The folk songs of northern Shaanxi sung by the yellow land

Sheep (la) belly hand towel (yo) three lanes of blue, we see (la) face is easy (oops) pull words difficult (nah).

One on that hill (yo) and one in that ditch, and we can't pull that word (oops) to wave.

I see the village (yo) I don't see the people, and I tear up the egg and throw it in the artemisia forest.

Whenever I hear this northern Shaanxi Xintian tour "Tear Eggs Thrown in the Sand Artemisia Forest", I will see the vast and endless loess plateau, the barren mountain beams that solidify like waves, the winding ravines that stretch and flow, and the saibei field villages that are different from the southern part of the jiangsu Province. In this barren and impoverished yellow land, the working people rub all the emotions in their hearts into a melody. The desolate tone, through thousands of ravines, reverberates in the tunnel of time for a long time, rolling and undulating, poignant and deeply hidden. Listening to the song with twists and turns and broken liver and intestines, you can instantly feel the loess atmosphere and historical temperature that comes from the face, and all singers and listeners are moved by it.

It is said that folk songs are a culture, a culture created by countless generations and countless people "feeling sorrow and events", and the essence of this culture is ultimately a word - true, meaning real people, true hearts, true feelings, and true intentions. As the Ming Dynasty literary scholar Feng Menglong said, there are "but fake poems, but no fake mountain songs." As one of the earliest, most abundant and most influential representative regional folk songs collected in China, the folk songs of northern Shaanxi are the product of the long-term integration of nomadic culture and farming culture, and are the songs of the working people living on the Loess Plateau for generations to return to the sound cavity of the cattle with the voice of the sheep. The living conditions of the people of northern Shaanxi have given the folk songs of northern Shaanxi a strong color of desolation and sadness.

When it comes to folk songs in northern Shaanxi, people will naturally think of Xintianyou and regard Xintianyou as synonymous with folk songs in northern Shaanxi. In fact, folk songs in northern Shaanxi in a broad sense include labor trumpets, mountain songs and minor keys. Among them, the mountain song refers to the Xintianyou, which is the most distinctive song in the folk songs of northern Shaanxi, with the largest number and the widest circulation. Xintianyou is a form of mountain song that people improvise and sing, not only in northern Shaanxi, but also in the neighboring area of Longdong and yanchi in eastern Ningxia. The mountains of northern Shaanxi are connected to mountains and ditches, people work on the mountains, porters drive their livestock, walk on the steep mountain roads, in order to dispel the sorrow and loneliness in their hearts, they touch the scenery, improvise songs, and express their thoughts and feelings in a high-pitched and long tone, hence the name Xintianyou. As the folk sing goes: "Faith in the sky, keep the head." With their heads broken, the poor cannot relieve their sorrows. ”

There are two types of Shintendo tours. A type of tune is high-pitched and broad, ups and downs, the style is bold and rough, the intestines are breathtaking, and the rhythm is free and long, which is determined by the personality of the people of northern Shaanxi and the occasion of singing. Singers often use high-pitched singing combined with true and false voices, sometimes more intense and unrestrained, sometimes euphemistic and affectionate. The music shows the sadness of the separation of relatives, there is also the love of going to the west, and the song is more full of resentment and injustice towards the dark world, such as the continuous big jump in the most representative "Porter Tune", which vividly expresses the indignation and dissatisfaction of the porter by singing in a high voice. Another type of tune is delicate and delicate, with a short range, a sharp rhythm and a neat structure. The style is more relaxed, bright and witty, mostly used to express love content, and is often sung for women to do housework or quiet night thinking. Singers often sing in a flat voice, such as the familiar "Blossom on the CliffSide" (the predecessor of "Know Not Know"), the melody is natural and smooth, beautiful and idyllic, fully expressing the infinite love between lovers.

