What is Chinese folk music?

Narrowly speaking, the so-called Chinese folk music is the music that reflects the national culture and spirit of the various ethnic groups that have been living and reproducing on this piece of land in China from ancient times to the present day on the basis of a long historical and cultural tradition with national characteristics. In a broader sense, Chinese music refers to the music of the world that is characterized by pentatonic modulation.

Chinese folk music is a very distinctive art form in the world. Over thousands of years of civilization, the Chinese people have created a large number of excellent folk music cultures and formed a folk music system with profound connotation and rich content. This system occupies an important position in world music. If we want to know Chinese music, we can't just sing some Chinese songs and listen to a few traditional music pieces, but we must also examine Chinese music from the perspective of ethnicity, history, and geography, and understand Chinese music, so as to truly comprehend the connotation of Chinese music and understand its status and historical value in the world music system.

Chinese folk music is divided into: folk songs, folk song and dance music, folk instrumental music, folk rap music and folk opera music.

From the present situation, the classification of folk songs includes: classification of musical genres, classification of lyrics topics, regional classification, classification of combination of genres and topics, classification of folk originality, classification of structural formation, classification of occasions, classification of language, classification of historical eras, classification of color zones, and other several major classifications.

Divided into nine categories by genre form. Namely: trumpets, mountain songs, field songs, ditties, dance songs, fishing songs, ritual songs, children's songs, and life tones.

Under the major categories are divided into a number of sub-categories. For example, the horn is divided into nine categories:

1. engineering horn; 2. forestry horn; 3. shipwright's horn; 4. agricultural horn; 5. mining horn; 6. stonemason's horn; 7. porter's horn; 8. marine boat fishing horn; 9. workshop horn.

Under each sub-category is divided into a number of sub-items. For example, the forestry bugle is subdivided into the following six kinds:

1) logging bugle; ② lifting wood bugle; ④ flow to send the bugle; ⑤ prying drifting bugle; ⑥ row of work, put bamboo rafts bugle

1. In the category name, both the original title and the Chinese translation of the Chinese title in front of the original name is placed in parentheses at the back, such as the Mongolian folk songs. Some folk songs of some ethnic groups, where the native appellations have been generalized, have the native appellations placed in front, such as the folk songs of the southern dialect area of the Dong ethnic group.

2. In the category name, only the native title, according to the provincial volume categories as recorded. Such as Sichuan Kangba, Ando dialect area of Tibetan folk songs.

3. Some ethnic minority folk songs in the category of generic Chinese title, in the database that respect the habits of the ethnic group, still using Chinese title. For example, the Miao folk songs of Guizhou.

4. The folk songs of individual ethnic groups were not categorized when compiling the provincial (regional) volumes, nor were they categorized when compiling the database. For example, Xinjiang Uyghur folk songs.