The following article comes from I Listen to the Chinese Broadcasting Alliance, the author I listened to
TIME PLUS is my Listening Chinese Broadcasting Alliance
Radio programs broadcast in ten cities in North America
TIME PLUS MUSIC
Wu Hongfei
Lead singer of Happy Avenue Band
Leader of the Dong Great Song Team
Wu Hongfei, a guest at TIME PLUS MUSIC, has many different identities. Journalists, writers, singers... She is best known as the lead singer of Happy Street. From the lead singer of a rock band to returning to the countryside to pass on the music of his own nation, what is the special experience of this? Today's show, along with Wu Hongfei's sharing, let's go to know her other identity closer to the origin - the leader of the Dong big song team. Explore her roots and discover the pristine beauty of Dong music.
Vague instinct,
Take her on her way home
Wu Hongfei once said: "If it were not for the mother tongue given to me by my parents and a vague instinct, I would not have found this way back home." One day a few years ago, she overheard a Piece of Dong music, the pure sound in the music, the natural ease of her surprise, at that time, in Beijing, this metropolis where Eastern and Western cultures are highly integrated, she thought of those beautiful Dong girls, thinking that she was also a Dong woman, out of the context of her own ethnic group for too long, a part of her body, as if lost. Although she couldn't understand the meaning of the ancient Dong lyrics, her tears couldn't stop flowing down. Later, she tried to translate that song, from a song to a huge treasure of Dong music. She found that the melodies in Dong music had almost never been used in the pop song spectrum for more than 30 years. A strong sense of freshness, a passion for the imminent development of the wilderness, surrounded her, and she decided to use these materials in her own music. She thinks, it's punk!
Between 2012 and 2013, Wu Hongfei organized these singing Dong girls and launched a dong song team. There is no official background, no sponsorship, and the number of people performing each time is not fixed, but with a simple passion for sharing these music, she took the Dong pipa and took these girls out of Guizhou, taking Huaihua, Guilin, going north to Beijing, going south to Shanghai, Nanjing, Hangzhou, Suzhou, Wuhan, Changsha, Guangzhou, Chengdu, Chongqing, and held a total of 50 performances in various bars and cafes.
share
It is the tradition of the Dong people
The Dong people like to share, and the people have a tradition of not picking up the road and not closing the house at night. It is only natural for you to come to the door of someone's house, eat a lump of glutinous rice, and drink a sip of water. In the place where the Dong people live, there are wells everywhere, and small bowls and bamboo tubes are placed next to the wells, and no one will take these utensils with them, and everyone can drink the sweet well water. From such a natural and simple folk custom and custom, he got great satisfaction from his heart, which also became Wu Hongfei's original motivation to share these Dong music.
Dong Song: It is an intangible cultural heritage
It is also rural life
The Great Song of the Dong Nationality was inscribed on UNESCO's Representative List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2009. Wu Hongfei introduced: "Dong music is the earliest polyphonic music discovered by orientals, and Dong songs usually have several melodies, intertwined and staggered to sing. What is more special is that the polyphonic harmony of the Dong great song is a natural harmony, which corresponds to the polyphony of Europeans, but it sounds more primitive, more mountainous, and less precise.
The tone of the Dong song is relatively unique, there are a total of 16 tones in the Dong language, and the Dong people speak naturally like a kind of music. Music runs through the big things and small things in the life of the Dong people, and in the earliest days, the Dong people used music to record things. Drum Tower Deliberation is an ancient form of meeting of the Dong people, using the drum to summon the clan to gather, in the spring, decide when to sow seeds and harvest in a year, and the patriarch will announce the law. After completing these formal and serious steps, the clan will gather to drink and entertain. Whether it is a drum tower discussion or an entertainment event, music is always in it.
During the Spring and Autumn Period, Chu Guo's "Yue Ren Song" is considered to be the predecessor of Dong music in ethnology, which is a very euphemistic love song that expresses the feelings of girls' longing. Thoughts like this, which cannot be accurately conveyed by modern language, are also hidden in their music by the Dong people.
The old people in the mountains and forests, from little girls to their old age, lamented that their lives, like fallen leaves, will soon wither. These deep, warm and a little sad emotions that have been precipitated in time are also conveyed through their songs. Talking about this, Wu Hongfei said a detail that deeply touched her. An old man once said to her, "Forty years ago, there was a girl, as old as you, who came here to collect songs. Now, forty years later, you have come", in the understanding of the old man, this matter seems to be a fatalistic reincarnation. The old man asked Wu Hongfei, "Can you take me to Beijing?" Wu Hongfei could only answer her with regret: "I can't do it." These pieces of music have been passed down through the lives of the old people, and their time here has been repeated here, perhaps until death, and they cannot see the heavens and the earth outside the mountains.
In this way, Wu Hongfei and her Dong ethnic song team brought these ancient music out of the mountains, in addition to the performances all over the country, Wu Hongfei also used these collected materials to make records with the help of the tribesmen. Listen to the "Song of the Sanaine", which combines the folk music of the Dong people with folk songs, pop, orchestras, and electronic elements, and the album "The Great Song of the Dong Nationality", which pays more attention to restoring the original style of the Dong nationality song. Use your ears to feel this ancient people with mysterious colors, touch the soil there, and see the most ordinary life.
*Program Producer: Tian Yu
*Content Director: Leshan
*Graphic Editor: Le Min
*Article from: I listen to the Chinese Broadcasting Alliance