The lyrics of Xintianyou are usually two sentences of the upper and lower sentence structure. Most of them use the technique of Bixing, generally speaking, the first sentence is compared with the excitement, and the next sentence is the question, that is, "sothing to support the feeling" and "touching the scene". Northern Shaanxi folk songs make good use of dialect slang, "don't be in a hurry", "don't meet", "flash at the big intersection" these colloquial phrases are full of local atmosphere. Northern Shaanxi folk songs are also good at using overlapping words, such as "green line line", "human tip", "bitter water", "tear egg egg" and other overlapping forms, with thick northwest dialect vocabulary characteristics, interesting, not only enrich the melody, but also fully express the emotion. Northern Shaanxi folk songs are also common fictional words, making the songs more emotional, more able to move people's emotions, the most commonly used are "so", "so", "oh", "ah", "oh cough", "cough" and so on.

In addition to Xintianyou, the folk songs of northern Shaanxi in a broad sense also include labor trumpets and minor keys. The labor trumpet is a song gradually formed by the people of northern Shaanxi in the process of life and labor, and its content is closely related to labor, including the Yellow River boatman trumpet, the rammer trumpet, the quarry trumpet, the hanging coal trumpet, etc. Minor tunes refer to folk tunes that circulated in northern Shaanxi, including general minor tunes, silk thread tunes, social fire tunes, custom tunes, etc. Among them, the general minor key is mostly in this genre, people often hum in daily life, not restricted by the environment and conditions, and the singer blurts out at any time to express personal feelings. In addition, the folk songs of northern Shaanxi in a broad sense also include children's songs.

Due to the closed environment and inconvenient transportation in northern Shaanxi in history, the rich folk music reserves in the local area are rarely understood by the outside world. Until the Red Army entered northern Shaanxi in the 1930s, especially after the establishment of "Luyi" in Yan'an in 1938, teachers and students of the Luyi Music Department at that time began to collect and record the folk songs of Shaanxi, Gansu and Ningxia centered on northern Shaanxi, and directly collected folk songs from the mouths of ordinary people, such as: "Embracing the Army Flower Drum", "Liu Zhidan", "Playing Nangou Fork", "Autumn Harvest", "Embroidered Gold Plaque", "Dongfang Hong" and so on. Although the number of folk songs recorded at that time was small, their pioneering significance was extraordinary, so that since then, the folk songs of northern Shaanxi have continued to keep pace with the times, and new classic songs have been circulated in each different historical period. These repertoire have had a wide impact on the whole country after being adapted and processed by professional musicians, including not only "Thirty Mile Shop", "Orchid Flower", "Footman Tune", "Animal Spirit" "Running Dry Boat", "Walking West Exit" in the 1970s, "Our Leader Mao Zedong" in the 1970s, "Military and Civilian Large-scale Production", "Shandan Dan Blossoms Red and Bright", as well as "Yellow River Boatman Song", "Tear Eggs Thrown in the Artemisia Forest", "A Beam on a Slope" and so on since the 1990s. The continuous emergence and wide dissemination of classic folk songs has also become a very peculiar cultural phenomenon in folk songs in northern Shaanxi since the 20th century. The long-standing folk songs of northern Shaanxi are the concentrated expression of the thoughts, emotions and lives of the working people in northern Shaanxi, and imprint the life and sorrow and joy of the ordinary people in the yellow land. With its unique cultural connotation, rich aesthetic connotation, timeless dialect tune and frank and rough style, the folk songs of northern Shaanxi highlight the thick and profound historical accumulation of northern Shaanxi culture, reflect the cultural bloodline and mental process of the people of northern Shaanxi, and also engrave the glorious development process of the Communist Party of China and the birth of new China.

Northern Shaanxi has a unique loess culture because of the Loess Plateau. In 2008, folk songs in northern Shaanxi were listed as national intangible cultural heritage. The folk songs of northern Shaanxi are not only the products of the Yellow River and the Yellow Land, but also the development and evolution of the Yellow River culture and the Yellow Land culture, and the Chinese civilization formed has been deeply rooted in the spiritual blood of every Chinese son and daughter.

(The author is a professor at the China Conservatory of Music)