A Brief Introduction to the Bai People of Baiju Drama

The Bai people are a people who can sing and dance well, and all aspects of their life can be expressed in songs and dances. For example, there are dances in Dabenqu, such as sheep-herding, graveyard, forcing love, sacrificing, asking for souls, and homesickness; and there are tea-picking dances, water-carrying dances, drunkenness dances, wine ritual dances, end-plate toasting dances, and water-offering dances in the folk dances. Speaking of Bai songs and dances to say to the Western Han Dynasty rhetorician Sima Xiangru, who in the "Shanglin Fugue" has listed some of the Western Han Dynasty popular music and dance song, which has "Wencheng upside down song". Sima Zhen of the Tang Dynasty made a note on "Wencheng Bengge" in "Shiji Suoyin": "Wencheng is the name of a county in western Liaoning, and its people are good at singing. Beng" is the name of the county in Liaosi, whose people were good at singing. "Beng" is the name of the county in Yizhou, whose people were good at singing. The word "Beng" means "Dian". Southwestern barbarians was a general term for the Southwestern ethnic minorities during the Han Dynasty. Sima Xiangru, who knew about music and rhythm, had traveled to the Southwest Barbarians under the order of Emperor Wu, and the song he recounted was not only a song, but also an art form that included song, dance, and music. This in the Dianchi Lake in the county home of the Banshen Jinning Shizhai Mountain and nearby Jiangchuan Lijia Mountain excavations of bronze musical instruments, music and dance figurines and bronze decorative music and dance modeling can be corroborated. The date of production of the Western Han Dynasty at the latest. Sima Xiangru saw the song in the upside down guess is "playing songs". At that time, the Bai people did not have the written word, the song can only be passed on from generation to generation by the spoken word, by the spoken word processing additions and deletions. The ancestors of the Bai people through the song entertainment form, one for their own entertainment, eliminating the night cold, loneliness and fatigue, to obtain spiritual pleasure; two for the entertainment of the gods, that is, to honor the ghosts and gods in order to pray for the blessing of peace, to obtain spiritual comfort; three for the transmission of the ancient, education of the future generations do not forget the ancestors, in order to obtain the support of the spirit. The Bai people have a saying that "the old man does not pass on the old, the small man lost the genealogy". Like the long narrative song handed down to us, "Open Heaven and Open Earth" recounts the process by which Pangu Pansheng opened heaven and earth to create all things. Sheep Song" describes the nomadic life of ancient Dian people, and proudly sings: "Dali is a good place, sheep ah fat and fat. Dali is a good place, wool is three feet six long."

