Traditional Culture Encyclopedia - Weather forecast - Reflections on ancient Mongolian dance

Reflections on ancient Mongolian dance

The Hui poets of the Yuan Dynasty once described the scene of whipping:

The new barrels of horse milk are full of jade, and

the fishy smell comes from the cuttings of sand sheep and chinchillas.

The night of the camp is drunk with singing and singing, and the blue sea is pressed amidst the sound of whips and drums.

After returning from the hunt, people reunited for a feast, tasting the refreshing and fragrant kumiss, beating whips and drums, and getting drunk by singing. The whip drum is a long mosquito slung around the body. According to archaeological discoveries in 1982: the mural in the tomb of a nobleman from the Yuan Dynasty in the suburbs of Chifeng, a descendant of Hongji Cibu Dexue Chan, depicts a band from the Yuan Dynasty, one of whom is wearing it. Whip the mosquito and hit it with a whip in your right hand. Hitting mosquitoes with their hands, singing and dancing at the same time. The song they dance to is also a song about hunting.

Clapping and dancing is an ancient custom of the Mongolian people. Yu Gong, a native of the Song Dynasty, recorded in the record of Meng Tatar: "The king (referring to Mu Huali) went out and accompanied him with female musicians. He led 17 or 18 beauties. They were extremely smart and cunning. They mostly played official music with fourteen strings. The music is very low and the dance is very different. "It is different from the whip dance, here it is "clap as a festival". The extraordinary dance postures that seemed strange to the Han envoys clearly had strong grassland characteristics.

The shepherd’s art is like the vast sea. We only picked up a few shells from the sea, but these few shells alone are enough to prove the richness and richness of the sea. Looking at the literature, painting, music, and dance in the grassland area, we can see that:

The art of herdsmen is extremely closely related to their lives. Art arises from the sum of human instinctive needs and social needs. From the perspective of creative methods, living environment, expression content and utilitarian characteristics, it exists in the lives of herders, and it is interdependent and adaptable to the living environment of the grassland. Take folk songs as an example. Shepherds sing folk songs when grazing, they sing love songs when they are in love, they sing blessings at holiday banquets, and they sing love songs when they miss their hometown. Grassland life is the matrix of human culture and art - folk art is indispensable. Exhaust, inexhaustible "soil" and "treasure house". The integrated relationship between grassland life and herdsmen reflects the inseparable connection between artistic activities and the subject in life - people.

The art of grassland has the characteristics of nomadic culture. Located in northern China, the vast Mongolian grassland is the birthplace of China's horse-riding herdsmen. Horses gallop on the vast grassland, and the brave and fierce nomads dominate the grassland and live and multiply. Horses play a vital role in the lives of herdsmen, and the close relationship between herdsmen and horses forms the characteristics of grassland art. In literature, there are countless legends and congratulations about horses. In music, there is the unique sound of the morin fiddle. In dance, they integrate the characteristics of the horse and the shepherd's deep emotion for it into the shoulder movements. and leg movements, the horse is the most common beautiful image in the folk art of nomadic peoples.

The characteristics of grassland art are not only reflected in the imitation and destruction of the image of horses, but also in its national art tradition of poetry, music and dance. The literature of shepherds includes ballads, praise poems, epics, folk narrative poems, storytellers, and Haolaibao. They are often accompanied by morinouqin, fourhu, sanxian or flute. Unaccompanied "tutu songs" are also combined with certain tunes, and some also Supplemented by action. The nomads are a people who love singing and dancing. "Book of Wei Gaoche Biography" contains records of "gathering together to worship heaven, with tens of thousands of people gathering to worship the heavens. At the meeting, they rode horses and killed animals, and wandered around singing songs and dances", which describes the grand singing and dancing of the nomads. Activity. In singing and dancing activities, there is often talking and singing. Therefore, poetry and dance constitute another characteristic of nomadic art.

The characteristics of grassland art are also reflected in its strong and rich lyrical color. The vast grassland is sparsely populated and nomadic life has few interactions, but the pent-up emotions of the herdsmen are fully expressed in the long pastoral songs of the grassland. When I heard the long-key pastoral songs on the grassland, the natural beauty that "touches and matches the mood", I just explained it lightly and said: "The meaning here does not belong to the object itself, but lies in the mood it arouses." Long-key pastoral songs on the grassland Like spring water and a cup of mellow wine, it expresses the shepherd's intoxicating love for the grassland and his hometown, and expresses the shepherd's broad-minded, bold and open-minded mind. "Music is the art of expression. It is good at expressing emotions. Prairie pastoral songs capture the special essence of music." With its touching lyricism, people can fully feel the unique rhythm of life in the grassland.

The beauty of strong and vivid colors is another characteristic of grassland art. The blue sky, green grass fields, red flowers, white sheep, and the colorful colors of grassland life are reflected in his art, making the art of grassland show strong color beauty. It is expressed in the description of literary language, in the colors of paintings and musical instruments, and in the melody of music. "The feeling of color is the most popular form of general beauty." Circle color is the most extensive, the most vivid, and the most direct reflection of a nation's grassland art, which plays an important role in the cultural history of our country. Different ethnic groups living in different regions have different cultural patterns. Grassland art is the materialized image of grassland cultural model. Gambridge pointed out: "The history of art is not a history of continuous technological progress, but a history of changes in concepts." Marx believed that "a certain period of prosperity for art is by no means proportional to the general development of society." Certain art forms of great significance are possible only at an underdeveloped stage of artistic development.” The epic poems "Janger" and "Qasr Khan" are wonders of pastoral art.

Its grand structure, complex plots, magnificent scenes, classic upper-level art of language, and inexhaustible source of art for experts have not only produced extensive and far-reaching influence in the cultural history of the Mongolian people. influence and fill the gaps in Chinese cultural history.

The significance of the prairie pastoral songs that touch the heart and soul with their strong and charming lyricism cannot be underestimated. People often attribute the revival of world music culture after the Middle Ages to the West. In fact, prairie pastoral is completely comparable to the secular music of the Western Renaissance. "If we say that the emerging feudal class in Mongolia severely attacked the decadent eastern and western feudal forces in the late Middle Ages with a devastating force, reopened the long-interrupted international trade channel between the east and the west, and thus objectively created favorable conditions for the germination of capitalism later. , then in the field of art, the emergence and development of Mongolian grassland pastoral songs can be said to be the harbinger of world music culture finally getting out of the low ebb of the Middle Ages and entering a period of vigorous development. "Prairie pastoral songs not only reflect the excitement of the nomadic people during their development period. Passionate and romantic spirit, and became the forerunner of humanism in the history of world music culture.

In the region of the Chinese nation, grassland art and farming art are always in constant exchange, complement, integration, and development. Especially in the Yuan Dynasty, the Mongolian people entered the Central Plains and spread their distinctive grassland art to the vast areas where farming people lived. According to Volume 28 of "Nancun Zhuogenglu": "Dada musical instruments, such as zither, Qin pipa, huqin, Hunbu and so on, play different tunes from Han people." There are 16 types of songs and 12 types of ditty. Although its tune has been lost, it was very popular in the Central Plains at that time.