Yangge is a kind of mass and representative folk dance widely spread in China (mainly in the northern region), with different titles and styles in different areas. In folklore, there are two types of rice-planting songs: those performed on stilts are called "rice-planting songs on stilts", and those performed without stilts are called "rice-planting songs on the ground".
Recently, the term "rice-planting song" mostly refers to "ground-planting song". Yangge has a long history, the Southern Song Dynasty Zhou Mi in the "Old Story of Wulin" in the introduction of the folk dance team there is a "Murata music" records, the Qing Dynasty Wu Xilin's "New Year's Day miscellaneous singing copy" expressly recorded the existing Yangge and the Song Dynasty "Murata music" of the origin of the relationship.
The rice-planting songs have a thousand-year history in China, and reached their peak during the Ming and Qing dynasties. Wu Xilin of the Qing Dynasty, "New Year's Day", "rice-planting songs, the Southern Song Lantern Festival of the village music. The origin of "Yangge", Chinese folklore, there is a saying that the ancient farmers in the rice planting, pulling rice seedlings and other agricultural labor process, in order to alleviate the face of the soil, back to the sky of the pain of labor, so singing songs, and gradually formed a rice-planting song; another folk legend is that "Yangge" originated in the fight against floods. "
Anciently, the ancient Chinese people had a great deal of experience in the field of flood control and flood prevention.
Ancient people on the banks of the Yellow River, in order to survive, fighting against floods, and finally, victory, we are happy to pick up the flood tools as props, singing, dancing, expressing the happy mood, with the increase in the number of participants, there are dance movements and dance combinations, and gradually on the formation of rice-planting songs. The third folk theory according to the "Yan'an Fu Zhi" recorded "spring lively society, commonly known as Yangge", the Court can be seen Yangge may have originated from the social day of sacrifice to the activities of the land master.
Twisting rice-planting songs, is China's northern folk music, representative of a dance, is China's first intangible cultural heritage into the national list of one of the projects. It is one of the first items on the national intangible cultural heritage list in China. Its predecessor was a kind of singing activity of farmers during rice-planting, and it originated from agricultural production and labor. Every year during the spring plowing, women and children from farming families, numbering in the dozens, would go to the fields to plant rice seedlings together, and one person would beat a big drum, and when the drum sounded, "a group of songs competed and continued for days", which was called "rice-planting song". It first appeared in the form of singing, and later developed into a form of dance and theater performances, and was popular in the north and south of China.
Yangge is a representative form of folk dance. It is mainly popular in the northern part of China. But because of the different areas of circulation, there are Shanbei Yangge, Jinbei Yangge, Northeast Yangge, Henan Yangge, Hebei Yangge, Shandong Jiaozhou Yangge and drums Yangge and so on. This kind of rice-planting song has different styles and characteristics. Generally, the dancers dress up as various characters and dance with fans, handkerchiefs or colored silks.
In the form of performance, the beginning and the end of the big field, interspersed with small fields. The big field is a group dance with changing formations, and the small field is a dance with a simple plot performed by two or three people, or a song and dance, or a small opera, and in some areas, the stilts, the dry boat, the bamboo lanterns, the flower drums, and other forms of song and dance are commonly known as "Yangge" (see "Dictionary").