The Bai people sing to later, with the expansion of the influence of the Han culture, naturally accepted the Han folklore and historical stories, there are a lot of dramatic chapters, such as "reading song" (Liang Zhu story), "Zhu Geliang", "Chu and Han struggle", "Eight Immortals Crossing the Sea" and so on. These songs are just historical stories of Han folklore to express the spirit of the Bai nationality, so they have distinctive characteristics of the Bai nationality. For example, the "Reading Song" of Liang Zhu is sung, and the "Willow Shade Worship" is changed to "Pine Worship", and after the "Worship", the "Point Cang Mountain" is also traveled. In "The Opening of Heaven and Earth", a brother and sister get married, "Who will be the master? Please ask the pine tree to be the master." Therefore, the white people from the ancient custom, married people have in front of the color room door and heaven and earth in front of the hall planted a pair of pine tree custom. The Han Chinese Liang Zhu did not write about the labor of Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai, but the Liang Zhu in the "Reading Song" builds a straw hall, makes tables and stools, picks water and burns the fire to cook by herself, and changes the plot of "sending off eighteen people together" into a game of chess and a trial of playing the pipa. At the end of the Yingtai into the tomb of Shanbo also added a golden hoe from the grave dug out two sticks, two sticks were thrown into the river, turned into two goldfish, two goldfish were netted up and buried in the river, and turned into two willow trees. The two goldfish were netted and buried by the river, and then turned into two willow trees. Then the golden axe was used to cut down the willow trees, and the wood pieces were turned into pairs of butterflies. Finally Liang Zhu becomes a pair of double mandarin ducks and Ma Wencai becomes a single mandarin duck. The enhancement of the storyline gives it a basis for association with opera. There are also songs and dances around the three spirits that are related to the opera. "Around three spirit" called "Sana" in white, is the Dali Bai in the lunar calendar April 23-25 held a kind of song and dance event with some kind of shrine legacy. Around the three spirit in the dress old man holding a crooked hanging small gourd 芦 bamboo cane, is likely to be the evolution of the sacred tree that is the social tree (mulberry tree), gourd is closely related to reproduction of the sublime nature of the object, its origin and the ancient worship of life of the Han Chinese "society" of the "gathering of the community to drink", the same, that is, during the season of abundant life, that is, in the season of life, that is, in the season of the richness of life, that is, in the season of the richness of life, that is, the "social drinking". The origin of the gourd is the same as that of the "gathering and social drinking" of the ancient Han people who worshipped the "society" of life, i.e., the free intercourse ceremony of gathering men and women, singing and dancing in the spring (Chunshe), the season of abundant life. The Bai people have many legends about the evolution of the mass singing and dancing ceremonies around the three spirits. For example, in ancient times, there was a year of drought in Dali, and at the time of planting rice seedlings, no rain fell from the sky, so the seedlings could not be inserted. Later, the people gathered in the temple of the Lord of Xi Zhou Jiu Tang God built a rain platform, chanting and praying to the Lord for rain, to April 25 this day it really rained. From then on, the people believed in the Lord and went to the temple on April 25 every year to pray for rain. There is also a legend around the three spirit is for a dead love of the people of the emperor mourning. Obviously, with the development of the Bai society, the Lord of the People replaced the Lord of the World. Zhang Wenxun edited the "history of Bai literature" recorded the legend, said the ancient Bai people have a love of the emperor died, "because he was able to implement benevolent government, the people loved him, he died, the people for his funeral, holding a pestle and a branch of the willow tree, the willow tree on the hanging of the white cloth and water bowls, to express the love of the emperor of the people's condolences, this form once a year. Later, the mortar and pestle in people's hands became the king's whip, the bowl of purifying water became the money drum, and the red cloth was hung on the willow branch instead of the white cloth."

By the Qing Dynasty, its music tunes absorbed a large number of Bai folk songs and dance tunes. Such as "digging water tune", "out of the door tune", "Dali ancient scenery", jumping is the king whip, money drum dance, playing gongs and drums, flute, suona, etc..

The poems of the Bai literati in the Qing Dynasty depicted this: "The money drums and the whip of the king, the hands push and knock the arm rotating, the most is the song of the little nuns, singing into the sky of love." (Xianfeng years of the Bai poet Duan bit "around the three spirit of bamboo words".

"Qu singing people's home with the mouth," around the three Ling is to sing while walking, improvised words, basically "seven seven seven five" of the Bai tune lyrics form, which is the same lineage with the Dabenqu Shanhua body poetry style lyrics. Any national opera is inseparable from the cultural nourishment of the nation, and at the same time, it is inseparable from the influence of other national cultures. The Bai people's Dabenqu and Blow Blow cavity is in the Bai people's folk songs and dances and rap on the basis of the development.

The Dabenqu is composed of hundreds of Bai tunes, usually accompanied by three strings and suona. In the course of its development, it gradually formed a comprehensive opera art of rap, song and dance. Some say that it originated in the Tang Dynasty, while others say that it originated in the Ming Dynasty. If only from the lyrics of "seven, seven, seven, seven, five" Shanhua style, it is not very convincing to infer that Dabenqu originated in the Tang Dynasty. Because the Bai people have a synthesis of the embryonic art of opera will certainly be affected by the Han Chinese local opera, and the Han Chinese local opera is the rise of the Yongzheng Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty, so the rise of the Dabenqu and spread only after this.

