How did the song of cutting grass come into being?

The hinterland of central Hubei, south of Hanshui River and north of Yangtze River, is one of the breeding grounds of "Chusheng" and "Nanfeng", with Pingchuan, Baili fertile land, Tongshun River, Tongzhou River and Dongjing River passing through the territory, intertwined with ditches and dotted with lakes.

The rich Chu culture has created a unique folk culture here. Grass-cutting songs and wheat-beating songs are one after another, fishing songs and songs are soaring, and three-stick drums, colorful lotus boats, lotus flowers and mussels are popular in rural areas. It is these folk music, dances, stories and customs that gave birth to the unique local folk operas in Jianghan Plain.

On the ridge of Mianyang in ancient times, the working people would choose a good singer to play drums and lead the singer whenever they worked:

Beat gongs and drums to sing yangko, forget the pain and get into work.

These lively and loud songs are all over the fields. During the Wanli period of the Ming Dynasty (65438-0577), Mianyang Jinshi Fei Shangyi wrote in "Transplanting in the Southern Suburb" that "the streams are winding, the sun is shining, and five acres of halls are full of green radish. Idle in the bean shed to accompany guests, I suddenly heard this poem "Drumming and Singing Farmers' Songs". "

In Maozui and Sanfutan, Xiantao City, Jianghan Plain, villagers planted and mowed grass with songs, which formed "high-pitched" and "sad" folk tunes such as playing frontier songs, Mianyang fishing drum songs and singing shadow play.

Among them, mowing the grass song is a special singing form popular with productive labor. The singing content of mowing songs is rich, and the qupai is also changeable. Except for you singing with me, most of them are sung by one person, with high-pitched and simple voices, using the dialect vernacular in Tongshun River basin, with strong local flavor.

The performance form of grass-cutting songs is developed on the basis of folk songs and dances and ground flower drums. These include fishing drums, three-stick drums and folk tunes.

Fishing drum, also known as "bamboo harp" and "Dao drum", is a percussion instrument. It takes a bamboo tube as the body, about 65 cm to 100 cm long, and the bottom of the tube is covered with a layer of protective skin of pigs or sheep. When in use, the bamboo tube plates are used together. Later, there was a cloud board accompaniment, so it was called "fishing drums and feelings."

The popularity of fishing songs and Taoist feelings in Hubei began in the Ming and Qing Dynasties. Zhuo Renyue in Ming Dynasty recorded in Cold Night:

I know better than Tang poetry, Song poetry and Yuan music. Wu Ge's songs, such as Guizhi Er, Luojiang Resentment, Jujube Stick and Silver Stranded Thread, are all special creations of my Daming literature and art.

These folk tunes were introduced into Jingzhou, Hubei Province along the Yangtze River, passed through Huangmei, Wuxue and Hankou, and then spread from Jingzhou to Xiangfan, Laohekou and Yunyang, where they were combined with music from all over Hubei Province to become local folk tunes, and they were mixed with songs and dances such as stilts, lotus picking boats, clam shell essence and knocking on vegetables.

The history of the three-stick drum is earlier. It is said that it existed in the Tang Dynasty, and it was called "Three-stick Drum" at that time. A flat drum hung around a person's neck, three battles in Xiao Mu were played with handwheels, three sticks played drums in turn, and one stick was thrown into the air in turn, singing and dancing. After the Song Dynasty, he changed from singing ditty to singing novella, and transplanted stories such as The Three Kingdoms, The Water Margin, Romance of the Gods, The Journey to the West, and Xue Jiajiang from scripts and drum words.

On this basis, the form of folk rap gradually evolved into a song with stories and simple characters, which was originally called "Flower Drum Along the Door". Because most of its early performances were performed by victims lifting wooden benches, pushing carts, hanging gongs and drums, and singing while knocking, it was also called "shelf flower drum" or "scooter flower drum".

Later, artists borrowed from other operas, and the grass-cutting songs were constantly enriched and improved. Artists have changed from singing without singing to focusing on singing, and from disguised as men to disguised as men, making the performance closer to life and more artistic.

At the end of the Qing Dynasty, the grass-cutting song composed of fishing drums, three-stick drums and local art changed from singing to two-person make-up performance and three-person make-up performance, and then formed a grass-platform team to participate in party activities such as meeting the gods in rural areas, folk festivals and family etiquette.