Liu Xinyi
Before telling the story of the "Ancient Wind Circle", I would like to start with the moment when it was ridiculed.
On July 20, 2012, Dong Zhen, dressed in white and wearing a veil, appeared on the stage of "The Voice of China". The singing track is "Sword Like a Dream", according to Dong Zhen's own Weibo afterwards, the track was designated by the program party - "say that my voice can represent martial arts". At the end of the song, no mentor turned around. "Sword Like a Dream" is the opening song of the Taiwanese martial arts TV series "Yitian Slaughtering Dragon" eighteen years ago, and Dong Zhen prefers to describe her usual style with "xianxia style". In any case, the word "archaic" has not yet emerged in between, but this does not mean that the name "archaic" is not recognized, but rather it is closer to a tacit understanding of how "ancient wind music" tries to break the circle and how to break the sword.
However, at the end of the same year, the ancient wind music society "Mo Ming Qimiao" successfully held a concert for the sixth anniversary of its establishment in Beijing Sparrow Washe, and the following year, it successfully held the "Jinling Qinhuai Night" concert in Nanjing. When the society was founded, it took "Gravitation to the Ancient Wind" as its slogan and became the largest ancient wind music team to date.
Ancient Style Music Society "Mo Ming Chess Magic"
Six years ago, "Sheng Tang Night Singing" turned out to be a precursor horn for the subcultural music genre of "ancient wind music". Six years later, "The Age of The Gods" was covered by the Phoenix Legend at the Bilbili New Year's Eve Party, breaking the wall out of the circle again. In a blink of an eye, the "ancient wind music" and the subcultural circle "ancient wind circle" under its leadership have spent more than ten years.
I don't remember the clouds or the lack of clouds, I have seen flowers blooming and flowers thanking
- "The Wind Rises"
The reason why the "ancient wind circle" is mentioned at the beginning of the article (or, talking about its encounter in the mainstream world) is because the birth of "ancient wind music" shakes the foundation of its legitimacy – of course, the premise is that "legitimacy" itself is important - which means that it must be folded, and even many times, in the moments facing the mainstream music production mode.
The original song of "Sheng Tang Night Song" is the episode "Leaving the Soul" of the Taiwanese Cloth Bag Opera "Thunderbolt" series. The lyrics have nothing to do with "Thunderbolt", but the pen turns sharply, depicting the grand scene of the Tang Dynasty imagined by the lyricist. Obviously, Ediq's re-creation of the filler cover was not authorized. More obviously, there are reasons why this act has not been pursued by the copyright owner: the lack of access to online messages, the barriers of geographical location, the reputation that was not loud enough at that time, and the most death-free gold medal nature (perhaps imaginary) reason: it has not been used in any commercial activities.
In the years since, there have been countless songs that have been filled in and covered, mostly from East Asian ACGN interludes or popular songs represented by Cantonese songs. Although in recent years, with the improvement of copyright awareness, the creators of many songs have begun to contact the original songwriters who were filled in and covered in the early years to try to obtain authorization, but the relevant controversy has not yet subsided.
Almost at the same time as the rise of filler covers, original attempts arose at the same time. However, even if they enter the road of originality, or are reluctantly exempt from the label of "non-commercial", ancient music still attracts controversy: creators and listeners strive to "interpret the emotions of the ancients and express the inner world of the ancients with lyrics", and make extensive use of classical imagery and rhetoric in their creations. However, the widespread appropriation of pop songs or extraterritorial ACGN works inevitably makes this kind of retro experiment anonymous — or at least not legitimate.
On the other hand, "rhetoric" has also become a common criticism of ancient music, especially lyrics. In 2018, New Weekly published an article titled "Yes, these ancient style lyrics are made up"[1], which was subsequently reprinted by mainstream media public accounts such as People's Daily and China News Weekly.
In fact, the controversy faced by ancient music is precisely in a sense to explain its deep "fandom" nature, so that many years later, looking back at the criticism and self-defense of that year, I feel that it is like an inexplicable surprise from friendly people.
