"Sound and Endless" is a music variety show jointly created by TVB and Mango TV to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Hong Kong's return to the motherland. The program team invited many famous singers from Hong Kong and the mainland, including Lin Zixiang, Ye Qianwen, Li Keqin, Lin Xiaofeng, Yang Qianwei, Li Jian, Mao Buyi, Shan Yichun, Mosaic Band, etc., and the lineup was luxurious.
At present, four episodes have been broadcast, and the Douban score is 7.5. In addition, the mainstream media have also praised and reported on it, it can be said that this is another popular music variety show created by Mango Station after "I Am a Singer" and "Sound into People's Hearts".
I also have a lot of friends around me chasing this variety show, and even triggered a boom in friends listening to old Cantonese songs, including many children after 95.
There are many reasons why Cantonese songs are good, in addition to the Cantonese pronunciation is closer to ancient Chinese, the tone is rich, and the singing is more catchy, there is also a very important point, that is, the theme of cantonese old songs is grand, not limited to the love between men and women. For example, Beyond's "The Earth", the tune is majestic, outlining a picture of family affection returning home at dusk, father and son facing each other, and tears in their eyes.
On those green roads / How much trauma has been experienced /
On that old face / also recorded the wind and frost /
The Day of Autumn Wind and Autumn Rain / When I Was a Teenager /
Forced to say goodbye / Didn't say goodbye /
Looking back at yesterday in front of the door of the foreign country /
Sigh of sighs year after year / But the sunset and sunrise never change /
When I look at my father's smile again at this moment / I am unconsciously speechless /
Let the sunset twilight seep into tears / On those open roads /
How many ideals have been broken / On that high hanging face /
Quoted a few more / The unchanging sun and moon /
The earth of coexistence/appeasement and division in acquaintance/demarcation has been drawn
The famous song "Glory Years" pays tribute to the black leader Mandela, celebrating his lifelong efforts to eliminate racial discrimination in South Africa and to achieve a democratic and free society.
Today there are only remnants of the shell / Greeting the glorious years /
Holding on to freedom in the wind and rain / A lifetime of wandering struggles /
Confidence can change the future / Ask who can do it /
Can you distinguish between skin color boundaries/
May this land / regardless of whether you or I are high or low /
The beauty of the colorful colors flashing out / is because it does not /
Separate each color / year month to turn possession into loss /
Tired eyes with expectation/
In addition, the songs that have been widely acclaimed in recent years, the lyrics are also very well received, such as Li Zongsheng's "The Hill",
Over the hill / Although the head is white /
Chattering / Timeless Sorrow /
See immortality before you want / Just throw yourself away /
Crossing the hill / Only to find no one waiting /
Chattering/never bringing back tenderness
The lyrics of Park Shu's "Ordinary Road" have also aroused a lot of resonance,
I've crossed mountains and the sea/ I've also crossed the sea of people/
Everything I once had/ In the blink of an eye, it's like smoke/
I have been disappointed / lost all directions /
Until seeing/ordinariness is the only answer
According to the survey, about 70% of people pay attention to the lyrics when listening to songs. More than 50% even said that the quality of the lyrics affects how much they like the song. In 2022, Jay Chou's new song "Don't Love Me to Pull Down" in a sentence "Brother training chest muscles for you to lean on" caused the whole network to complain. Many Jie fans call on Fang Wenshan to come out of the mountain, after all, the lyrics he wrote "Sky blue and other smoke and rain / And I am waiting for you / Cooking smoke rises / Across the river" but they often appear in the middle school language test questions.
Over the years, more and more lyricists have turned to other fields, and many music big vs shout: popular songs have declined. At the end of the day, more than 70% of respondents believe that the lyrics of many songs are too vulgar and superficial. More than 60% of people believe that the lyrics of many popular songs at present emphasize love too much and have been divorced from reality.
Chinese pop music originated in the 1920s. At that time, Shanghai had begun to take on the characteristics of a commercial metropolis, and European and American pop music flowed into the mainland through dance halls, movies, radio and other media, and pop music came into being.
Subsequently, it was briefly discontinued in the fifties and sixties. In the 1960s and 1970s, it began to revive and develop rapidly in the 1980s. In fact, coinciding with the reform and opening up, people's minds are further open, the ability to accept new things is enhanced, more and more songs pay more attention to practical problems at the beginning of expressing emotions, coupled with the emergence of karaoke, songs have been more widely disseminated.
The early 1990s was the peak of the development of popular songs and lyrics, and many classical poetry lyrics led the lyrics to the retro direction. However, in the middle and late period, with the excessive commercialization of mass communication networks, the packaging and appearance of singers have become the main criteria. These phenomena have led many music creators to pay less attention to the lyrics and songs themselves, and then a vicious circle, resulting in fewer and fewer pop masterpieces, and the phenomenon of good songs and bad words occurring from time to time. On the other hand, with the strengthening of exchanges with foreign countries, many listeners have also turned to Japanese, Korean, European and American pop songs, which has led to the stagnation of the development of the Chinese pop music scene.
Similar to the ups and downs of popular songs, the development of ancient poetry has generally gone through such a stage.
When modern people talk about writing poetry, their first reaction is that this matter is particularly elegant, not something that the general public can play. In fact, poetry is an ancient popular song that expresses the joys and sorrows of the creator.
The origin of poetry is not literary at all, it is the slogan of work. It is said that the first Chinese poem, called "dàn gē", was about hunting in primitive societies. The whole poem consists of eight words:
Broken bamboo, continued bamboo; flying earth, step by step (ròu, ancient word for meat).
