Hubei Xiaoqu

Name of China's national intangible cultural heritage: Hubei Xiaoqu

Applicant: Wuhan City, Hubei Province

Item No.: 763

Project No.: V - 70

Time of publication: 2008 (second batch)

Category: quyi

Region: Hubei Province

Type: new item

Applicant: Wuhan City, Hubei Province

Protection unit: Wuhan rap troupe Co., Ltd

Hubei Xiaoqu

Applicant: Wuhan City, Hubei Province

Hubei Xiaoqu, formerly known as "Hantan Xiaoqu", "Hantan silk line" and "Waijiang Xiaoqu", is mainly popular in Hankou, Shashi, Yichang and other areas along the Yangtze River. It originated from the folk songs of Ming and Qing Dynasties. It is a combination of Hantan Xiaoqu and tianmian Xiaoqu. It has a history of more than 300 years.

Hubei Xiaoqu is a free and flexible form of rap and singing. It can be performed by one person, or by more than two people sitting, standing and walking. The most common form is two people sitting. The performers are born, Dan's profession, singing and accompanying by themselves, playing erhu and Tan ban Festival. Generally speaking, his singing style is multi melody, but also single melody. Most of the libretto are composed of seven character, four character and cross sentence structure, and there are also five character, long and short sentence and pile sentence between them. Hubei Xiaoqu originally had more than 300 singing tunes, of which more than 120 have been handed down to the present day. The commonly used ones are "Nanqu tou", "Nanqu Zhengban", "Nanqu Wei", "Wenci Diao", "tanhuang Diao", "Xiqiang", "Siping", "tanwugeng", etc., which can be used to sing some single and miscellaneous operas with complex plots. These tunes can be roughly divided into five categories: the first is Nanqu, which is the main singing style of Hubei Xiaoqu; the second is Wenci, which is evolved from the popular Wenci music in Eastern Hubei; the third is tanhuang, which is evolved from the inflow of Wuyue tunes; the fourth is Xiqiang, which is evolved from Jingzhou "Xiqiang"; the fifth is Zapai, which is adopted from Hubei folk tunes.

The traditional repertoire of Hubei Xiaoqu is quite rich. More than 180 of the original 300 repertoire have been handed down. Among them, the representative works are snatching umbrella, Xijing Ci and Su Wenbiao borrowing clothes. Most of the contents of the repertoire come from legends, dramas and folk stories, most of which are about love. Some of the repertoires are about people's suffering, fighting against national oppression, reflecting women's unfortunate fate, pursuing freedom and happiness, and resisting the old feudal ethics. In addition, there are also some short passages full of knowledge and interest. In these traditional repertoires, the long "Big Ben tou" such as "the eastern expedition" and "the western expedition" can be sung continuously for several months, while the short repertoire is similar to the "Fen Jie Ge" in folk songs. Hubei Xiaoqu shows strong local characteristics of Hubei, which has certain research value in social history, regional culture, folk art and so on. However, this precious folk art style has no successors and is in danger, which is in urgent need of protection.