Early Dabenqu

is a person holding the three strings to play and sing, singing is the Bai tune, the development of the later eighteen tunes. Eighteen tunes are the singing of minor keys, there are [crab tune], [old sparrow tune], [new sparrow tune], [flower spectrum tune], [family tree tune], [Pipa tune], [flower tune], [goat herding tune], [graveyard tune], [Taoist love tune], [sacrifice tune], [yin and yang tune], [the starting of the scripture conference tune], [worship tune], [ask the soul of the tune], [SiXiangLing], [blood lake pool], [bees picking honey], and so on.

Looking at the Husband's Cloud

It is a Bai opera written by Bai playwright Yang Ming based on Bai folklore, and was brought to Beijing by the Bai Opera Troupe of the Dali Bai Autonomous Prefecture in mid-November 1980 for a debriefing performance, which was performed in the Palace of Ethnic Culture for 11 shows. The main character of the play, Princess Ah Feng, was played by Ye Xintao, and the hunter Ah Long was played by Yang Yongzhong. The opera's singing style is a good combination of Bai Dabenqu and Blow Blow, which is both euphemistic and delicate, and expresses the thoughts and emotions in an exciting and bright way. According to the needs of plot development and character performance, the play also includes dance scenes with Bai customs and folklore, such as "Around the Mountain Forest", "The King's Whip", "Giving God's Wings", "The Fairy Scattering Flowers", and "The Fairy Scattering Flowers", "Fairy Scattering Flowers" and so on. It was well received by the audience in the capital.

The story of "The Cloud of Hope" was also created in the era of Nanzhao, and it is said that the king of Nanzhao had a princess, Ah Feng, who was very beautiful and fell in love with a handsome and brave hunter, Ah Long. In order to pursue a free and happy love life, she escaped from the palace with the hunter and came to live happily on the peak of Cangshan Mountain. When the King of Nanzhao found out that the Princess had fled, he asked the Venerable Master Luo Quan to knock the hunter into the Erhai Sea and turn him into a stone mule. The Nanzhao Princess died of grief because she was looking forward to and missing her beloved. After her death, she was transformed into a white cloud, every year in August and September, the white cloud appeared to be a gale, until blowing away the water of the Erhai Sea to see the stone mule, before the winds and waves calm down. The white people sympathize with the princess, the beautiful white cloud called "hope husband cloud".

Large-scale modern white drama "Love Warms Cangshan Mountain"

Modern white drama "Love Warms Cangshan Mountain" is set against the backdrop of the rural life of the Bai people, and unfolds the plot of the contradictions and entanglements of the township head, Tian Xiulan, and her husband, Manager Zhao, her brother, Tian Jinsheng, and the rural village of Liu Erbao, etc., which depicts the story of Liu Erbao's family of simplicity and goodness, victimized by the back of the pot, and the township head, Ah Xiu, who struggled to get out of the quagmire of the family affairs and reveal the truth of the story of reflection. Shaped a love for love, frank and honest as an official for the image of the township chief, showing the modern Bai rural characters and customs and folklore.

