The Lanzhou Taiping Drum is cylindrical in shape, the drum body is 70 to 75 centimeters high, the drum surface is 45 to 50 centimeters long, and the drum weighs 19 to 22 kilograms, both sides are covered with cowhide, painted with two dragons playing with beads and other patterns, and the drum belt is longer, which can be slung over the shoulder for easy striking, and at the same time can be thrown in any direction.
Lanzhou Bitterwater Taiping drum is the world's unique Han Chinese drum culture and art, wooden drum body painted dragons and lions, cowhide drums are painted Taiji, drums weighing more than ten pounds ranging. Dozens or even hundreds of drummers, majestic lineup, flags command, gongs and cymbals hit the festival, the drum body flying, up and down in an orderly manner, the performance of the left hand buckle ring, driving the drum body, the right hand holding a whip to hit the drum surface, the body just healthy and changeable, the rhythm of slow and sudden, the drum lineup of the open in and out of the drums, drums and majestic and exciting, filled the world, majestic and majestic, strange and magnificent, the God of the Yellow River like the waves of the hundred folds and bends, the potential of the ten thousand horse galloping alarming, the sound of the same as the spring thunder roll, the mountains and the rivers! Zhenzhen, a radius of more than ten miles are heard.
Lanzhou Taiping drum has its own characteristics, first of all, its shape is different from other drums, the drum body is 80 to 85 centimeters long, 37 centimeters in diameter, with a cylinder as the basic modeling, the volume is large, without drumsticks, but with hemp twisted into a drum strip (or drum whip) to beat the drum surface. When beating the drum, the drum is pronounced low and thick, and the drummer's motions are people dancing drums, drums with people, and people and drums in unity. The drum's up, down, leap, flip, ride, flash, show, prancing, moving and other playing methods are rich, fully embodies the drummer and the drum's mutual integration, vertical and horizontal clutch. It can be said that its playing method is the only one leading the drum road.
Movement style
Lanzhou Taiping drum dance is a group dance, the beginning of the show gives a kind of dragon and tiger leaping, the warm atmosphere of universal celebration. Just see the drums and gongs beat the rhythm, the drum body dancing, many drummers before and after the leap, left and right, suddenly the sky, suddenly the ground, sometimes jumping and beating, sometimes lifting and beating, all the ups and downs in an orderly manner, with the tacit understanding, as if ten thousand horses galloped, the spring thunder rolled. Taiping Drums have various performance forms such as "Sedan Chair Welcoming Guests", "Children and Daughters of the Yellow River", and "Ring Competition", etc. The drum team consists of 24 to 48 people. There are 24 to 48 people in the drum team, with as many as 108 people. Drummers beat the gong and accompany the music under the order of the leader, and the formation changes constantly, for a while it is "two armies facing each other", "golden dragon crossing the tail", "double breakout", and for a while it is "wheel spinning battle". "Wheel spinning war", "jumping fight", "squatting fight", "turn over and fight", "bank hit", and so on.
The basic steps of the boys in the Lanzhou Taiping Drum performance are: flash, exhibition, prancing, moving, flipping, turning, jumping and leaping. They jumped a zhang dragon tail, back eight feet tiger turn; left oblique like a dragon playing in the water, right oblique like a tiger swallowing sheep; progress chain of thirteen whips flying, thrilling.
Lanzhou Taiping Drum has been arranged, processed and perfected by generations of folk artists and artisans, and has gradually formed three basic playing styles of high drums, medium drums, and low drums, based on which it is blended into the techniques of theatrical frame work and martial arts techniques to strengthen the rhythmic changes, and the rhythm of a single Taiping Drum has given rise to different playing styles of lightness, heaviness, slowness, and urgency, and the changes in the formations have also been more fluent. The new techniques of drums, gongs and cymbals make the Lanzhou Tai Ping Drums more musical, artistic, dancing and characterizing, and there is a reasonable development on the basis of inheritance.