Translated, it means: cut bamboo! Pick up! Pop up! Where to run!
In the Western Zhou Dynasty, the state set up an official institution, the Poetry Collector, which was responsible for collecting folk songs from all over the world and performing them for Zhou Tianzi to help Zhou Tianzi understand the sufferings of the people.
During the Han Dynasty, the imperial court collected folk songs from all over the world through the institution Lefu. The content of the poem has also become more and more abundant, from four words to five words. For example, the famous love poem of the Han Dynasty, "Peacock Flying Southeast".
Peacocks fly southeast, wandering for five miles.
Thirteen can weave, fourteen learn tailoring,
Fifteen bullets, sixteen poetry books.
In the Southern and Northern Dynasties of the Wei and Jin Dynasties, a large number of poets emerged, such as the outstanding representative of Jian'an literature - Sancao (Cao Cao, Cao Pi, Cao Zhi father and son); the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Forest; the originator of pastoral poetry - Tao Yuanming; the originator of landscape poetry - Xie Lingyun...
During this period, seven-character poems slowly developed, and the rhythm of the poems became stronger. Shen Yue, one of the four beautiful men in ancient times, was Shen in the Shen waist and pan sideburns, and also put forward the theory of sound law, which laid the foundation for the formation of Gelu poetry in the Tang Dynasty.
However, similar to the development of popular music, poetry has slowly begun to deviate. Most of the mainstream poets before the Tang Dynasty ate at the court, so the poems they created only focused on the extravagance of court life, or specifically patted the emperor on the back. If this line of thinking continues, poetry will also come to an end.
At this time, under the efforts of a group of outstanding early Tang poets, including, but not limited to, Wang Ji, the four masters of the early Tang Dynasty (Wang Bo, Yang Jiong, Lu Zhaolin, Luo Binwang), Chen Ziang, etc., the atmosphere of poetry has improved again, such as Chen Ziang's ancient famous passage "Dengyouzhou Tai Song" wrote:
The ancients were not seen before, and the comers were not seen after that.
Thinking of heaven and earth, alone but weeping
At this point, poetry reached the Tang Dynasty, not only did not decline, but hit a new record high. Of course, in addition to the accumulation of previous dynasties, there is also an important "East Wind" - the Imperial Examination System of the Tang Dynasty.
The imperial examinations of the Tang Dynasty were divided into many kinds, one of which was called jinshike, which was very difficult and had the greatest impact, and it has always been said that "thirty old Ming classics and fifty young scholars". In other words, the fifty-year-old middle soldiers are all young.
Similar to our college entrance examination language, there is a content of silent writing of ancient poems, so all Chinese can more or less memorize a few ancient poems. One of the contents of the Tang Dynasty Jinshike examination was poetry and song endowment, and the consequence was that the Tang Dynasty people were all dead to poetry. It is estimated that in Datang, which reader can not write two poems, is not faceless to go out to greet people.
After many generations of accumulating strength, Tang poetry went all the way up to the peak, and a large number of outstanding poets broke out: Li Bai (Shi Xian), Du Fu (Shi Sheng), Wang Wei (Shi Buddha), Bai Juyi (Shi Mo), Meng Jiao (Poetry Prisoner), Li He (Poetry Ghost)...
In addition to this, different genres have emerged. For example, the Biansai poetry school, which specializes in the scenery and military life of the biansai, represents poets: Wang Han, Li Xin, Wang Zhizhuo, Gao Shi, Wang Changling, Cen Shan, etc.; the Shanshui Pastoral School, which travels every day and adds farmhouses, representing poets: Meng Haoran, Wang Wei...
Of course, even in the Tang Dynasty, poetry deviated many times. For example, the Tang Dynasty people continued the style of the previous dynasty, advocating the Piao Wen, that is, paying great attention to duality, harmony of sound rhythm, paying attention to beautiful words, and using allusions. The famous "Preface to the Tengwang Pavilion" is a piece of text.
In the face of this trend, Han Yu and Liu Zongyuan and others vigorously advocated the ancient literature movement and emphasized that writing should be said and had something, which formed a great influence at that time. Later generations of Su Shi called for him madly, and commented on Han Yu as: "The decline of the eight generations of Wenqi, and the weakness of the Daoji world; loyal to the anger of the lord, and bravely won the marshal of the three armies."
In addition, there are Yuan Shu and Bai Juyi, the good brother CP "Yuan Bai", who vigorously advocated the "Xinlefu Movement". With the development of poetry, its role in reflecting the lives of ordinary people has gradually become smaller, and it has become more of a work for literati to express their emotions. Yuanbai CP believes that articles should be written for the times and poetry should be created for reality.
Look at this criticism, like the current situation of the pop music scene? It is not difficult to understand why the pop music scene has been declining over the years. It is expected that the pop music scene can also produce some, similar to the Han Liu combination, or "Yuan Bai" CP such a character to break the game, or like the literati of the Song Dynasty, do not play poetry, change to play words, and play the art form of words to the extreme. Of course, "Song Ci" is also another form of ancient poetry, and its development path has a lot in common with "Tang poetry", which will be discussed later.
Why are cantonese old songs so charming, and what do you think? Like or forward, support me! You are also welcome to leave a message and express your thoughts.
Resources:
- Chinese Research on the Development Of Lyrics of Popular Songs, 2014, Li Li
- Half Hour Comics Tang Shi 1, 2, Lu Lei Half Hour Comics Team, 2019