The term "fandom" is now commonly defined as "a secondary creation based on an already formed text (usually a pop culture text) that borrows from the original text's existing characters, character relationships, basic storylines, and worldview settings." [2] As far as ancient music is concerned, the nature of "fandom", in addition to the strong secondary creative color, has another meaning, which is to trace its original meaning: people with similar interests create and publish non-commercial works.
As mentioned above, many of the original songs used for filler cover songs are mostly from East Asian two-dimensional subcultures. In fact, a large part of the resources are from a series of martial arts or immortal games collectively known as the "Three Swords of China". It is worth noting that in providing the original song, the games themselves provide a large number of narrative resources for ancient music.
Since 2005, singer Xinran has published a series of cover works from game interludes such as "Traces of Heaven" and "Legend of Paladin III" on the decibel network - even though as early as 2003, Huanyu Star, the publisher of "Paladin Legend", has held an event "Royal Sword Jianghu, Xianqu Xianyu", inviting fans to fill in the lyrics for the theme song of the game[3], which is used to create momentum for the release of "Paladin III". However, the player's act of filling in the words and singing the cover song continued after the event ended (in fact, the event was only held for 20 days). Later, it became a folk tradition of this type of martial arts-xianxia game and became a supplement to the game narrative.
Online Game "Sword Man Romance Online Edition III"
In 2009, the online game "Sword Man Love Online Edition III" (hereinafter referred to as "Sword Three") was released, and since then, "Bashu Storm" and "Anshi Chaos" and other expansion packs have been released, making it one of the most prestigious online games in China around 2014. With the popularity of Sword Three, the ancient style fandom based on the game's world view, plot or character setting has exploded - not only based on the game background (Datang), but also based on the game system and the game system-based player relationship (such as master-apprentice, love affair, etc.), or wandering between the two.
For example, "Conversion" is based on the in-game door setting, writing the love between women and monks, while "Eyebrow Snow" focuses on the joy and sorrow of the gamer group. On the map of "Sword Three" fan culture, the proportion of ancient music is even no less than that of novels and illustrations.
It is you who kiss open the pen and ink, dye the tears in the corners of my eyes, and play the clutch to meet the sad and happy for whom
- "Koi Copy"
The importance of ancient music in fandom stems from the narrative impulse it naturally possessed from its inception.
Taking "Sheng Tang Night Singing" as an example, the creator creatively added eight raps to the rhythm in the prelude to the game:
"Dragon cream wine I drunk, put the grape wine luminous cup, awarded the courtiers to taste its taste, Jinding cooked sheep remember to add cinnamon; Orchid liquor lamps and tears, and sells a charm with gold; The mist and rain gently scratched the back of the beauty, and the silk bamboo robe danced everywhere..."
In the interlude, a similar treatment exists:
"General Pei Min danced his sword and shook the heavens and the earth with a rainbow; The hao volume added ink to the Chang'an Song, and the wild grass was pointed at Zhang Xu... Last night the stars last night wind, painting the west bank of the building Guitang East. With no colored phoenix wings, the heart has a sharp edge..."[4]
These few sentences can certainly be regarded as idle "Verse"—if some hip-hop music concepts are used here—but more importantly, the author creatively opens up a unique narrative paradigm and space in ancient music: recitation.
The name, derived from monologues or dialogues in traditional Chinese opera, is a way of performing between verbal confession and singing. (There is no doubt that if we look at the root causes, the essence of "nianbai" in ancient music should be closer to the "mouth white" in Peking Opera.) The emergence of this form allows the creator to enhance the narrative function of the song by adding "lines" recited by the singer or other voice actor directly in or before the music without having to cooperate with the melody.