The high drum plays patterns, the middle drum plays techniques, and the low drum plays deep. When the gongs and drums are finished, the drummers circle around and first play the harrier turn, one layer, two layers, three layers, layers blossoming, symbolizing our prosperous career. When the drummers play Yellow River Surge, they take turns to throw the drum into the air, one layer falls, one layer rises again, and the big waves roll in unison, showing the surging and unstoppable momentum of the Yellow River from different angles. Other formations are: the eagle strikes the sky, loud thunder bombing, two armies against the ring, four gates, three suns to open the Thai, the iron arm of the siege, ten thousand horses galloping and so on.
Lanzhou Taiping drum specific playing method is divided into three categories: low drum, drum, high drum.
Low Drum
The drum belt is longer and the drum is placed on the top of the foot. The drum is placed on the top of the foot, and the back of the left foot is placed on top of the drum when marching. The drum is basically attached to the ground during the performance, and when the drum is swung in the left, right, front, back and flash, the right leg crosses the drum, and the left calf and the inside of the foot clamp the drum for rotation, or the two legs can be exchanged to do this action.
Mid drum
The drum is placed below the drummer's knee joint, when the drum is completely unsupported, and is the most difficult for the drummer to play. The drummer has to finish hitting the drum in a series of movements, and also has to add performance techniques such as twisting the drumsticks and drums in both hands above the head and making appearances. This is an extremely rigorous requirement for the drummer's body rhythm, the dance of the hands, and the mutual coordination of the drum strikes.
High Drum
The drum is placed on the drummer's hip. When the performance of the left hand to support the drum, the use of the drum's self-weight and the movement of inertia to swing swing, the formation of people drums flying spectacular scenes. "The tiger descends from the mountain" and other techniques. High drum with its high momentum, grandiose scenes, superb skills to become the "Yellow River waves," "wheat waves rolling," "Iron Wall Siege," "Three Sheep Kaitai The high skill has become the necessary material for the formation of "Yellow River Surge", "Wheat Wave Rolling", "Iron Wall Siege", "Three Sheep Kaitai" and "Ten Thousand Horses Running". In addition, Taiping drums in the performance is very concerned about the layout of the formation. The drum team is led by a big golden dragon flag, several small flags, gongs, cymbals and other brass instruments responding to the beat, dozens to hundreds of drummers in line, the drum team in the golden dragon flag under the command of changing formations. Each formation has its own fixed and clear formations as well as interspersed application of low, medium and high drums.
Through the vicissitudes of life, Lanzhou Taiping Drums have been equipped with a set of programmed norms in terms of specific playing methods and formations, and have become a treasure of Lanzhou Han folk art.
Features
Besides the above distinctive features, Lanzhou Taiping Drum has another important feature: it has the imagination and creative space for artistic creation, which, through inheritance and innovation, gives the drum a strong sense of contemporaneity and artistic appreciation.
Folk Art
Tai Ping Drum, a Han folk art, through the in-depth excavation, collation and innovation of Gansu Province's dance community of artists, on the basis of the original Tai Ping Drum will be low, medium and high drums of the three methods of playing the organic fusion of the traditional drums to give up the traditional method of playing a set of commonly used to use a method of playing a more monotonous pattern, so that the Tai Ping Drum movement is more diversified. First of all, in the conversion between action and action, bold innovation, speed up the conversion rhythm, it is more reasonable, scientific. This has increased the difficulty of the movement, but the movement is more fluent. This makes the changes in the drumming method tend to be rich, and the single dull rhythm has been changed. In addition to the music as a background, so that the rhythm of the music and the rhythm of the drums are integrated, but also to make the rhythm of the Taiping Drums Xuyiqi. The most important thing is to add the dance movements into the basic performance movements of the drummers, and to express people's thoughts and emotions artistically with exaggerated techniques. Through the above artistic innovations, the art of Taiping Drum's ornamental greatly improved, and it became one of the important forms of expression of square dance art and stage encouragement.
