Visit Hequ Mountain Qu

A visit to Hequ Mountain Song

Shanxi is called "the ocean of folk songs". Almost every county in more than 1 counties in Shanxi has its own folk songs. According to statistics, more than 2, folk songs have been collected, and strong local colors are everywhere. Tracing back to the Spring and Autumn Period, tang style and Wei Feng in The Book of Songs were mostly Shanxi folk songs, and the famous Shuoshu and Cutting Tan were also Shanxi folk songs. For thousands of years, Shanxi folk songs are depressed, full of emotion, passionate about love, and sincere in singing scenery, which is beyond the reach of folk songs in any part of the country.

Folk songs originated from folk songs. As the name implies, folk songs refer to short songs that can be sung at any time in mountains, fields, cliffs and yards. In Shanxi, the most famous folk songs are Hequ folk songs. The most popular Shanxi folk song "Walking to the West Exit" was originally due to Hequ, so we chose Hequ as the first stop to visit the hometown of Shanxi folk songs.

the origin of Hequ folk songs

On April 28th, I set out for Hequ from Taiyuan.

sitting in the car, I can't relax. As an interviewer of "Thick Shanxi", I deeply realized the heavy weight of the word "Thick" for the first time. At noon that day, we stopped in Xinzhou City. With the help of Xinzhou Branch of Shanxi Daily, I found Mr. Wu Zhaopeng, Secretary General of Xinzhou Federation of Literary and Art Circles. Mr. Wu has studied Hequ folk songs for many years, and has published many monographs related to folk songs and operas.

I said to Mr. Wu, you regard me as a student, please give me a lesson.

Hequ is on the Yellow River Triangle in northwest Shanxi, looking at Shaanxi in the west and connecting the Han nationality inhabited areas in Inner Mongolia in the north. Before liberation, farmers living in this area, due to the concentration of land and successive years of drought, rushed to the west exit (Hequ farmers called Hetao area in Inner Mongolia "the west exit") to sell cheap labor and maintain a minimum living. Their main means of making a living is to "win over" and "beat up" the landlords outside the west exit, followed by going down the coal kiln or "running the river road" (referring to the life of boatmen). It is usually spring and autumn, and some people have been living in other places for many years. The local people call this kind of life "going west" or "running outside".

due to a large number of farmers' "going to the west", the economic and cultural life of northwest Shanxi and western Inner Mongolia has been generally exchanged, and the folk songs of Mongolian and Han nationalities have also influenced each other. The Han folk songs circulating in the western part of Inner Mongolia are not only popular in Suiyuan, but also in the northwest of Shanxi, and even spread to Shaanxi, Gansu and other places, becoming the same folk songs of the Han people in this vast area (the genre of such folk songs is similar, but the lyrics and tunes are different). In Hequ, people call it "mountain songs".

Shanqu is a folk song that can be sung by everyone in Hequ area. It is not an exaggeration to say that "every family has a new score of string songs, and the children and elders do their best to sing". It is said that the best singer can "sing for three days and three nights without being heavy", which shows his wealth. For many years, in order to eliminate fatigue and express their feelings, working people have used their own intelligence to create this self-entertaining impromptu singing form from singing to singing in the process of working life. It is distributed in villages and towns all over the county. Men, women and children are singing all the time. They sing whatever they want, and the lyrics come out of their mouths.

The musical form of folk songs is that four bars form a phrase and eight bars form a piece of music; The last four bars are mostly repeated or slightly changed by the first four bars. The ending sound of the upper phrase usually falls on the dominant sound and the subordinate sound, while the ending sound of the lower phrase falls on the tonic.

The lyrics form of folk songs is based on the seven-character sentence, but it is not strictly bound by the seven-character sentence, and it can expand and contract freely with the changes of emotion and language. It can be a neat seven-sentence style of "peeling a fish from a puddle tree", or a symmetrical eight-sentence style of "finding a good man to fly around the sky and a muddy boy to swim in hell", or it can be developed into a more free eleven-sentence style of "peeling a layer of mud after a landscape". Or it can become a three-eight-eight sentence pattern of "big elm, two-eight-fork, who will give us control over the hip". With the change of language, the rhythm is often changing. A short folk song, because the singer's life experience is different, the change of joy and sorrow and speed is also different. It can sing different contents and reflect different life emotions with different objects.

In the singing style of tunes, the tunes of mountain songs are loud and clear, rough and unrestrained, with wide range and free rhythm. The tune of Hequ folk songs has three main characteristics: First, folk songs use a lot of methods of combining true and false sounds, which makes it form a unique singing method different from other genres of folk songs. For example, when farmers raise their hoes and shepherd the sheep and shake off the whip, they shout a voice, and when the high notes can't get up, they use falsetto, which reflects the refreshing spirit of people's open mind. Second, folk songs use a lot of melodies with big jumps, which can span seven or eight degrees or even eleven or twelve degrees from the lowest to the highest notes, forming a sense of rhythm with ups and downs, lively jumps and enthusiasm. Third, the tune adopts the method of long tone. The so-called long tone means that it can be extended freely in the high-pitched and middle-pitched areas, and it can be sung as long as you want. When you are happy, you can extend it indefinitely according to your own strength, expressing the excitement of farmers when singing.

