Who was Jay Chou 2,000 years ago?
I can't resist telling you a little story from that era first. More than 2,100 years ago, during the time of Emperor Wu of the Western Han Dynasty, there was a man named Li Yannian, who was convicted of breaking the law when he was young, so his status in the court was very low, specializing in breeding dogs in the court, which is the lowest status in the eunuchs.
But this Li Yannian, very musical talent, can sing and dance, very good at writing lyrics songs, but also very able to sing. It is said that whenever Li Yannian sang his own songs, no one around him was not touched by him, probably like our era of Jay Chou, or Li Jian such a musician it?
At that time, Li Yannian knew that Emperor Wu's empress, Empress Wei, was getting old, and that Emperor Wu just didn't have a girl around who could fill the gap and make him happy.
Li Yannian thought, why don't I introduce my beautiful sister into the palace, so he privately asked Han Wu Di's sister, that is, Princess Pingyang to help him pull the strings to create opportunities, and sure enough, the opportunity came.
The original text of his lyrics is like this, "There is a beautiful woman in the north, absolutely independent. The first time I look at her, I see that she's a city dweller, and the next time I look at her, I see that she's a country dweller. I don't know if I'd rather be in the city than in the country. It's hard to find a good person again!"
The lyrics turned into vernacular is to say: there is a beautiful and elegant woman in the north, do not often deal with people, whenever she looked back, the soldiers in the city have to abandon their posts, lost the city; she looked back, even the monarch has to abandon his emperor's throne. I do not know how she was caused to fall in love with the country, I only know that such a beautiful beauty, ah, once missed it will be difficult to find again.
The lyrics now sound slightly exaggerated, but at that time Emperor Wu was moved to tears after listening to Li Yannian's singing, and he asked, "Wow, is there really such a beautiful woman in this world?"
At this time, his sister Princess Pingyang went up and said, "There is! There is! Let me tell you, this man who sings is called Li Yannian, and the woman mentioned in his lyrics is his sister."
At this point, I think you can probably guess that Emperor Wu was going to call on Li Yannian's beautiful sister next. As it turned out, Emperor Wu then took Li Yannian's sister into his palace and took her as his concubine, making her Mrs. Li.
I What was the task of the "music house"?
What about Li Yannian? Li Yannian, because of his outstanding musical talent, and because Emperor Wu loved Li Yannian's sister, Mrs. Li, so in 112 BC, Emperor Wu's government set up an organization called "Lefu" (乐府), which is the word for music, and the word for government, which is the word for government. This is a very famous music management organization in Chinese history, so guess who is in charge of this organization? Of course it was Li Yannian.
What was the task of this organization? In addition to collecting and organizing some folk music, he also had to compose music for the time, fill in the lyrics, or adapt the songs, arranging and orchestrating, and sometimes also responsible for organizing large-scale performance activities.
You should be able to imagine that Li Yannian would have been very happy at this moment, being such a talented musician, and that the work of the Music Office was something he loved and was comfortable with, and that from then on he didn't need to keep a dog, and that he had completely turned over a new leaf.
In terms of Li Yannian's story, the biggest function of music is that it helped him turn his life around. But I'm not sharing his story with you today to make you look at the function of music from such a utilitarian perspective. I actually want to show you what he did in the organization "The House of Music".
I just mentioned that in addition to compiling new music or organizing large-scale performances, he also needed to collect folk songs, which is what we often refer to as a custom, and there has been such a custom since the Zhou Dynasty in China.
It's a good idea to have a system.
I'll give you a few options, and you can guess:
First, because the rulers valued folk culture and art;
Second, to let the rulers learn about the people's way of life and thinking from the lyrics of the folk songs;
Third, to convey the ideas that the rulers wanted to convey through the form of the folk songs, so that they could achieve the role of indoctrination;
Fourth, all of the above. Fourth, all of the above.
Which one do you think the answer is? It sounds like each one makes sense right? So the answer is four, all of the above.
As we mentioned before, outside of the fact that music helped mankind survive during the Flood era, and also allowed Li Yannian to rise through the ranks, its most important function is actually the expression of emotion and life.
So, in ancient times, the emperor sent officials to the folk to collect folk songs, and after these officials collected the folk songs, they did some editing and organizing and offered them to the emperor, so that the emperor could understand the people's life from the lyrics of these folk songs.
You have to realize that 2,350 years ago, when there were no computers, no Internet, no WeChat, the ruler could know what the people were concerned about, and what the public opinion was, by picking up the songs.
|What were the songs in the Book of Songs like?
Well, before Li Yannian, there was actually a very complete and famous collection of songs from the Song of Songs, called the Book of Songs.
There are three important classifications of songs in the Book of Songs, the Winds, the Elegance, and the Songs.
What is the "wind"? It is the "wind" that we just mentioned earlier, that is, the folk songs, which comprehensively reflect the social landscape at that time, and are the very important essence of the Book of Songs.
When I talk to you about the folk songs of 2000 years ago, you may feel very distant, but let's think about it from another angle, you now open the network or TV, you hear these popular songs, such as "Little Apple", "the most dazzling national wind" square dance, or Li Yuchun's "one hundred kinds of love" and so on and so forth? ... After a couple thousand years, isn't it also very reflective of the lifestyle and ideas of our time?
When you think about it like that, don't you think, "欵? It's not that far away, is it?
The second category in the Book of Songs, "Ya", is the music that belongs to the lords and nobles in the court, or to the literati, and is divided into "Daya" and "Little Ya". The music of the court and the music of the literati is divided into "Da Ya" and "Xiao Ya", Da Ya belongs to the formal music of the court, and Xiao Ya is more applicable to the music of entertainment.
The third category in the Book of Songs, "Ode", is the music of sacrifice.
Speaking of which, I'm going to give you a sneak peek. Although there is such a complete textual record in the book, I really think it's a shame that there was no recording technology in those days that would let us know what the music was like, so I've lined up a western classical music in the background, and you don't want to think it's a bad match.
Most of the classical music we hear now is actually very close in its role to the elegant music of the Poetry and Chanting era, which was the official music of the court, created for the needs of the court by the musicians that the lords and nobles
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Reprinted from Wu Jindai
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