Cultural Characteristics
The history of Taiping Drum can be traced back to the distant past. The Lanzhou City Museum has a collection of colored pottery drums from the Majiayao culture of the Neolithic era unearthed in Leshanping, Lanzhou, which is called the "ancestor" of the drum by historians. It is quite similar in appearance to today's Taiping drum, and there may be some historical connection between the two.
The drum body of the Taiping drum with red lacquer, and painted with a dragon or gold lion design, both ends of the drum made of cowhide, with the "eight trigrams" around the taiji figure decorated. This series of production methods fully explains the drum and change the "gossip" touch yin and yang, "look up to see the image in the sky, look down to see the law in the ground, look at the pattern of birds and beasts, and Xingdi of the appropriate, far from the things. It reveals the idea that heaven, earth, people and drums are one, and it becomes the "heart image" that characterizes the beginning of the Taiping Drums.
Social Fire Customs
Over the centuries, Lanzhou Taiping Drum has gradually developed into a unique western style of Han folk culture and art forms, Taiping Drum's appearance has long been not a simple barrel shape, the drum body is round, more than a meter long, about 50 centimeters in diameter, a drum is about eight or nine pounds. Black or red drum painted with lions rolling embroidered balls or two dragons playing pearls pattern, drums covered with cowhide, playing a deep and exciting, drums depicted on the surface of the mysterious gossip Tai Chi. Drummer left-handed whip, right-handed mallet, known as the local double whip, whip and mallet flying when the performance, the action is strong and elegant. Taiping drum drumming action into the traditional Han martial arts components, amplitude, power, and suddenly Prime drums to the head, and suddenly swung drums to the ground, riding drums leaping, before hitting the back, it is very difficult to perform. Drum team generally to teeth flag as a command, gong trekking section, drum body flying, the three rise and fall in an orderly manner, the scene is very spectacular. More uncomplicated is that, in the earth-shaking drums, hundreds of drummers busy but not chaotic, the formation constantly changing, discharged a variety of formations, such as "a word long snake array", "six array", "gossip array
The team is constantly changing its formations, such as the "one word long snake formation", "hexagonal formation", "eight trigrams formation" and so on.
In the rural suburbs of Lanzhou, every year during the Spring Festival there is the custom of social fire. From the third day of the first month of the lunar calendar to the sixteenth day of the first month of this period of ritual activities, Taiping drum team has been playing an important role. On the third day of the first month of the lunar calendar, the Tai Ping Drum Team will play the gongs and drums, and turn around in each house in the village, which is called sweeping the street, in order to clean up the filthiness of each house. Then under the leadership of the drum team, the villagers go to the nearby temples to worship the local gods (such as mountain gods, land gods, etc.), the form of the equivalent of the Central Plains temple fair. At this time, the sound of the Taiping drums is alarming, the purpose is to drive away evil spirits and pray for the next year's wind and rain, a good harvest. Villages with the conditions, during the Spring Festival every day to perform two plays, one in the morning and one in the evening. Before the play starts, it is usually necessary to play a drum to cheer up, and when the play is over, it is also necessary to play the drum. During the Spring Festival between villages Taiping Drum also send each other social fire, this time Taiping Drum has become a liaison between the village friendship and feelings of the bridge.
The 16th day of the first month of the lunar calendar, the fire is coming to an end, the last activity is to send the god of pestilence, whenever this time, the villagers tied a huge straw man, as the god of pestilence, beating gongs and drums to send the god of pestilence to the village outside the fire, in order to ensure that the next year safe and smooth. This is the end of the whole event.
After the end of the social fire, the villagers repair the broken drum, and then seal it until the next year to restart the social fire, usually no one is allowed to move the drum. Lanzhou Taiping Drum not only festivals add a festive atmosphere, but also reflects the Loess Plateau on the Northwest China and the spirit of nature and the spirit of struggle as well as the hope for peace and prosperity, the country's prosperity and people's peace.