Mr. Wu said that due to the evolution of the times, folk songs have also developed greatly. For example, the comparison between the upper and lower sentences is more appropriate and vivid than in the past, and the artistic conception of the words is more sweet and far-reaching, resulting in a large number of excellent folk songs reflecting different times. But the most intoxicating thing is the original Shan Ye's songs. Adapted folk songs often add modern flavor, get rid of those vulgar languages, but lose the original charm of folk songs.

through Mr. Wu's introduction, I learned that in the past 3 years, there have been 3 or 4 small-name peasant singers in Hequ and Baode, and a large number of professional singers who are famous in the whole province and even the whole country have been sent abroad.

Three brothers and sisters in Baode are famous for singing

Referring to the famous Xinzhou folk singer, Mr. Wu recommended three brothers and sisters, Yang Zhongqing, Yang Aizhen and Yang Zhongyi from Baode County. On the evening of my stay in Xinzhou, I met Ms. Yang Aizhen who had just returned from Beijing. Yang Aizhen, 51, is studying at China Conservatory of Music at her own expense. She hopes to learn more nutrition from theory and return to Shanxi to train new folk songs.

Yang Aizhen looks much younger than her actual age. When she talks, her voice is intoxicating. As soon as I saw her, I couldn't help asking her to sing a folk song. She smiled and opened her mouth to sing:

Who's that on the dam beam?

That's my deadly second sister.

There are ten kinds of grass growing on that mountain.

I saw my sister's nine things.

Brother, I'm on the dam beam.

Sister, you're in that ditch. Mother, in particular, has a clear and sweet voice like that mountain spring. Since childhood, children have grown up in an atmosphere full of songs. At that time, life was very hard. Aizhen's grandfather and uncle had passed by, but the songs at home never stopped. In the most difficult days, beautiful folk songs made children forget all their sufferings. When he grew up, his brother Zhongqing was in the ocean of folk songs and sang all his life. Aizhen went to national music and determined to become a professional singer of national singing. My younger brother Zhongyi embarked on the road of opera, and now he is the head of the Bangzi Youth League on Xinzhou North Road.

Finally, Yang Aizhen said to me, "You should interview my eldest brother. He is obsessed with folk songs. He seems to be born for folk songs." Yang Aizhen's words touched me very much. The growth of Yang's three brothers and sisters can't be separated from the warm family with songs, and this spirit is also a spiritual model for farmers living in Hequ and Baode to strive for self-improvement. "Hequ Bao Dezhou, ten years and nine years, men go outside, women pick bitter vegetables." In those miserable years, it is these folk songs that have been passed down from generation to generation that have helped people to resolve their worries and move towards a better tomorrow.

The next morning, we set out from Xinzhou and went to Baode County.

Baode County is located in the southwest of Hequ County, just across the Yellow River from Fugu County in Shaanxi Province. Through a bridge over the Yellow River, people on both sides of the strait are as close as a family, speaking the same dialect, singing the same folk songs and leaning against the same mother river.

It is in this cross-strait border area that the Xintianyou in northern Shaanxi and Shanxi folk songs blend and promote each other, thus forming many folk songs with the same characteristics. In the past, singing a song together in Shanxi, Shaanxi and Inner Mongolia must have been all the rage. Until now, the folk songs that grew up in this adjacent place have become the spiritual wealth of the people in the three places.

Yang Zhongqing, who grew up here, is 62 years old this year, but no matter how you look at him, he is not over 5 years old. Folk songs make Yang Zhongqing live a young and pure life. When he mentioned his family, Yang Zhongqing began to talk: My father was a one-on-one hawker, picked a pole, filled two baskets with some local products of Baode, carried them all the way to Hequ, and then picked back the local products of Hequ. In this way, on the round trip from Baode to Hequ, my father brought Hequ folk songs back to Baode. My father never walks dumb all the way, but sings a song every step of the way. Besides having a good voice, my mother is also very spiritual. While doing work, she composes and sings songs. When I was a child, I was always making trouble when my mother was spinning. My mother opened her mouth and sang:

Mom wants to spin

You want to mess with the crowd (dialect, meaning making trouble)

Our life can't be done

My Yang Zhongqing

Under the influence of her parents, Yang Zhongqing, 6, was able to say Allegro and sing folk songs at the class meeting. When he grew up, he used his holidays to earn money every year to buy books on erhu, violin and music. In order to improve his accompaniment skills, he blocks his sister-in-law outside the gate every day and lets her sing and accompany him. If she doesn't sing, she is not allowed to eat in the hospital.