The play was unanimously praised by the audience, experts and leaders in the Yunnan New Drama (Programs) Showcase 2000, and was undisputedly ranked at the top of the list of award-winning dramas (programs) in the show. Theater critics believe that the success of the play does not lie in catching up with the fashionable "new", but lies in the honest "true", lies in the real and true feelings, and the real is the life of art. As far as the material is concerned, "Warmth of Cangshan" has nothing new, but is a commonplace in the countryside of fake pesticides, fake seeds and other events, on the storyline there is nothing particularly surprising. The play centers around farmer Liu Erbao, who makes a scene at the wedding banquet of township chief Tian Xiulan because of fake pesticides that burned his crops, and Tian Xiulan's investigation into the source of the fake pesticides. The playwright's skill lies in focusing, refining and summarizing such an ordinary event to make it typical, without departing from the basic principles of traditional realism. The plot of the play, the composition of character relationships, the unfolding of the plot, the development of character, the advancement of dramatic contradictions and conflicts, the use of suspense, anticipation, and abrupt changes, all are natural and smooth, without any sense of artifice, in line with both the logic of life, and the logic of feelings of the characters in the prescribed situation, so as to make the reality of life and artistic reality better unified, so that the audience feels Real and believable, happy to accept, for the success of the theater performance has laid a good foundation. Real is the life of art, and true feelings is the spring of life of art, the success of the "warmth of Cangshan" lies in the fact that it wrote the true feelings, with the true feelings of people, the play around the tracking down of fake pesticide sources to start a series of dramatic conflicts, are centered on a "love" word. Affection, township love, the party and the people's flesh and blood is the core of the play, the township head Tian Xiulan Mei Kailan, and her new husband, Zhao manager love, and her hand pulled up the younger brother Tian Jinsheng from childhood, and never thought of is that trafficking in fake pesticides is their own younger brother, but also pulled out of their own newlywed husbands, and fake pesticides and their own hands from her husband's company to help Liu Erbao to buy, such a double! Coincidence caused by the misunderstanding, is to jump into the Yellow River is also difficult to clear, on the other hand, by the fake pesticides victimized Liu Erbao, but also precisely her and live together for twenty years, nurturing her growth of the folks. More seriously, as a township chief, the fake pesticide incident not only affects the reputation of the family, their own prestige among the masses, but also directly affects the image of the party, the party and the masses of the flesh and blood. Tian Xiulan is not a saint, she needs affection, she needs home, she can not bear to see the loss of the folks, but also can not bear to see the pesticide has suffered Liu Erbao suffered injustice, but to make amends, a variety of emotional impact, so that she fell into an extremely complex and difficult emotional network difficult to extricate themselves from, and even more difficult to make a decisive choice. The most difficult thing for people to cut off is love, the most tortured is no more than love, the most difficult to choose is also love, the script put Tian Xiulan in the dilemma of this difficult choice of true love, to start the inner emotional struggle between family love, township love, the Party and the masses of flesh and blood, and in this struggle will be the character's inner world of emotional richness, authenticity, nobility and charisma presented to the audience to make people feel dear, lovely and respectable, and thus both emotionally and rationally. In the course of this struggle, the character's inner world, emotional richness, truthfulness, nobility and charisma are presented to the audience, making them feel close, lovely and honorable, so that they accept the character of Tian Xiulan, the mayor of the township, both emotionally and intellectually, and of course accept the theme of the play.

Axiu Township Chief

The play won five prizes for outstanding repertoire, playwriting, performance, choreography, and music composition in the province's new play (festival) exhibition in 2000, and six prizes for repertoire, performance, and music at the 7th Chinese Theater Festival in 2001, and was renamed Axiu Township Chief and made into an opera drama series that was broadcast nationwide.

The playwright: Wei Shusheng; director: Li Peng; music designers: Wang Maolin and Zhang Liangshan; choreographers: Zhang Shoupei, Jiang Guo, Yang Guangbing and Yang Yueming; and main actors: Ye Xintao, Yang Yikun, Ma Yongkang, Zhao Wensheng, Dong Hanxian, Peng Qiang, Zhao Xianzhi and Yang Liuzhong.

