What are the characteristics of folk songs?

There are three characteristics of folk songs:

Firstly, they have the most direct and close connection with the people's social life

The authors of folk songs are the people. It is created by them in their long-term labor and life practice in order to express their lives, express their feelings, express their will and wishes. In the past, the working people were deprived of the right to master culture and could not read or write, let alone know the score, but they made up and sang their own songs by word of mouth to meet the needs of life. For example, "Long Worker's Bitterness" and "The Difficulty of the Laborer's Child" express the sadness of the long workers who suffer from fraudulent oppression; "Embroidered Lotus Bags" expresses the young girl's longing for her lover and her longing for a happy life; "Battering Ram Horns" and "Chuanjiang River Boatmen's Horns" express the bravery of the laborers in their fight against the nature; and "Flowering Toad" and "Dongsil Niang" sing the innocent character of the children's games. But "there are fake poets, but no fake songs" (Feng Menglong, Ming Dynasty). The thoughts and feelings of the people expressed in folk songs are the most real and deepest.

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

The process of creating folk songs and the process of singing and passing them on are one and the same. In the process of singing, improvisation, in the process of creation, singing, circulation, of course, the creation and development of traditional folk songs is a slow, spontaneous process.

Thirdly. The musical form is characterized by simplicity and simplicity, approachability, vividness and flexibility.

The musical form of folk songs is short and concise, with most of them taking the musical section as the basic structural unit, and the structural form of repeating a single musical section to form a sectional song occupies a large proportion in the folk songs, and the musical materials and expressive techniques of the folk songs are very economical and refined. Most of the tones of folk songs have a strong local flavor and local color, which are closely combined with dialect speech, and the musical performance is very life-like, flexible and vivid, with no fixed meter. Good at changing. For a variety of different content, lyrics, singing occasions and conditions have a strong ability to adapt.

The formation of Chinese folk songs

China's folk songs, with a long historical tradition and rich artistic heritage, as far as the primitive society, he was in the heat of the people's collective labor. Only because there is no text and sheet music, the folk songs at that time can not be complete information can be examined. "Poetry" in the "national wind", included one hundred and sixty folk songs in the north of China, although only written records, but enough to show that in the eleventh century BC to the first six centuries, China's folk songs to have a fairly complete, mature art form. For thousands of years, folk songs have been closely accompanying the people, expressing their thoughts and wills, recording their history, and nurturing generations of artists. The "Lefu Folk Songs" of the Han, Wei and Six Dynasties. In the Tang and Song dynasties, there were the "Songs and Lyrics", in the Yuan dynasty, there were the "Songs" and "Ballads", and since the Ming and Qing dynasties, there have been the "Ballads", "Xiaoqu" ...... is the folk song of the sea of a few pearls survived. They are radiating an inextinguishable light in the history of Chinese culture. Over the past half century, Chinese society has undergone fundamental changes, and folk music has embarked on a new course. A large number of new folk songs have been produced during this period, and they have seen greater development in all aspects.

Under the influence of thousands of different natural conditions, social conditions, lifestyles, and ways of labor, folk songs have developed a richness and diversity of subject matter and forms, styles and colors, means of expression, artistic experiences, and tonal materials. It has many ways of categorization.

From the point of view of the content of the subject matter, it can be roughly divided into: reflecting social contradictions and class struggles; reflecting production and labor; reflecting love and marriage; reflecting daily life; amusing and enlightening; singing legends and stories, news about people, scenery and monuments, and so on.

From the point of view of the situation of the subject matter, it can be roughly divided into: trumpets, mountain songs, ditties, dance songs, customs and ceremonial songs and so on. In the new folk songs produced in the last half-century, there are two new elements of the theme of marching songs and chants. From the point of view of style and color, there are fifty-six nationalities in our country, and the folk songs of each nationality enrich the treasury of music culture of our motherland with their own unique style characteristics. In some of the large number of people, living in a wide range of ethnic groups, such as Han, Tibet, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Uygur, Zhuang, etc., but also in accordance with the different local characteristics of the subdivided.

It is well known that other categories of folk music, such as opera, opera, folk instrumental music, etc., are developed on the basis of folk songs, and professional music creation cannot be separated from the nourishment of folk songs. And they enrich the content of folk songs with their own artistic characteristics and professional skills, refine the form of these folk songs, and give a positive influence on the development of folk songs.

The folk songs of various ethnic groups, regions and periods in China are as beautiful as the brilliant white flowers blooming everywhere. The ones introduced here are just a drop in the ocean of folk songs.