Gaoqiang (Changde Gaoqiang)

Name of China's national intangible cultural heritage: Gaoqiang (Changde Gaoqiang)

Applicant: Changde City, Hunan Province

Project No.: 151

Project No.: Ⅳ - 7

Time of publication: 2006 (the first batch)

Category: Traditional Drama

Region: Hunan Province

Type: new item

Applicant: Changde City, Hunan Province

Protection unit: Changde Hanju Gaoqiang Protection Center

Introduction to Gaoqiang (Changde Gaoqiang)

Applicant: Changde City, Hunan Province

Gaoqiang is a kind of opera derived from Yiyang tune in Ming Dynasty and later Qingyang tune. In the course of hundreds of years of evolution, great changes have taken place in the branches of Yiyang tune, which have different degrees of integration with local folk music, thus forming different musical styles of Gaoqiang.

Changde Gaoqiang is one of the three major tunes in Changde Han Opera. On the basis of the local primitive sacrificial songs and dances and other local music, it gradually developed and matured by absorbing the early opera tunes such as Yiyang tune and Qingyang tune of the Ming Dynasty. It is mainly popular in the West Dongting District, Wuling mountain system, chenshui and Yuanshui river basins, as far as Southwest Hubei and eastern Guizhou. It was renamed Wuling opera in 1986. From Wanli of Ming Dynasty to Qianjia of Qing Dynasty, Gaoqiang of Changde was the most prosperous period, and then gradually declined with the rise of the north-south road of tanqiang. The representative operas in Changde's Gao Qiang opera are "sacrificing Headkerchief", "thinking of fan", "lianglangshan", "shuanghoudou" and "Cheng Yaojin getting married". After liberation, new Gao Qiang operas such as "furongnv" and "zisuzhuan" appeared, which made a sensation.

Changde Gaoqiang has more than 30 kinds of basic tunes and more than 70 kinds of Qupai, and its singing forms include roll singing, bangqiang, etc. Among them, bangqiang is greatly influenced by Yuanshui boating song and Zha Pai Haozi tone, which can be divided into two categories: vocal bangqiang and instrumental accompaniment. Vocal bangqiang is composed of many singers and instrumental accompaniment is accompanied by big gong, big cymbal and suona. Its singing is closely combined with the local dialect, and integrates a large number of music materials of local witch tune, nuoyuan tune and Yugu tune. When singing, there are many kinds of performance methods, such as native voice, side voice, clip voice, small voice and so on.

Changde's Gao Qiang's characters are divided into four parts: Sheng, Dan, Jing and Chou, including "Sansheng" such as Qingxu, baixu and Xiaosheng, "Sansheng" such as Zhengdan, Xiaodan and laodan, and "Sanjing" such as dahualian, Erhualian and Xiaohualian. In the performance, singing and reciting are combined with the standard of Zhongzhou rhyme spelling and the tone of Changde dialect. In order to emphasize the regional characteristics of the characters, some foreign languages are also used. Changde Gaoqiang attaches great importance to the training of basic skills of performance, and has a set of expressive action programs. In addition, it also extracts some special performance paradigms from life to form body movements that simulate birds and animals or other dynamic and static states. Changde's high pitched performances are often interspersed with some wonderful special effects, which can often receive fascinating performance effects.

As early as Jiaqing and Daoguang in the Qing Dynasty, many Changde Gaoqiang troupes had disintegrated or changed to play tunes, resulting in the loss of a large number of plays and the interruption of inheritance. In 1954, Changde Municipal Department of culture held a high tune learning class, excavated more than 20 traditional scripts, and put on a few of them again, which brought the dying Changde high tune back to life. Changde Gaoqiang is the organic carrier of Changde regional culture, which provides fresh materials for the study of the spread and evolution of local opera tune. In recent years, with the great changes of society, Changde Gaoqiang once again fell into the difficult position of being on the verge of extinction, which urgently needs to be rescued and protected.