Folk songs of Hequ

Name of China's national intangible cultural heritage: folk songs of Hequ

Applicant: Hequ County, Shanxi Province

Item No.: 33

Project No.: Ⅱ - 2

Time of publication: 2006 (the first batch)

Category: Traditional Music

Region: Shanxi Province

Type: new item

Applicant: Hequ County, Shanxi Province

Protected by: Errentai art research center of Hequ County

Introduction to Hequ folk songs:

Applicant: Hequ County, Shanxi Province

Hequ is located in the northwest of Shanxi Province, bounded by Pianguan and Wuzhai in the East, Kelan and Baode in the south, and Shaanxi and Inner Mongolia in the West and North by the Yellow River respectively. It is a special area of "one chicken crowing three provinces". Because it is located in the bend of the Yellow River, the traffic is blocked in the history of the bend, the land is barren, the drought and flood are uncertain, and the common people suffer a lot. This special human and geographical environment has formed the way of life and production that local people go to the west every spring and winter to work in Daqingshan and Hetao of Inner Mongolia. From the pain of leaving his wife and son year after year, the folk song of "going to Xikou" which is called "Shanqu" by the local people has naturally come into being. Shanqu belongs to the genre of folk songs. It has not been determined when it was formed, but the "Er Ren Tai" formed on the basis of Shanqu has a history of about 200 years. In the local chronicles, there is a record of the Ming Dynasty's Hequ that "every household has a new score of string songs, and every child, woman and old man sing praises", which shows the long history of its singing tradition.

The content of Shanqu lyrics is profound and the melody is rich. In the winter of 1953, the Institute of folk music of the Central Conservatory of music (now the Institute of music of the Chinese Academy of Arts) went to the local area for the first time to collect folk songs. In just three months, it recorded more than 1500 lyrics and more than 150 kinds of tunes, including "three days' journey and two days' arrival", "everyone is here, you are not here", "cutting naked oats", "mentioning my brother's journey to the west", "true soul following you" "Left and right", "brother in the East, sister in the west, Tianhe separated at both ends" and so on are all excellent works handed down from generation to generation. They use up and down sentence style in the structure of Ci and music. The up and down sentence often reveals a deep emotional state or depicts a lifelike picture of life, such as "mountains in the water, stones in, people are not in you", "hear my brother sing up, warm up on the cold windowsill" and so on are typical examples. The melody of Shanqu uses juxtaposition, echo and contrast, which contains rich aesthetic meaning. It also has typical significance in reflecting the development history of folk songs and the living conditions of folk society.

Chinese PinYin : He Qu Min Ge