Artistic characteristics of Hengyang fishing drum

Besides fishing drums and simple boards, some also use cymbals. Traditional tunes are dull and monotonous, and singing long lyrics is not expressive enough. Fishing drums are more flexible in singing. Except for some short songs with fixed lyrics, long songs have no fixed songbook, only a four-word "Bridge Road Book", which records the outline of the story. When singing, the artist improvises, gives a profound and detailed description of the plot and characters one by one, and adds rich colors to achieve the expected artistic effect. Hengyang Fishing Drum is a fishing drum tune formed under the influence of Shan Ye's lyric minor and religious songs. It belongs to the monorail slab cavity structure, and has four sentence patterns and fine-tuning patterns. Its singing style is relatively simple. In the early years, one person sang from multiple angles with a drum festival. Prelude, intermission, and speech pause can all be accompanied by fishing drums, resulting in momentum, severity, and cadence. In the early years of the Republic of China, yueqin and Yunban were added. The lead singer plays the yueqin in his hand, and the accompanist beats the fishing drum and the cloud board. They can also sing and accompany. Later, erhu, sanxian, bamboo flute and electro-acoustic instruments were added, and many people sang from different angles. Fishing drum singing evolved from Taoist tunes. Due to the change of the plot, several kinds of aria, such as Daoqing, Orthodox, Sad, Overlapping and Scattering, are derived, which are expressed by words, with fewer words and more sounds, and different lyrics and lines.

The singing is simple, deep and beautiful. The singing methods of fishing drums in Hengyang county and city have their own characteristics. Hengshan fishing drum is integrated into the tune of shadow play, Changning fishing drum is integrated into Sixian ditty, and Qidong fishing drum is integrated into the singing of Qi opera. Therefore, local fishing drums in Hengyang are very popular with local people. Modern fishing drums have also added songs with real life themes, which are more and more ideological and artistic. The most prominent one is the fishing drum in Qidong, and its performance has been full of drama, using various singing methods such as duet, performance singing, fishing drum sketch and opera singing. Taking the tune of the fishing drum as the main theme, we boldly absorbed the artistic essence of Qi Opera, Dihuagu and Qiyang minor, showed the true colors of life, sang, pulled, read and improvised, and even fully applied costume props, stages and scenery to the performance of the fishing drum, which made the audience feel refreshed and adapted to the actual needs of the diversified entertainment life of ordinary people.