Forest chant (Changbai Mountain Forest chant)

Name of China's national intangible cultural heritage: Forest chant (Changbai Mountain Forest chant)

Application area or unit: Jilin Federation of literary and art circles Folk Artists Association

Item No.: 599

Project No.: Ⅱ - 100

Time of publication: 2008 (second batch)

Category: Traditional Music

Region: Jilin Province

Type: new item

Application area or unit: Jilin Federation of literary and art circles Folk Artists Association

Protection unit: Baishan Cultural Heritage Protection Center (Baishan Museum)

Introduction to forest chant (Changbai Mountain Forest chant)

Application area or unit: Jilin Federation of literary and art circles Folk Artists Association

Forest chant is a chant sung by forest woodcutters in the process of cutting, transporting and building trees. It is mainly spread in Changbai Mountain in Northeast China, big and small Xing'an Mountains, Northwest China and South China. Because of the different ways of labor, it has formed a variety of names. For example, in Changbai Mountain area, the number of transporting wood includes mushroom number, daqiezi number, dragline number, Liao number, waqian number, Liusong number, etc. There is also a kind of "raft chant" in the forest areas of central and South China, which is sung by workers when they put "rafts" into the river. Due to the high labor intensity and high risk of forest operation, the chant also has the characteristics of high pitched, extensive, heroic and overwhelming style.

Changbai Mountain Forest chant is a kind of folk song sung by woodcutters in Changbai Mountain Area of Jilin Province when they carry wood. It has been accompanied by forest and cutting labor for thousands of years and has been spread in Changbai Mountain forest. In order to achieve the goal of unifying the labor rhythm and improving the labor efficiency, the leader who carries the wood "bar head" will lead the singing while the others will sing.

According to their functions, Changbai Mountain Forest chants can be divided into many kinds, such as Chuanpo chant, guilang chant, shangtiao chant, tugging rope chant, etc. The starting tone of each song is very important, which is called "rejection" by the people. The size, height, thickness and strength of the "throw" sound determine the mental strength, gait and grasp of transportation distance and time of other receivers. "Shuo" can be divided into "up" and "down". The "up" is the ending of the sound, which means to tell the receiver to work hard upward, while the "down" is the opposite.

Changbai Mountain Forest song has clear rhythm, beautiful melody, unique tone and strong charm, which sounds exciting. In the long-term development process, it has created many representative works of Haozi temperament, such as "old sow hum", "old lady tune", "toad tune", "18 Gua" and so on, and also bred many excellent singers.

Changbai Mountain wooden chant truly records the life form in the development process of this area, shows the genius of the local working people's cultural creativity, and provides important materials for the study of northeast local culture. In recent years, due to the improvement of mechanization and the implementation of forest stoppage policy, as well as the gradual aging of folk artists, the forest songs that have been handed down for thousands of years are gradually declining in Changbai Mountain area, with few inheritors and on the verge of extinction.