Yao folk song (Huayao Wuwa folk song)

Name of China's national intangible cultural heritage: Yao folk songs (Huayao Wuwa folk songs)

Applicant: longhui County, Hunan Province

Item No.: 609

Project No.: Ⅱ - 110

Time of publication: 2008 (second batch)

Category: Traditional Music

Region: Hunan Province

Type: new item

Applicant: longhui County, Hunan Province

Protection unit: longhui County Intangible Cultural Heritage Protection Center

Yao folk song (Huayao Wuwa folk song)

Applicant: longhui County, Hunan Province

Yao nationality is a typical mountain nationality in southern China, mainly distributed in Guangxi, Hunan, Yunnan, Guangdong, Jiangxi, Hainan and other provinces. Yao folk songs have many sentence patterns, such as five character, seven character, Qupai style, long and short sentence, etc. These folk songs can be divided into love songs, custom songs, production songs, bitter songs, resistance songs and so on. Love songs can be divided into leading love songs, love songs, parting songs, sending love songs, love hate songs, free songs, pan songs and so on.

Huayao Wuwa folk song is an ancient folk music art unique to Huayao people. It has a history of thousands of years, and is mainly spread in huxingshan Yao Township, longhui County, Hunan Province. Wuwa folk song originated from the labor songs of Huayao ancestors. After a long period of development, it gradually formed a unique style and finally evolved into a kind of high pitched folk song. Its development history mainly includes the embryonic period of the ancestors, the gestation period from the end of Yuan Dynasty to the beginning of Ming Dynasty, and the mature period from Ming Dynasty to the Republic of China.

Based on production, life and folklore, Huayao Wuwa folk songs can be roughly divided into four categories: historical songs, custom songs, production and labor songs and love songs. Most of Huayao's Wuwa folk songs are sung by adult men in the way of combining true and false voices. The melody is free in rhythm, loud and clear in voice, with a long tune, often mixed with "Wuwa" and other lining words.

Wuwa folk song is quite neat, generally seven character, nine character or eleven character is a sentence, each song is mostly six sentence lyrics, generally with double sentence rhyme, and the expression techniques such as direct presentation, metaphor, arousal, exaggeration, antithesis, parallelism, repetition, question and answer are often used in the words and sentences. The rhyme of Wuwa folk song is called tune. Each tune has a fixed name composed of three words, which is similar to the name of Qupai, which is not found in other folk songs. According to the research, there are 24 tunes in Huayao Wuwa folk songs, and about 10 of them are handed down now, such as "young boy", "my elder brother", "I am virtuous", "let's listen to the words" and so on.

Wuwa folk songs fully and vividly reflect the life form and cultural tradition of Huayao in Longhui, and its content is equivalent to the growth history of Huayao. The high pitched melody of this kind of folk song can't be compared with other folk songs. Just as music experts evaluate, even the most famous singers in the world can't sing the high pitch of Wuwa folk song. The "Wuwa" in the song symbolizes the indomitable spirit of Huayao people who dare to fight against the harsh environment. Even the pursuit of love is magnificent and earth shaking, which fully reflects the firm and optimistic, sincere and enthusiastic national character of Huayao people, and provides a fresh example for ethnological research. At present, the old generation of Huayao singers are few, and the inheritance of Wuwa folk songs needs to be solved.