Chapter 25 Part III Celebrating Festivals and Watching Lanterns Section 25 The Art of the Miao People in Western Hunan

You don't have as many songs as I do. I have three songs that are as many as cow hair. After singing for three years and six months, I just finished singing a cow's ear. This is a four-sentence folk song from my hometown when I watched the Niuzi singing competition. It is healthy, happy, and a little humorous. When I sing it, I really feel happy for each other.It turns out that the author is Miao or Han, but there is no way to know, because the same good folk songs are popular in the ten counties of the Miao Autonomous Prefecture. For those who have lived in the Central-South Brother ethnic areas for a while, there are two things that are most likely to retain the impression of the local people: love of beauty and enthusiasm.

The love of beauty is especially evident in women's attire.The materials used are generally dark homemade cloth, or plaid, or dark blue and light green. The cuffs and trousers are mostly made of a few colorful and beautiful edges, some are ingenious embroidery, and some are just made of ordinary calico. Cutting and patchwork of materials, together with individual styled embroidered aprons and a hand-woven flower belt, give people a healthy, simple and unusually moving impression on the upper body.Coupled with some jewelry made by silversmiths in Piaoxiang, it is really harmonious and beautiful in terms of color matching and overall effect.And it also makes people feel that it not only reflects a person's love for beauty, but also a profound and long-standing culture of this nation.

There are more than 300,000 Miao people living in this area. Except for some who are accustomed to using Chinese, they have no written language.Enthusiasm is mostly expressed in singing.In any mountain area, where there are villages or reclaimed fields, where people live or work, you can hear all kinds of beautiful and sentimental singing no matter in the morning or evening.According to the seasons, various sacred songs must be sung to worship ancestors and gods, and congratulatory and mourning songs must be sung for weddings and funerals. Production and labor are divided into categories, and all kinds of melodious and happy songs are sung anytime and anywhere.As for the love between young men and women, there are thousands of beautiful folk songs that can't be sung endlessly.Even passers-by, who are indifferent to each other, ask for directions and talk, and they also sing.When many farmers in mountain villages talk to strangers, either because of shyness or embarrassment, their mouths are often bumpy and difficult to express.If you change the method and use lyrics to narrate, things will rise up and the words will come out. You are simply a born poet.Everyone seems to have a gift for rhyming and singing.The art of embroidery and cross-stitching is limited to women, but singing is not limited to men and women, and the skills are superb.

This kind of good singer must usually be a person who can do his best in his village.Whether it is a carpenter who grinds and grinds tofu, or a carpenter who hoops a barrel or makes a mat, his craftsmanship must be excellent.Their genius, the role they play in the local area, is to make each other emotional, enrich life, and inspire people to love life and work.Even if some songs are close to humor and irony, the essence is still very healthy.This only refers to the people who can sing and the songs they sing. As for the singers who are particularly famous in the local villages and villages, and the singers who have been recognized by the public for many years, their singing skills are naturally even more amazing!

In December of the winter of 1956, when I returned to my hometown, I spent three strange nights in Jishou, the capital of the autonomous prefecture, which were worth remembering forever.At that time, it happened that a working group of experts from the Central National Music Research Institute came to the autonomous prefecture to record and record Miao songs. The deputy governor of the autonomous prefecture, Long, specially invited four master singers of the Miao nationality to come to the prefecture.It was freezing cold, everywhere was covered with ice, and the air outside the courtyard seemed to be frozen, but we burned two large fires together in the conference room of the new office building of the autonomous prefecture, gathered around the brazier, and tried to sing various songs, He sang until late at night without resting.Among them are two men, one is a teacher who is over 70 years old, and he has a brain full of good songs, which is really like a treasure trove. The number is more than three cow hairs. Even if he sang for three years and six months, he just sang one Cow ears.A primary school principal who is over 50 years old, besides singing, he also knows many moving legends of Miao nationality.It's really "the water of the Donghe River will never end, and the songs of Master Ge will never end".The two girls are very young: one is twenty years old, can sing and play drums, the other is only seventeen years old, her throat is crisp, and there are some childish voices mixed in when she sings.There is always laughter in the singing, but when you smile, it seems to be singing softly.

Everyone sat around two burning charcoal braziers and sang all kinds of nice songs in turn, explaining and singing.The deputy governor is a Hmong intellectual just over 30 years old. The secretary-general of the CPPCC is also a Hmong intellectual. He can sing and sing. He sat with us by the brazier, peeling oranges as big as fists for everyone, and interpreting. .When explaining a certain sentence, as usual, he would scratch his head and smile and say, "What should I do? There is no way to translate it. The meanings are all puns, clever and clever. No matter how good I am, I can't translate it!" The principal of the primary school tried to translate After a while, I also said that some of them really couldn't be translated. "It's just like when I was a child and saw the rainbow appearing after the rain, how beautiful it is, I can't tell! It must be more convenient to test the number one scholar in ancient times!" Everyone couldn't stop laughing.

