If you want to talk about the recent impressive music mix, it is probably "We Folk 2022".
Rap, rock, electronic and other music genres have come and gone on the variety stage, and now this last stick has finally reached the hands of folk music.
Since the premiere of the first episode on December 23, 2022, this 10-issue folk music complex has sparked a lot of online discussions with its successive release.
Some people are pleasantly surprised by the comprehensive lineup of the program, in everyone's words, almost half of the folk music scene is here. And the musicians span a huge age, they stand together, you can almost see how Chinese folk songs have come all the way, like counting the rings of a tree.
Some people were moved by the selection of songs for the show, and it can be said that we have all fantasized about what those golden ballads will look like when they appear on a stage tailored for them, and "We Folk 2022" began to bring this fantasy to life.
Last Friday, the last episode of the season of "We Folk 2022" was released, announcing that the results of the first variety show attempt of Chinese folk songs had been lifted the last veil.
Wan Xiaoli dressed like the classic style of the late master Ma Sanli in the closing episode, with some witty handsomeness, he held a guitar and finally sang the song "Fox" again.
Zhou Yunpeng put down the guitar, and the deep and loud "Walden" sounded alone in the darkness, and in the song, Thoreau crossed the ocean and crossed time to meet Tao Yuanming.
Like them, the other folk musicians of this season gave their last fantastic performances on this stage, and the finale I think is the best episode of the season. Just like all musical styles when they go to the public context, they are like a stubborn rock thrown into the center of Walden, and the waves are always accompanied by many different sounds.
"We Folk 2022" is over, but many familiar issues about folk music itself have been talked about again with the end of this show.
For example, what exactly is a ballad?
Although this show has achieved the purpose of "breaking the circle" of folk music, the scene that many old music fans imagined that the streets and alleys were fully occupied by folk songs again did not arrive as expected. So, now there is even a voice that says: ballads are good, and it's good that variety shows where folk songs appear, but -
"Has the golden age of folk music passed?"
In fact, the phrase "The Golden Age of Folk" has been running through the comment area of every episode since the premiere of "We Folk 2022". It is not surprising that some people are obsessed with this problem, after all, if they are really curious about something, they will be eager to understand its development laws.
Breaking through the mystery of the golden age, we can really understand what the meaning of folk songs is, and even understand why folk music is the last variety show. In the cognition of folk music fans, the development process of Chinese folk music can be divided into three periods.
The first paragraph, the "campus folk period" from the 80s of the 20th century to around 2000, the key word is "the era of white clothes".
After the Taiwan folk song movement, the fire of folk songs spread to the mainland, and was picked up by the young people on campus and just out of the campus at that time, Shen Qing, Gao Xiaosong, Old Wolf, Ye Bei and other folk pioneers were representative figures of that period.
The peak of the campus folk song era is probably the old wolf wearing a white shirt and singing "You at the Same Table" on the stage of the Spring Festival Gala, which is probably the first time that the public has a wide perception of folk music on the mainstream stage.
Old Wolf sings "You at the Same Table" on the spring evening of 1995
The subtitles of the Spring Festival Gala mistakenly beat "Old Wolf" as "Lao Lang", but now it seems appropriate, because the era of campus folk songs seems to be particularly short, and in a blink of an eye, the generation of Old Wolf is old.
The second paragraph, the urban folk song period from 2000 to 2013, focuses on a "poetry and distance". The works of this period are all produced in the process of accelerating urbanization in the country, early with stories such as Beipiao and River Bar, and later with stories such as La Phi and Sesame Oil Leaf.
The ballads of this period have appeared reflections on social changes, interrogations of personal fate, and lack of satisfaction with the status quo, but still yearning for beauty and hope, more thorough sadness, and more gorgeous praise.
The third paragraph is the popular folk period from 2013 to the present, focusing on a "contradiction", because the so-called golden period of folk songs and the folk stigmatization campaign both occurred during this period. In the first half of this period, folk songs broke the circle through variety shows, from the Douban group to the TV screen, from the playlist to the music festival scene, and the folk music was blowing out in a comprehensive way.