As soon as "Nian Bai" came out, the "drama song" came out of nowhere: with the help of interspersed or even deeply embedded in the lines between the singing segments, the "drama song" pushed the narrative impulse of ancient style music to the peak. It looks like a miniature radio drama (and comes with its own theme song), which aims to tell the whole story within the capacity of a song. "Butterfly of Dead Leaves", also created by Ediq, appears from the perspective of "Storyteller", explaining the background of the story in the song:
"Book writer: It's been three years since I finished writing this story, but the dead leaves have never returned, and this year duanyang, it was me who accompanied her drunk in the cellar, and I don't know how long she will stay at this city gate, I just know that that night I burned a book that I had written for three years." [5]
At the same time, this narrative impulse naturally overflows the framework of the melodram song and becomes one of the important characteristics of ancient style music that distinguishes it from other song genres. After all, due to the limitations of technology and manpower, not all ancient music has the strength to adopt the presentation method of "reading white + song".
Even if the recitation is stripped away, the narrative dimension of many ancient music is still deeply rooted. It can almost be said that this instinct was rooted in the beginning of the birth of ancient music – obviously this is not unrelated to its "game fandom" origins. "Copywriting" is another flesh of narrative impulse. In the ancient music circle, "copywriting" can certainly be used to express creative inspiration, but most creators are more willing to solemnly narrate the background of the song story in the "copywriting". The representative, when released in 2008, was produced by Mo Mingqimiao and sung by Hetu. The lyricist Finale fictionalized a dynasty, the Great Zhou, and fictionalized three characters: "Emperor Baiyan of Zhou", "Emperor Jing of the Former Dynasty" and "Former Noble Concubine Cinnabar". The copy reads:
Emperor Baiyan of Zhou died on a snowy night ten years after becoming emperor.
This grass-born emperor did not like luxury, and after forcing the palace to seize the throne, he abandoned the gorgeous palace room built by the former Emperor Jing, and every night he stayed in the Nine Dragon Pagoda in the imperial palace, and when he died, he also crossed his knees on the futon in front of the stone room on the top of the tower, facing a portrait on the wall.
If there were palace ladies who had been through the previous dynasty, they would surely recognize that the woman with the incomparable color on the painting was the last noble concubine who was appointed by the former Emperor Jing.
It turned out that after ten years of falling into the country, Bai Yan finally followed the man. There was not a single word left behind him. So all the mysteries about the founding emperor of the Zhou Dynasty were buried in the thick history books along with the portrait hanging from the nine-fold pagoda and hidden behind the seven-fold screen. [6]
Compared with this rather complete story, lyrics such as "At that time, the red line was entangled in a thousand turns / The difference between a thought and a person to marry" and "The one that ended up counting / Finally covering the world for you" and other lyrics are closer to the footnotes of the story.
Interestingly, the authors of ancient style music chose the carrier of "copywriting" precisely because the music websites that published these songs at that time had a special "copywriting" or "creative inspiration" column, which provided listeners with the convenience of reading. But in the process of the spread of the song, the shedding of the copywriting is inevitable. Shortly after "Pour out the World" became popular, some fans edited the "Yan Kuan X Qiao Zhenyu" CP fan video based on this song; Based on the fandom video, someone created an original beautiful novel called "Pouring Out the World, The Chaotic World". Obviously, at this moment, the plot of the novel and the plot of the song have nothing to do with each other.
The "narrative" is complete, and the ancient style music naturally begins the attempt to "narrate the world". After "Pouring out the World" became popular, Mo Mingqimiao launched an album of the same name, including tracks such as "The Wind Rises in the Sky" and "Spring Breeze One Gu". Each track can be written separately and connected to each other in the plot. From the perspective of female generals Xie Wan, Gongzi Moli and others, they jointly outlined the sentient beings of the "Zhou Emperor Baiyan" who started the army and founded the country. Since then, projects such as "Fenghualu", "Tang Hongyan Fu", and "Hundred Sons and Hundred Families" have also aimed to outline the group portraits of a dynasty and a generation - and behind these "Xushi" projects are countless good associations gathered under this banner.
Chant long songs, pens walk dragons and snakes, and move the wind and clouds to change color for it
- "The Wind and The Wind"
After discussing the "narrative-narrative" instinct of "ancient wind music", let's return to the name "ancient style".