In p>1986, Yang Zhongqing was transferred to the county cultural center and served as the deputy director of the cultural center. He participated in cultural performances in the whole country, North China, provinces and regions for many times and won 6 awards. He became a famous folk singer in the whole province and was praised as the "King of Folk Songs on the Yellow River" by the folk song community.

Following Yang Zhongqing, we came to the Baode County Cultural Center where he works. The two-story cultural center is very simple, and his office of less than 1 square meters is even more dark and cramped. A small desk, a dim light and a worn-out small tape recorder are all that Yang Zhongqing carries the dream of folk songs. From the cupboard, he moved out more than a dozen simple tapes he recorded and put them in the tape recorder. A melodious song flew out, and Yang Zhongqing showed a gratified smile. On the wall opposite me, there is a big photo of Yang Zhongqing going to Japan and performing in the Great Hall of the People. However, this lonely scene in front of me makes it difficult for me to connect with Yang Zhongqing, a famous folk song king.

As soon as my grandmother fell, I lit the lamp.

I watched the lamp.

I slept with my arms bent and my face facing the wall.

A string of lovesick tears fell on the pillow.

In the sad and resentful song, Yang Zhongqing said that modern people look down on folk songs, and people think that folk songs are out of date, but I think that although they are short, some are just two sentences. What worries me most is that folk songs can't be passed down in the future. Maybe after several years, my name Yang Zhongqing is just a symbol printed in the data book. My greatest wish is to leave the folk songs that I have sung all my life in the world. I don't want to take these songs away.

Yang Zhongqing really loves folk songs like his sister said. When he went to bed, he kept singing and fell asleep.

Hequ people living in songs

The symbol of entering Hequ is a tall tower with a pen inserted on the edge of the city and a statue of Bai Pu, a great master of Yuanqu, which shows the world the profound accumulation of Hequ history and culture.

in the light rain, our car stopped at the famous Xikou Gudu in Hequ. Looking up, the white floodplain stretches far away in the misty rain and fog, and the mountains at the end are looming. This is the west mouth of the "Three Provinces with Crows", and this is the place where the sobbing Yellow River water, my sister's sad tears and my brother's heartbroken blood shed the shocking "Walking to the West Mouth"

Suddenly, there was a crisp song in my ear, looking for prestige. In a small pavilion not far away, three Hequ women were singing happily against the rain. Stepping on the song, we came to them. Facing the "watching" of several strangers, they not only didn't feel uneasy, but sang louder. Sing a few songs. One of them asked us: You are not from Hequ, are you? Where are you from? Are you traveling here?

It is said that we are journalists from Taiyuan, who specialize in covering Hequ folk songs. They were very happy, and told us every bit of Hequ folk songs, such as how many kinds of tracks there are, how many singers there are, and how many people still love folk songs.

When they rushed to finish, they threw us a difficult problem: We told you so much, you have to pay back. Sing us a song.

singing? We looked at each other. Watching us push each other off, they were surprised: what's so hard about it? Why are you Taiyuan people so coy? If you don't sing, we won't let you go.

as a last resort, several of us sang a song. They hummed along with us, clapping their hands to accompany them. Sing a song, and when we waved goodbye, we felt reluctant to part.

This is the simplicity and enthusiasm of Hequ people, and their character is as full of true feelings as it is sung in the song. Among these three cheerful, enthusiastic and charming Hequ women, the youngest is 55 years old. It is amazing that in the wonderful folk songs, Hequ people not only live young, but also are full of passion. I found the most beautiful scenery here in Hequ women.

In the land of Hequ, dolls as young as a few years old, old people as old as the dragon bell, men and women are singing all the time. It is said that there are several well-known family troupes in Hequ, and several generations from one family form a concert to tour between villages and towns, which not only greatly enriches farmers' leisure life, but also greatly enhances the circulation function of Hequ folk songs.

Why do Hequ people have such a good voice? When talking about this topic, the locals laughed: the Yellow River raises people. Some people also say: eat sour rice to eat.

Pickled rice with acid, also called sour porridge, is the most authentic special rice in Hequ. There is little rain in Hequ area, and the soil can't be cultivated before May, so we can only plant a kind of grain called Mi Mi, which has strong drought resistance and short growth period, but the grains of Mi Mi become bitter and astringent after being put into the mouth, and only when it is stirred with acid can it be delicious. Specifically, after the millet is cooked, put it in a big jar, pour in sauerkraut water, cover it with a lid, and then take it out after the sauerkraut water is soaked in rice grains for fermentation. In the past, Hequ people got up every morning, ate a bowl of sour porridge and drank a bowl of sour soup, so they didn't have to drink water when they were working in the fields that day. Sour porridge has played a role in clearing away lung heat and nourishing a good voice for Hequ people. Until now, when foreigners come to Hequ, they have to taste a bowl of sour rice first, and then they feel that they have really been to Hequ. Serve a bowl of sour rice and dig it in.