Why Yang Gongs and Drums are Losing Their Heritage

However, the development of folk gongs and drums has not been satisfactory in recent years, for example, the folk gongs and drums in many places are facing the loss of skills, and some of the folk gongs and drums are fading away in the historical stage, which is a phenomenon that should not be ignored. This phenomenon cannot be ignored. We need our folk drum and gong inheritors, experts and scholars who study national percussion, and the administrative departments of folk drum and gong to work together to do a lot of work, so that our folk drum and gong can be inherited and developed.

Let the folk gongs and drums play its great social function and value in the modern society. The current situation of folk gongs and drums in different parts of the country have been subjected to different external influences, the inheritors of different ideological realms, the development of their own situation also has a large difference, including the inheritance of the stereotypes of the same; there are also in order to promote the development of a number of adaptations, but in the process of adapting the process of losing a lot of the traditional artistic style that should be fixed on, not in line with the modern people's aesthetics, so it is not similar. However, in the process of adaptation, many traditional artistic styles that should have been maintained have been lost, which are not in line with the aesthetics of modern people and make them unrecognizable; the better-developed folk gongs and drums have been scientifically arranged on the basis of the original drums and drums, and the music structure has been created at a higher artistic level, which has resulted in the formation of the better folk gongs and drums. For example: Taiyuan gongs and drums, Jinnan Weifeng gongs and drums, Jiangzhou drum music, Chaozhou gongs and drums, and Miao drums.

Most folk gongs and drums, however, show the following phenomena in the process of inheritance. Traditional old-fashioned thinking in the audience of folk gongs and drums, the inheritor's thinking and their own artistic qualities are uneven. Many folk artists have old-fashioned ideas. For example, the Jinnan Wei Feng gongs and drums are mainly distributed in nine counties and districts of Linfen City, Shanxi Province, including Huozhou, Fenxi, Hongdong, Yao Du, Fushan, Xiangfen, Houma, Pu County and Xiangning. And each village in each township of each county has its own traditional song. In the traditional Jinnan Wei Feng Gong and Drum system, a large number of villages only play their own songs, not learning from other villages, and the songs of their own villages are never spread. Most of the old folk artists may only play their own ten or eight songs in their whole life, and it is difficult for them to accept outside influences.

Therefore, their own development was greatly limited. The traditional Jinnan gongs and drums performance is "playing songs", and the songs themselves have certain musical rules, but the overall musical structure is too "flat", with poor contrasts between strength and weakness, and poor contrasts between speeds. If we talk about the music itself and the improvement of the art level, we need to combine and complement each other's strengths and weaknesses, and most of the old folk gongs and drums artists have a more old-fashioned way of thinking, and they think that the things left behind by their ancestors can't be changed, and if they are changed, they won't be the things of their ancestors, which makes their stubbornness in this aspect an obstacle to the development of certain things. The serious loss of folk gongs and drums has resulted in a wealth of musical materials after thousands of years of inheritance and development. These folk gongs and drums have formed a treasure trove of national percussion music in China in the form of folk notation and oral transmission from old artists. Although the state has set up a mechanism for the protection of intangible cultural heritage, most of the intangible cultural heritage protection units and intangible cultural heritage representative of the inheritors lack the necessary supervision of the higher unit, supervision is not in place of the protection of intangible heritage can only be a formality, a large part of the gongs and drums of the song has been lost or facing the prospect of being lost. The rescue and protection of traditional folk gongs and drums is an urgent task. The social status of folk gongs and drums practitioners Before the 1970s, the main social function of folk gongs and drums was weddings and funerals. Most of the inheritors of the folk gongs and drums were sons and fathers, family-type folk bands. The social status of such folk bands was extremely low, and they were not even respected, and the practitioners of the bands could only barely support their families. As a result, few people want to learn it, and even fewer take it as a profession, and such social status has been continued until after the liberation. How to make the social status and economic income of folk gongs and drums practitioners to a reasonable height is the current government at all levels and the academic community should think about.