them forward. To this end, in November 2020, the couple opened the Xiaohui Chuanxue Hall in the name of their wife with their old home, hoping to build this corner of the place into a platform for learning, inheriting and displaying the music, dance and musical instruments of various ethnic groups in the canyon.
During the day, taking advantage of the agricultural leisure time, the husband and wife recruit villagers who want to learn traditional folk songs and dances for free. From village cadres to innkeepers, from village task force members to border policemen, the small training hall has become a window for multilingual communication and multi-industry music interaction. In the evening, a show of song and dance was held, and by April 9 this year, the museum had performed 66 performances.
Jiang Xiaochun said: "Songs are the wings of culture, and our music is like growing out of the land, it is inherited. We not only want to teach music and song and dance, but also want to teach our culture, such as the change of The Dabia (traditional Nu instrument) from 3 to 4 strings, which on the surface is an expansion of the melodic range, but in fact it is also closely related to the migration of our Nu people. To this end, the couple created a special "64 generations of nu family tree" in the album "Fury Device", hoping to awaken people's inheritance of the roots of national culture.
Xiaohui, a wife who quietly picks firewood by the fire, is even more excited when talking about cultural inheritance: "We especially like to perform in places like schools, and in the summer we will have inheritance courses for middle school students, hoping to plant the seeds of beautiful music in the hearts of children." Now, the different ethnic groups in the world are not very peaceful, and the things that guns can't dissolve, maybe music can. ”
During the conversation, the students practicing Du Duli (the piccolo of the Nu tribe) on the side will spontaneously sing a chorus from time to time. In this old village on the top of the Biluo Snow Mountain, music has always been a way to write books and express longing for distant places, and when you are tired, you will take out the music to listen to and sing, which is the best embodiment of the optimism of the ethnic minorities in the Nu River and their love of life.
Starting from love songs, wine songs, and tea songs, the creation of Jiang Xiaochun and his wife started from the things of life, and music has long been handy. At the scene of the interview, they sang more than once, and the melodious song was like the smoke of the fire pond, which lasted for a long time in the training hall. I'm very making music, and a song can take two or three years to polish it. Just like attending a party to wear the best clothes, I hope that all the things we make are fine products, so that our culture can better integrate into the Chinese family and blossom into a hundred flowers. ”
"At the beginning of this year, we also received an invitation from the Dubai royal family to perform, but due to the epidemic, the trip was temporarily unable to make the trip. Wherever it is, the concert is a mecca of its own, and when the studio plays and sings, our audience also has the Crown Mountain opposite and the clouds full of mountains. We will always stick with it. ”
Reporter Wu Peizhao