Zuo Li covered folk works in 2013's "Happy Boys"
Zhang Lei recreated the campus folk classic in "The Voice of China" in 2015
The works accumulated by folk musicians in the previous two periods have maximized traffic exposure and market monetization during this period, and domestic audiences have dug up the treasures of Chinese folk songs that have been dormant underground for the previous 40 years along the lead of folk songs. Just as 94 Hung Hom on the Internet is to Chinese rock, in the general perception of folk music fans, this is indeed the golden age of folk songs.
If during the school folk period, folk songs were an extension of poetry, then during this period, folk songs became a supplement to poetry, and the lyrics of folk works filled the literary and emotional needs of countless young people, and some people set "looking north" as signatures, and "there is no grassland at home" became a popular phrase.
Wan Xiaoli's "Daughter's Love" became an episode of the hit movie, Lao Luo preset Zhang Weiwei's "Rice Shop" into the mobile phone ringtone, the folk musician repeatedly exposed the offline performance scenes, won awards at the music awards, everyone made money, everything was prosperous.
"After the Meeting" (2014) Han Han
However, in the second half of this period, folk songs are often associated with negative depictions of poverty, hypocrisy, and childishness.
For example, it is said on the Internet that late-night Internet suppresses emo, and most of the sharing is folk music. For example, mocking folk singers for not having a car or a house, and sleeping places without air conditioning. For example, despise the musical form and creation method of folk songs, saying that they are too simple, that their content is greater than the form, and that they have little content in themselves.
Image from the web
In fact, the so-called contradictory process from the golden age to being stigmatized is actually a change in the cycle of the times. When folk songs were overjoyed and pushed out of the ground, white-collar workers in first-tier cities were shouting to flee the north, sell their houses, and take their babies to places where air and soul are pure.
In 2015, a female teacher who had been working for 11 years left a letter of resignation: "The world is so big, I want to see it." ”
However, as the year 2013 moves to 2023, most of the people who once fled Kitakami have fled back, and instead of going out to see, everyone now wants to have a stable job. You can use dreams as horses, but taxi still costs money, ribs have risen from 18 yuan to 28 yuan a pound, freedom is expensive, marriage or to buy a house, everyone wants to leave, but they don't know where to go to change bones and get born.
The so-called golden age of folk songs, when the post-80s and post-90s entered the workplace, the pressure of the times has not yet been shouldered, housing prices are still thousands of flat, and the emotional opposition of the Internet has not intensified to today's point.
And folk songs began to be stigmatized, it was the development of the times began to accelerate, the changes were too drastic, resulting in people's inner needs becoming more and more utilitarian, the cultural needs of the times became realistic and impatient, and all kinds of contempt chains abounded.
Therefore, ballads that pay more attention to personal inner feelings, under the excessive public anxiety, seem to begin to leave the spotlight of the times.
It is also because of this that rap variety shows have been, rock variety shows have existed, and electronic music variety shows have existed, but variety shows about folk songs have not appeared.
Because now putting folk songs in the situation of variety shows and bringing them to the public context of the traffic era is too much courage and wisdom.
In the era of streaming music, music variety shows are the legs of the music industry.
This is especially true for the Chinese music market, and the music complex has to be a thigh.
In the past few years, all kinds of music works have completed the connection between narrow creators and broad consumers through music variety shows, and have moved from circle culture to mainstream spotlight.
However, every such "legging" process will be accompanied by a lot of controversy, and "We Folk Songs 2022" has also faced many doubts from the beginning to the end of the broadcast.
At the beginning of the show, fundamentalist folk fans questioned whether the musicians and guest cast might not have enough folk roles.
Comments come from the web
When entering the knockout and adaptation competitions, some netizens thought that this format was not enough folk, how can folk songs be ranked? How can a folk song be adapted into a pop song?
Even, even the tears often shed in the show were taken out by everyone to say something, saying why is it so good to cry in folk songs?