Although the flavor of the charm in many songs is difficult to translate, we have enjoyed enough from the repeated explanations and those gentle, passionate, and happy singing voices.The song master, who was over seventy years old, sang the lyrics of welcoming and sending off the gods when the Miao people held the cattle stabbing ceremony in a low, slightly nasal tone, full of unspeakable deep feelings, and then It was a rare masterpiece when the seventeen-year-old girl went on to sing in a clear tune.Even if we couldn't understand a sentence of the original words, and we didn't have the opportunity to witness the solemn and lively scene of the sacrificial ceremony, each other's lives seemed to be infiltrated by a common solemn and slightly depressed emotion.It makes me imagine that it seems to be the singing that the great poet Qu Yuan heard when he came to Xiangxi more than 2,000 years ago.According to historical records, Qu Yuan's famous Nine Songs were originally derived from that ancient song of rewarding gods.The original Divine Comedy is still preserved in the oral narratives of old singers and young female singers in this area, each with its own merits.

An older female singer who played drums and danced very well.The very young one is called Long Yingxiu, with a pale face, thin and long eyebrows, delicate and healthy, and big hands, which proves that she has never been separated from productive labor.When I first came here, I was a little shy, and kept putting my hands inside the embroidered apron skirt.Regardless of speaking or singing, he always smiles innocently.Like a tree azalea, it blooms under the drizzle and sunshine.Everything in the world is beautiful in front of her, and it is worth smiling at each other. No matter what she sings, she always speaks well.Occasionally, the rhyme is wrong, and it is not in accordance with the rules. When correcting it to the master or her companions, she herself laughs happily. The beads keep rolling.In fact, my comparison and description are very clumsy and disproportionate.Because any kind of analogy, it is difficult to describe the healthy and happy singing and laughter full of youthful life!Only good poetry and good music can barely retain a similar image sometimes, but I can neither write poetry nor compose!

At this time, I recalled a few local folk songs I heard on the hillsides of my hometown when I was a child more than 40 years ago. The song was: Clouds and flowers bloom in the sky, pods grow in the valley forest, The pods entangle the grain tree, and the young sister entangles the young family. There is a heavy slope in front of Jiao's house, others walk less and more, The iron sandals are worn out, not for you? At that time, I was still like a baby watching cows, and I just sang along with the chant of chopping firewood and picking up fungi.Knowing that the young guys teased the young Miao girls "Lao Mi" and "Dai Pa" who went up the mountain to cut grass and firewood to collect fungus, they sang it, but they didn't understand the deep meaning of it.But those young women with high breasts, eyebrows and bright eyes, after more than forty years, I still remember them very clearly.It is only now that I understand that there are real reasons for producing such a good folk song.Without a suitable object and a special environment as the soil, these good songs will not grow, and these songs will not be so simple, sincere and beautiful.These songs were sung by Han shepherd boys in the mixed Miao and Han areas. Compared with many excellent Miao songs, they should be said to be inferior.

The emotional content reflected in the singing of Miao men and women is subject to certain restrictions in language translation, so it is not easy to convey it.But their other artistic talent, reflected in the weaving and embroidery that is closely related to life, is easier to appreciate and understand.Their embroidery patterns are lively and lively, but also full of creative boldness and innocence. Obviously, like folk songs, they have grown together from the soil of an ancient traditional people's art.Although these patterns were completed in the 19th century, they are in the same vein as the thematic patterns reflected on painted lacquerware and bronze mirrors in Chu culture more than 2,000 years ago.There is also the hope and joy of youthful life leaping and dancing, and it is full of a clear and strong sense of rhythm.It can be seen that its existence is not accidental, it has a long history and is always fresh.It is part of the common cultural heritage of the people of the motherland. It has not only enriched the content of local people's lives in the past, but will also combine with young lives in the future to make various brilliant new developments.Tahu paper-cut pattern Tahu paper-cut pattern

The appearance of rural embroidery in western Hunan (Figure 12) was introduced in magazines, and we often treat it as a kind of art pattern, but in other places, it has been used as an embroidery base for many years, with beautifully colored silk threads , using a variety of different techniques, reflected in millions of young rural women, decorating their youthful lives, thus enriching the life and emotions of the local people! Figure 12 Xiangxi