What are the characteristics of folk songs?

Folk songs have three characteristics:

First, it has the most direct and close connection with people's social life.

The authors of folk songs are the masses of the people, who created them in order to express their lives, express their feelings and express their will and wishes in the long-term labor and life practice. In the past, working people were deprived of the right to master culture. They could not read books or watch music, but relied on word of mouth to compose and sing their own songs to meet the needs of life. For example, "Long-term Workers Suffer" and "Difficulties in Recruiting Workers" pour out the sadness of long-term workers being defrauded and oppressed; Embroidered purse expresses the girl's longing for her lover and yearning for a happy life. Song of Tamping and Song of Chuanjiang Boatman show the heroic spirit of laborers in their struggle with nature. "Toad Flower" and "Winter Silk Niang" sing the innocent character of children when playing games. But "there are fake poets and no fake folk songs" (Ming and Feng Menglong). The people's thoughts and feelings expressed by folk songs are the most real and profound.

Secondly, folk songs are gradually formed and developed through extensive mass improvisation and oral singing. It is the crystallization of the wisdom of countless people

The creation process, singing process and circulation process of folk songs are integrated into one. In the process of singing, it is improvisation, and in the process of composing, it is spread. Of course, the process of creation and development of traditional folk songs is slow and spontaneous.

Third, the musical form is simple, approachable and vivid.

Folk songs are short and pithy, and most of them take music fragments as the basic structural unit. The structure of segmented songs, which is composed of a single piece of music, occupies a large proportion in folk songs, and the musical materials and expressions of folk songs are economical and refined. Most of the tones of folk songs have a strong local flavor and local color. They are closely combined with dialect pronunciation, with vivid music performance, flexible and vivid form, no fixed beat, good at change and strong adaptability to various contents, lyrics, singing occasions and conditions.