Of course, as the name suggests, "ancient style" points to a retro or antique aesthetic orientation: the widespread use of the five-tone style in composition, the selection of instruments such as flutes and kites in the orchestra, the traditional imagery taken from ancient poetry in the lyrics, and the addition of the singing method of "drama".
Guqin
However, in 2003, Jay Chou's song "East Wind Broken" has already carried the banner of "Chinese style" music style, that is, two years before the birth of ancient wind music, it swept the country; Today, represented by the emergence of the variety show "National Style and Beautiful Youth", the reference to the word "national style" seems to overlap with "ancient style". For the "Chinese style" or "national style" that also use these elements and creative methods, the "ancient wind circle" tries to draw a boundary. Common rhetoric is as follows:
"The lyrics of the Chinese style are more vernacular than the ancient style music. Many of the ancient style lyrics use ancient poetry, and they also pay more attention to the rhyme of wording. ”
"In terms of orchestration, compared with the "ancient style", the proportion of Western instruments or electroacoustic instruments used in the orchestration will be slightly more, basically half Western instruments and half national instruments; The ancient style emphasizes the use of ethnic instruments and electronic synthesizers. ”
"Chinese style is involved in the entertainment industry, and creators like Jay Chou, Lin Junjie, Xu Song and others have a certain status in the entertainment industry music circle, while ancient style music is still only developing on the Internet." [7]
"The national style focuses on the 'country' in space, and the ancient style focuses on the 'ancient' in time"[8]
Obviously, these words contain more or less biased and absolute meanings. Behind such attempts to define, however, is an imagination of "high and low" and a near-decisive posture: behind the "more quaint" and "more national" is a rejection of the already mature industrial production system of pop music.
This so-called "high and low" imagination reveals another, almost diametrically opposed, "ancient wind circle" essence: not the self-amusement of the Wenqing-style solitary study, but the self-amusement of calling friends and friends, with the most stubborn seriousness, to sow a wild in the Cyber tribe.
The production of antique music is not dominated by record labels or music producers, but by "societies" or "studios": "planning" provides inspiration and creativity, while recruiting people; After the "lyrics" and "compositions" cooperate (or directly fill in the words of existing works), they are covered by the "singer", and after being mixed and contracted by the "later stage", they are published on music websites such as decibel network and 5sing, and at the same time, "artists" are looking for "artists" to visually design the songs. All these "types of work" are gathered into various "associations" to exchange each other's needs, store project documents, and promote songs with QQ groups. With the help of the QQ group with extremely low cost of formation and the community-style production mode, the creation of ancient music has shown a decentralized trend.
Even if there is still a "wife and a little transparent" distinction (it is difficult to avoid for any online fandom community), any fan with a heart can participate in co-creation in the group chat - at least this will not be a lonely thing.
Exegesis:
Zhang Jiaming. Yes, these ancient lyrics are just made up. New Weekly.2018.https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/FTohy5BiSKYQPq_wKJgTww
Zheng Xiqing. Broken Wall Book: Keywords of Online Culture[M].Beijing: Sanlian Bookstore.2018:63
[3] See http://games.sina.com.cn/newgames/2003/07/07253855.shtml
[4] Ediq.Sheng Tang Night Singing.NetEase Cloud Music.2016.https://music.163.com/#/song?id=81532
[5] Mo Ming Qimiao. Butterfly of Dead Leaves. NetEase Cloud Music.https://music.163.com/#/song?id=366257
[6] Ediq.河图.NetEase Cloud Music.2016.https://music.163.com/#/song?id=27571867
[7] Nine days after the ink fell. What is the difference between Chinese style and ancient style?.Sohu.2018.https://www.sohu.com/a/285312862_763990
[8] M3 Small Mushroom. Guofeng = ancient wind, or is the ancient style just a kind of national style?.Zhihu.2018.https://www.zhihu.com/question/304459647/answer/605474809
Editor-in-Charge: Fan Zhu
Proofreader: Zhang Liangliang