Inheritance of Xinhua Folk Songs

Xinhua is the hometown of traditional folk songs. Since 1950s, Xinhua folk songs have developed to a prosperous stage. 1956, Xinhua held a chorus of thousands of Meishan folk songs, which was huge and had an audience of nearly 10,000 people, causing a sensation in the suburbs. During the period of 1957, Wu Xizhen, a famous folk singer, went to Beijing to participate in the national folk art performance, and the Xinhua folk song "The Immortal Descent to Earth is Hard to Guess" won the first prize. She sang "New Huashan" in Huairentang, Zhongnanhai, and Mao Zedong, Liu Shaoqi, Zhou Enlai, He Long and other central leaders have heard her sing folk songs many times. Once, after listening to folk songs, Chairman Mao held Wu Xizhen's hand and said happily: Songs that grow in the mud are crisp and pleasant.

In 1990s, with the decline of traditional farming culture and the impact of modern media culture, the new folk songs taught by mouth are facing the crisis of extinction. The older generation of folk singers died one after another, and the young singers were short of successors, facing the dilemma of blind date.

Xinhua County Party Committee and government attach great importance to the rescue and protection of intangible cultural heritage represented by Xinhua folk songs. In 2005, they established the intangible cultural heritage protection center, formulated a set of relatively perfect protection implementation plan and five-year plan, set up a special fund, set up a special working group, went deep into the rural areas of the county to conduct a dragnet survey, collected and sorted out more than a thousand folk songs and 10 music scores, incorporated them into local textbooks, and conducted pilot teaching in some schools.

In 2005, Meishan Folk Song Chorus selected by Xinhua County won the silver prize in the 6th National Disabled People's Art Show held in Wuhan. In 2006, at the 4th Meishan Cultural Seminar in China, Treasure Hunting in Mountain Opera directed by the County Troupe was well received by experts. In the same year, Xinhua folk songs were included in the first batch of intangible cultural heritage list in Hunan Province. This year, Xinhua folk songs are actively applying for the national intangible cultural heritage list.

Representative figures are Wu Xianzong, Dai, Zhang Yican, Fang, etc.