Tea mountain chant

Tea mountain chant

Yao Township Tea Hill Chant - spread in seven townships in Huangxikou area of Chenxi County, it is said that the chant song is sung when digging tea hill. When people dig tea hill, they beat gongs and drums at the top of the hill, singing for a while to inspire the vigor of the diggers.

On June 7, 2008, the "Tea Mountain Number" declared by Chenxi County of Hunan Province was listed in the second batch of national intangible cultural heritage list with the approval of the State Council.

Heritage serial number: 588 II-89.

historical origin

Sometimes it's just one person singing together. The chant song of Chashan is magnificent, broad and magnificent, exciting and high-spirited, which has a very inspiring effect. Chashan chant has unique sound method, peculiar music melody, eight-degree high-pitched area, especially sophisticated, which can be regarded as a wonderful flower of Chinese national vocal music art.

Chant from Life

In addition to farming rice fields, Yao Min also manages a large area of Camellia oleifera plantation. Tea Mountain chant is the work mouth they sing when digging tea mountain in winter. The process is that drummers first offer sacrifices to the God of land, people digging mountains, line up at the foot of the mountain, and then drummers beat drums not far ahead, accompanied by drums, the rhythm of the chant, hoe landing together, digging mountains together, the faster and slower the rhythm is directing the digging mountains. How fast is it?

In the 1950s, Comrade Shu Heiwa, an amateur singer in Dawan Village, Huangxikou Town, once sang several times to Changsha, Beijing and Zhongnanhai with his unique singing voice and singing voice. He Jiguang, a famous singer, once worshiped Shu Heiwa as a teacher, thus making his artistic career more glorious. After listening to Shu Heiwa's singing, many experts and people praised him and said, "There is a Shu Heiwa in Western Hunan, whose voice is better than two suonas".

Legend has it that the Tea Mountain Song has been popular for more than 200 years. In 1956, when the county excavated folk art, it was formally invited to participate in the mass cultural performance and won many awards from the region, province and country. For the Yao family, the chant song of Chashan is a regular meal. Everyone can hum a few passages. Every program celebration or large-scale literary and artistic performances, there is less participation of Chashan chant song, with its participation, to add a national atmosphere to the performance. Its exciting voice resounded through the clouds, and its beautiful melody inspired people to forge ahead.

In 2006, it was selected as the first provincial intangible cultural heritage.

In 2008, it was selected as the second batch of national intangible cultural heritage. Number: 588 II-89

artistic characteristics

Vocal characteristics and singing methods

(1) Characteristics of "wow-wow" cavity

"If you have a song, you will have a wow tune", "wow tune" is suitable for all kinds of chant songs. Generally, in the fast rhythm, there are many ways of singing in chorus. Because of the need of vocalization, almost every sentence in the chant has the foil of "wow-wow" tune. Wow-wow tune is characterized by a series of rapid changes in the pharynx and mouth while the vocal cords stably produce long tunes.

The "wow" sound . Some have no specific lyrics, the whole chant is all sung with "wow wow", such as "wow wow song", the whole song is sung with "wow wow" from beginning to end, is the representative song of Chenxi Chashan chant. The basic tone of Chenxi's Chashan chant is similar to Wawa Wa Ge, but the singer can play, expand or extend freely according to his ability in singing. In singing, singers with good voice conditions, more embellishments and "wow" tunes are the most popular.

(2) Singing Method of Chashan Chant

1. High-pitched singing. The basic method of chant singing in Chenxi Chashan is high-pitched singing. Because Yao Township has a deep mountain and gully, it is very difficult to communicate with people on the opposite mountain when working in the mountains. In the long-term labor practice, people found that only by using falsetto to "shout" to the opposite person, the opposite person can hear, so when "shout" song (singing) will be raised, the singing tone will be prolonged, so that the voice can be sung high and transmitted far, thus forming the unique singing method of Chashan chant - high-pitched singing. 2. Choreography. The break-up singing method includes the tremolo and the tune singing method which appears in the song. Break the cavity to sing jump, pause, solid, appear in the drag cavity when breaking the cavity in singing to pay attention to its lining characteristics and emotional extension, jaw to relax naturally, and fast up and down tremor, and then combined with the rapid changes in the throat cavity and mouth, after the vocal cord stable long line cavity, from slow wave to fast wave, followed by a continuous "wow" sound, wow sound singing, pronunciation. Lightweight and flexible, very flexible and breath of life . Break-up singing is also a difficult way to master. 3. Tune-swinging and gliding singing. In the singing process of Chenxi Chashan chant, Jingqiang is widely used. It appears at the beginning, middle and end of the sentence. The beginning of the Chashan chant or before singing the treble almost always uses glide. When singing a slippery voice, you should lift your breath quickly, then suddenly relax your vocal cords and stop the airflow at the same time. In the process of slipping, you should lift your throat, open your throat and expand the volume of your pharynx and nose. As you go along, you should think about the pitch and fling the treble up to your nose and head with a falsetto like flinging something. This falsetto your nose and head does not sound like the subsequent dragging cavity. It is a pure falsetto, it does not leave the true voice point, and in this change of voice area, there is no real cry, and almost no trace of cohesion. Almost every sentence ends with a slippery sound, which not only enables the singer to have sufficient physical and psychological preparation in the continuous singing, but also to accurately answer the song, keeping in line with the previous sentence, and making the melody full of fluctuation and perfection.

