I. Historical origins
It as a comprehensive art, the origin is a complex and controversial issue, from these aspects:
(1) Folklore
Han Wu Di set up curtains to see the deceased consort Mrs. Li; the 15th of the seventh month of the lunar calendar, "Ghosts Festival" to attract the souls of the agricultural custom of returning the wish; the Palace Consort coaxed the Prince, the tung leaves, cut the shape of a man, shone on the window screen. Cut human shape, shine in the window screen to coax its happy, etc., there are many similar folklore.
(2) religious legends
Buddhism, Guanyin bamboo branches into a shadow to perform, attracting believers, persuade the good sermon; and Confucianism, rumor has it that Confucius looks ugly, hanging curtains when lecturing, and then people imitate its curtains to say the book, called its "shadow play", and so on, the basis of these legends is extremely small.
(3) Historical Records
There are two kinds of statements, one of which says that the shadow play "began in Han Dynasty, flourished in Tang Dynasty, and flourished in Song Dynasty"; the other is to be able to access the information that the shadow play was invented more than a thousand years ago during the rise of the Song Dynasty. There are explicit records, the earliest is the Song Dynasty Zhang Lei's "Ming Dao Magazine", which reads: "Beijing has a rich family, less orphaned, specializing in wealth, the group of scoundrels in a hundred ways to induce, and this son is very good looking to get the shadow puppet theater, every get to the beheading of Guan Yu, and always weeping for, and urged to get and slow down. Jianghan Plain shadow play source: according to Qianjiang Guoge shadow artist Liu Nianhua's oral, roughly, that the shadow play is also originated in the Han Dynasty Emperor Wu Di set up curtains to see Mrs. Li, and then to the Tang Dynasty Emperor Minghuang garden, to "shadow play" to speak of the history of the present, to the Ming Dynasty flow into the Arabian Peninsula, the European countries, began to rise, reform, innovation, Ming (1508) held a "Hundreds of Shadows" in Beijing. Beijing held a "hundred plays", Tangge shadow has a clear record of the Wanli years in the Ming Dynasty.
II. Artistic Characteristics
(1) Performing Art
A white curtain is used as a prop, and the performers stand behind the curtain and dominate the shadow people, presenting images to the audience, telling and singing stories, and the performers are usually two or three people.
(2) Art of Singing
The art of singing in Jianghan Plain Shadow Opera has two main cavities: the singing cavity and the fishing drum cavity. The "singing cavity" is the chicken singing cavity, also known as "Yang cavity", originating from the ancient Yang (Yang) water in Qianjiang City. "Cavity not cavity, rooster crowing", with the rooster crowing pronunciation for the start, the end for the drag cavity, jump as high as 17 degrees, originating from the Eastern Zhou period of the Chu folk songs, is China's traditional music "living fossil". It is the unique tone of Qianjiang Shadow Opera, which is divided into six types of tone plates: male cavity, female cavity, ugly cavity, miscellaneous flower cavity, the cavity of the Heavenly Officials, and the cavity of the eight not on the cavity.
"Fishing Drum Cavity" is named after the singing instrument "Fishing Drum Cylinder", and Shinyang Fishing Drum Cavity is divided into five categories: flat cavity, sad cavity, fish-tailed cavity (or phoenix-tailed cavity), pipa cavity, and miscellaneous flower cavity. The singers use both real and fake voices, with large scale jumps, a wide range of tones, beautiful timbre, high voice, and a gentle, touching way of conveying emotions. The folk song of Shinyang, "Watching cowhide, boiling eyelids, going home in the middle of the night, hitting the drum skin, and the wife being pinched by the eyebrow," shows that the shadow play has a great seductive power.
(3) Lyrics
Many of them come from literature, novels, literary poems, and folk tales of various dynasties. The scripts are usually very short, and are improvised by the performers as they unfold the plot and portray the characters according to the story. The language art, too, is mostly in dialect. The Jianghan Plain, with the Han River in the north and the Yangtze River in the south, is one of the birthplaces of Jing and Chu cultures, where shadow puppetry has found a breeding ground and prosperity. Although its source can not be proved, but as early as the end of the Ming and early Qing dynasties in this area, where organized to thank the gods will be events, New Year's festivals have the habit of singing shadow play, the accumulation of time has formed a unique style and carving characteristics.