However, in my opinion, these controversies are not a bad thing.
"We Folk 2022" as the first and currently the only dedicated folk variety show, I think its primary purpose should be to let folk songs break the circle, and now it seems that this purpose has actually been achieved.
Although we mentioned above that folk songs had a golden age in mainstream market and popular culture, there are still many people who are not familiar with it.
Many new listeners have a basic understanding of folk songs in this program, and some folk songs selected by the program can give ordinary audiences a clearer understanding of Chinese folk songs spanning 40 years in 10 episodes.
Comments come from the web
Moreover, we have often overlooked one thing before, that is, time is moving forward, and there are constantly listeners growing, they are the follow-up force of the folk audience, and how to make a folk textbook for them is a soul project.
A friend in the circle of friends, after watching "Our Folk Songs 2022", her children became Wan Xiaoli's listeners.
For the existing folk listeners, this show still plays a role in breaking the circle.
Because compared to watching from a distance offstage, or imagining their appearance in front of the lyrics, those singers who were once in the playlist finally have faces, demeanors, and lives.
The show's details of the dealings between folk musicians outside of singing make them flesh out with their works.
Everyone gave Wan Xiaoli his birthday
And in some of the supplements to the overall details of Chinese folk songs, it can be seen that the program team has put a lot of effort into it.
For example, the past and present of "River Bar" may not be well understood by many old music fans.
For example, Ma Tiao, Wan Xiaoli and Zhong Lifeng spanned years of friendship, who would have thought that the twilight of the lake of the soul used to be lush time and hair.
For example, a cappella version of "Rice Shop" takes place on a boat where Zhang Weiwei and Old Wolf are on a polar ocean.
In addition to breaking the circle, "We Folk 2022" has actually found the true value of many folk songs.
Take the frequent tears in the show, so much ink on people's delicate and real emotional changes, in the variety show is actually a luxury way.
The greatest energy of folk songs is to reach people's hearts, and the process is sometimes a little slow and seemingly unreasonable, and the true and patient record is the greatest respect for folk songs.
Strong as a phoenix baron will also shed tears in "Love That Can't Talk"
Finally, on the ultimate question of what is a ballad, We Folk 2022 has actually given its answer.
Sometimes this answer is a little cryptic, like the fleeting figure arranged in the last scene of Zhou Yunpeng's singing, which is a fusion of drama, music and literature.
Sometimes the answer is obvious.
Like the chords marked on the lyrics, although criticized by some fans as trichords, it at least shows the ambition of pragmatism and the belief in comprehensive promotion.
It's like those effects under Wan Xiaoli's feet in the lens, like those guests who look a little crossover, those formats that sound a little cruel, and those popular variety show methods.
We Folk 2022 is clearly exploring the innovation of folk communication forms and templates for future directions.
How to integrate, absorb, break through, how to create a dialogue between folk songs and different musical arts.
There will certainly be problems and shortcomings in the process, but at least we have taken the first step.
Not only the program group, but also many folk musicians are also participating in variety shows for the first time, and all three of us need a running-in process.
Just like Chinese folk songs have been running in with the times for 40 years, we are still looking for a feasible way out.
If you had to define a certain definition of what exactly is a ballad, I'd like to quote a quote from his answer when we interviewed Zhang Weiwei earlier in the tenth issue.
Ballads are, after all, the art of time.
It is the landlord's cat who sings: "538 on Nanhu Avenue will always be replaced by Mercedes-Benz cars!" ”
It was Wan Xiaoli who sang: "It's not like it used to be now, there are no fairy tales in the forest." ”
It was Zhang Weiwei: "Then time turned into smoke." ”
The variety show of folk ballads, the same about time.
It is with "We Folk 2022" this year that we have reason to look forward to "We Folk 2023", "We Folk 2024" and "We Folk 202X".
Has the golden age of folk really passed?
Whatever, in short:
"It's not as bad as you think."
Design/Vision: Strong