Rhythm and Melody Characteristics

The music rhythm of Chashan chant originates from the rhythm of people's labor. Its rhythm characteristics are determined by the rhythm of their working methods. These rhythm characteristics condense the rhythm characteristics of life and labor and are full of the breath of life. Chenxi Chashan chant song is mostly feather-tone, the melody belongs to the pentatonic scale system, the backbone tones of the mode are more, the deviation is very few, and the melody tone structure is dominated by three-tone series and four-tone series. The rhythm of the melody is very free, and the range is about ten degrees, but the whole range is very high. Sometimes there are some minor rises in the melody. The movement pattern of the pitch of a melody is usually after the high-pitched tone, through which the line cavity or homophone repetition is prolonged, and the final end is in the sliding tone, and usually ends in the main tone or the genus tone. Because of the limitation of labor, the music of Chashan chant is simple in form, and it is impossible to use more music materials, which are often used regularly and repeatedly.

Libretto feature

Chenxi Chashan chant song has the characteristics of freely filling in lyrics and singing at will. It has fixed lyrics and impromptu choreography, the content is very extensive and rich. The lyrics are improvised and compiled by laborers in their work. Its content is not limited to the things directly related to labor, but also includes a wide range of narrative, humorous and love life-related subjects and content. Chashan chant has fixed lyrics at a certain time. For example, there will be fixed lyrics in the beginning of digging, resting, eating and finishing work, while the rest will be improvised by trumpeters, with a wide range of contents, including Yao folklore, Yao family life, love and so on. Short lyrics usually appear at the beginning of a sentence or at the backbone of the melody, which can express people's daily life, such as joy, anger, sadness, music and so on. They can also achieve the perfect combination of "word rhyme".

Chashan chant has unique vocal method, peculiar melody, eight-degree high-pitched area and special high-pitched voice, which can be regarded as a wonderful flower of Chinese national vocal music art. It is hoped that this splendid flower of national culture will be more brilliant today when all kinds of music are flourishing.

Representative works

"Tea Mountain Song", "Western Hunan Tea Mountain Song", "Yao People's Heart to the Party", "Western Hunan Tea Mountain Song" and so on.

Shuheiwa (1910-2004), a native of Dawan Village, Huangxikou Town, Chenxi County. In 1957, he won the first prize in Hunan Folk Art and Literature Festival, and then went to Beijing to participate in the second National Folk Art Festival, which made him famous on the capital stage. In the early 1960s, he was employed by Hunan Folk Song and Dance Troupe as a vocal music teacher. He Jiguang, a famous singer, once worshipped him as a teacher. The unique pronunciation in He Jiguang's representative works "Take on Tea in Beijing" and "Dongting Fish and Rice Township" is due to Shu Heiwa.

Inheritance significance

In order to inherit and develop the Chashan chant, Chenxi County has set up a special intangible cultural heritage protection center to set up personal files for each Chashan chant folk artist, and established a one-to-one inheritance mechanism, that is, the folk artist takes an apprentice with him every year, depending on his singing skills, the county government and cultural departments give a subsidy of 2000 to 5000 yuan per year; and the school is set up in Luozishan Yao Township. A training course was held, with 30 students enrolled. Every Wednesday afternoon, Mi Qingsong concentrated on teaching.

At the same time, Chenxi County also holds competitions and song festivals to provide a platform for exhibition and exchange for the artists of Chashan number one. Not only can the winners be awarded, but also the top three newcomers and their masters be rewarded. The song contest was strongly supported by the old artists. Mi Xianqi, an 84-year-old man who has been singing chants for more than 60 years, got up at 6 a.m. and walked more than 20 miles to participate in the competition. Xiangyi and Xianggang, the sons of the Yao nationality township in Sumuxi, are both descendants of the chant. In order to compete on time, they arrived the day before.

"The purpose of holding the Chashan Chant Competition is to provide a platform for folk artists to understand and participate in the singing of Chashan Chant, to discover, exercise and train talents, to improve the singing level of Chashan Chant, so that Chashan Chant can be widely spread and further protected and inherited." Zhou Dan, Director of Wenguang New Bureau of Chenxi County, said, "In the future, Chenxi will continue to increase its support for Chashan Chant, so that Chashan Chant can be sung all over Yao Township."