Huizhou Folk Art: Huidong Fishing Song Culture

Huidong fishermen's songs have a variety of tunes and unique melodic flavors, and they also provide rich and precious materials for music creation. Huidong fishing song from the Song Dynasty by the Fujian coast into the shallow sea fishing songs in Huidong. It is one of the Han folk arts in Guangdong Province. Let's get to know the culture of Huizhou together 吧。

"Huidong Fishing Song" is popular in Huidong County's harbor, Nishan Fan Harbor, Yanzhou New Fishing Village, Xunliao New Fishing Village and other places. The local people call it "Hou Boat Song" or "City Song", and it belongs to the shallow-sea fishing song category of "Guangdong East Fishing Song". It belongs to the category of shallow-sea fishing songs in the "Guangdong East Fishing Songs", which is the same as the fishing songs of fishing villages in some coastal cities and counties in Guangdong Province, such as Shanwei, Haifeng, Bao'an and Huiyang, etc., and is largely the same as the customs and singing styles of the fishermen of the above places. But because they live in different areas for a long time, by the local customs, language, culture, temple music, local opera and folk tunes, so that the same fishing songs in a slightly different style of singing, each with its own characteristics.

Out of the cherished folk art, Ye Lin raised the pen, wrote to the provincial party committee leaders, calling attention to the plight of Huidong fishing songs on the verge of being lost, and talked about their own vision of saving Huidong fishing songs. This letter has received a high degree of attention from Zhu Xiaodan and other leaders of the provincial party committee, and the letter was sent down to all levels of government after being approved and copied.

Huidong fishing songs have "ah ah incense tune", "la hit cry do cry tune", "huh incense tune", "xian di tune ", "Luo Yin tone" and so on more than 20 varieties. Limited to fishermen singing on the boat, solo and sing, fishermen live in groups to "answer the song" (i.e., the song, or called fight song) for fun, are not accompanied by musical instruments; its melody has a strong flavor of local opera music and temple music; lyrics structure is mostly upper and lower sentences, a call and response sentence type. The lyrics are simple and concise, which is a good reference and inspiration for the creation of modern lyrics.

Huidong fishing songs in the decade of the catastrophe in the vitality of the fishermen "wash their feet on the shore" ushered in a new era, before the familiar, everyone will sing the fishing songs are gradually forgotten, only in the fishing village rituals, festivals, weddings and funerals and other occasions, can be heard to stay in the classic old fishing songs.

Many writers and composers have come to Huidong fishing villages and created a large number of works on fishing songs. The fishing songs of Huidong are a precious heritage of Chinese Han regional culture, but are in danger of being lost.