Longboat Tunes is a folk song of the Lichuan Tujia.
The world's best folk song "Longboat Tune" is organized and adapted from the Lichuan lantern song "Planting Melon Tune". Lichuan lamp song is Lichuan Tujia folk singing form on New Year's festivals, with colorful dragon boat as props. It originated in the early Qing Dynasty and has a history of more than 300 years.
The end of the Qing Dynasty, the lamp song in Lichuan is increasingly prosperous, lanterns have "before the eight out", "after the eight out" and "miscellaneous lamps" and so on a variety of. The song was sung in the area of Baiyang, Moudao and Wangying in Lichuan City in the southwestern part of Hubei Province, which is known as the hometown of "Longboat Song".
In 1958, "Dragon Boat Tunes" (also known as "Dragon Boat Song") was included in the performance program of the Hubei Mass Art Tour Tutoring Troupe, and "Dragon Boat Tunes" has been sung throughout the province, the country and even the world since then, and has been rated one of the most popular tunes in the world.
Over the past few decades, there are solo, duet, chorus, chorus, song, dance, dance and other forms of activities in the country as well as many provincial and municipal arts groups on the stage, Lichuan City is the hometown of "Longboat tune" proud, whether amateur or professional troupes have been enthusiastic about it repeatedly for a variety of forms of literature and art of the adaptation and re-creation.
Song Appreciation:
The "Melon Seed Tune" is mainly circulated in the area of Baiyangba in Lichuan City, and the main lyrics of the song have ten stanzas, which are sung from "Melon Seeds Enter the Garden in the First Month" to "Melon Seeds in October are to be kept until the end of October. ". The melon has been regarded as a symbol of many children and good fortune. In the Tujia region, the melon is a metaphor for fertility worship, reflecting the romantic nature of the Tujia people.
The singing style of "Planting Melon Tune" through the song is that a man and a woman lead the singing, with the help of all the people. During the performance, a colorful dragon boat is made of bamboo gabions and colored paper, with "Mamei" standing in the boat, a male clown called "helmsman" at the back of the boat, and a number of female dancers accompanying on both sides of the boat. Every place, paddling for the stage, Mamei lead singing, singing a song step on the drums to help the boat dance, the boatman before and after paddling, action comical, to win the audience a laugh.
From a stylistic point of view, the Longboat Song basically retains the chorus of the Song of Planting Melons, and the lyrics of the main song have been compressed from ten paragraphs into two (there are also three versions), with the elaboration removed, and the long-established reproductive imagery of planting melons has been weakened so that the theme of love is more prominent, but instead it better embodies the scenario-based characteristics of the folk songs of the Tujia ethnic group.
This is the first time that a Tujia folk song has been written.