Bai Opera - Dali Bai Dance, Dali Bai Bai Opera, also known as "Bai Opera". Formerly known as blowing blowing cavity, referred to as "blowing cavity", Dali Bai Bai Opera is in 1958 since the absorption of the Dali Bai Dabenqu tunes, is some of the music and dance of the Dali Bai and Yunnan Dian Opera music and the development of new types of theater. Blow blowing cavity, originally popular in the Dali Bai area, raw, Dan, net, end, ugly and other lines complete, there are certain performance programs, singing cavity has more than 30 kinds of, according to the line and the plot to the name. The music of Bai Opera is accompanied by suona, and the performance is full of songs and dances. The lines and faces are largely the same as those of classical Chinese theater. The scripts of Dali Bai Bai Opera include Dou Yi Xia Ke, Liu Yin Ji, Python Legend, Burning Song Ming Building, Blood and Sweat Shirt, Du Chao Xuan, Zhao Long Guan Lantern, etc. The lyrics of Dali Bai Bai Opera are sung in the form of suona. The lyrics of Dali Bai Opera are sung in "Shanhua Style", and the dialogues are in Dali Bai mixed with Chinese, but the Chinese characters should be read in white. Before 1949, there was no professional drama group (class) in Dali Bai Bai Bai Opera, but a self-indulgent Dali Bai folk organization.1 In 1959, the "Dali Bai Autonomous Prefecture Blow Blow Dance Troupe" was formally established, which was changed to the "Dali Bai Autonomous Prefecture White Opera Troupe" in 1962. In 1962, it was changed to the "Bai Opera Troupe of Dali Bai Autonomous Prefecture. In terms of singing, the troupe mainly sings Dabenqu, absorbing the Blow-Blow Cavity, and sings with the accompaniment of three strings and suona, and uses percussion to control the rhythm. Dali Bai Bai Opera has performed large-scale dramas such as "Blood and Sweat Shirt", "Looking at the Husband's Cloud", "Red Three Strings", "Cangshan Alliance", "Mrs. Bai Jie", "Peacock's Gallows", and "Princess A Gai", etc., which explored the development of Dali Bai Bai Opera. Now Bai Opera has become an important opera genre of China's ethnic minorities. It is based on the story of Duan Gong in the history of Nanzhao, which is the same story as Mr. Guo Moruo's famous play "Peacock Guts". At the end of the Yuan Dynasty, King Liang, the ruler of the Yuan Dynasty in Yunnan, in order to enlist Duan Gong, the governor of Dali, betrothed his daughter, A Gai, to Duan Gong as his wife, so as to achieve the goal of stabilizing the rule of the Yuan Dynasty in Yunnan. Duan Gong's outstanding wisdom and easy-going character won him the hearts of the people. In the meantime, the King of Liang was afraid that Duan Gong would threaten his rule due to the slanderous rumors he heard from the traitors, so he secretly ordered his daughter (Duan Gong's wife), Agai, to kill Duan Gong with poisonous wine made from peacock's gall. Kind and beautiful grassland "bet not reed flower" A Gai princess did not yield to power, against her father's orders, advised Duan Gong together to escape back to Dali to avoid trouble, but the straight Duan Gong firmly believe that the innocent will be able to clear their own, "one away from a thousand curses" of the foolhardiness of the belief that with the King of Liang "discernment is not the only thing. However, Duan Gong is convinced that the innocent will be cleared of the charges against him, and he wants to fight with the King of Liang to distinguish between right and wrong. Duan Gong was eventually killed by the King of Liang after being ambushed by a treacherous minister, Shi La. A Gai, because of her husband's murder, drank the poisoned wine that her father, the King of Liang, had tried to poison Duan Gong with, and died as a martyr for her husband.

The white opera "Princess Agai" is characterized by "giving her husband", "praising her husband", "persuading her husband", "supporting her husband" and "martyring her husband". A tragedy of life. The playwright in the creation of the play, the artistic point of view is very clear, the white opera must go its own way, the creation of the play must be based on the culture of the Bai people, must reflect the history of the nation and the typical image of modern life. The creation of the White Drama "Princess Agai" is the product of this philosophy. Although the subject matter is the same as Mr. Guo Moruo's famous play "Peacock Guts", the creation of which is undoubtedly self-inflicted problems, the playwright took a unique path to reread the history from the cultural perspective of the Bai people, and used the "Mongolian girl A Gai is a good daughter-in-law of the Bai people" as the main emotional line to go his own way to rearranging the scene and the story. The script is still a court drama, but it is full of love between husband and wife, father and son, and the deep love of human nature, which makes the story full of heavy and tragic colors, and extends the death of Duan Kung to the high level of "the nation must be united". After the launch of "Princess Agai", it has won nine awards, including the first prize for the comprehensive performance, the first prize for the music and the silver prize for the creation of the play in Yunnan Province, the first prize for the performance in the Third China Arts Festival, the first prize for the excellent play in the national "The First Troupe in the World" exhibition, and the single award of "Wenhua". Wenhua" single award. The play was awarded the Silver Prize by the Yunnan Provincial Government, and was selected by CCTV in 1996 as one of its "Opera Excellence Library".