Jianghan shadow operated by the shadow, shadow length of 70 cm to 80 cm, is a "door god spectrum" category of large shadow, most of the use of "Pigeon", "Tangge", The four styles of "Pigeon", "Tang", "Guo" and "Yang" are mostly used. The "Pi Ge" was created by two brothers, Pi Si Jin and Pi Si Yin, with a delicate shadow production and a paper-cutting style; the "Tang Ge" was created by Tang Yutang, a shadow carver from Qianjiang Wangchang, who was known for his fine floral motifs; "Guo Ge" was created by Guo Dabiao's father (birth and death, name unknown) in Sanjiangkou, Qianjiang River, especially for the realistic character modeling; "Yang Ge" was created by Yang Shuanglin, a member of the original Shinyang Shadow Team, with a slimmer shadow figure than the other styles of shadow people, large holes, and good transmittance of light. The material used for carving is mostly cowhide.
III. Inheritors
Jianghan shadow "Pigeon", there are Cai Hailin, Xia Zuqin and others, the Jianghan Plain shadow theater project representative inheritor. Jianghan shadow "Tangge", Tang Xiancheng, Jianghan Plain shadow play project representative heirloom, "Tangge" shadow eighth-generation heirloom, in 2008, the twenty-seven-year-old son of Tang Ruihua has become a "Tangge"! "Shadow ninth generation; Jianghan shadow "Guoge", Liu Nianhua, representative inheritor of the project, apprentice He Liangtian, Zhao Shanxin, Zhu Daixiong, Liu Zhihui, etc., leading the land for a long time in the Jianghan Plain generation of tour, Liu Nianhua's daughter, one of the next generation of the art of shadow carving in the Jianghan Plain.
IV. Protection of the status quo
Exquisite carving, singing high Shinyang shadow had brought a lot of laughter and glory to the people of Xiantao. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, Xiantao set up the first shadow theater troupe in Hubei Province. 1953, shadow artist Gong Benhuai created and performed "Wu Sung fights the tiger" in the province and the Central and Southern Bureau of the first prize. During the period of anti-American aid to North Korea, four shadow artists went to North Korea to console the Chinese People's Volunteers, encouraging the soldiers to kill the enemy bravely and protect the country. 1955, March, went to the provincial performance, Shinyang shadow puppetry "Wu Sung fights the tiger" won the first prize of the performance; 1988, West Germany national shadow puppetry delegation watched the shadow puppet theater in Shinyang, asked for two images to bring back to the country, and displayed in the country's museums; 1981, May. In May 1981, the leading comrades of the Ministry of Culture of the Central Government and the National Puppet and Shadow Association went to Shinyang and watched the shadow play "Flaming Mountain" and appreciated the singing of the play. The provincial television station also went to shoot a documentary introducing Shinyang shadow play. At one time, the city's shadow team developed to more than 40, more than 300 artists, creating a "village village shadow play" landscape. In recent years, due to a large number of influential shadow artists or old age, quit the stage, or successive death, resulting in many skills, schools lost, coupled with the audience fault, shadow performance groups sharply reduced, Xiantao city only shadow artists nearly 100 people, of which only nearly 20 people insisted on year-round performances in the countryside, nearly 30 people in the amateur performances.
The endangered condition of shadow theater has attracted the attention of the Xiantao municipal government. Xiantao Municipal Party Committee and the municipal government held several meetings to study the revitalization of the shadow play. Xiantao City, the cultural sector to guide the establishment of the city's folk shadow artists association and the people have private, self-financing Shinyang shadow art troupe. Municipal finance to "money to support things" way, the shadow artists to give appropriate support, focusing on the training of Li Ruizhi, Gong Jinting, Zhang Jingping more than 10 shadow play cultural center households.
Especially in the past two years, Xiantao set up a task force to actively declare provincial and national intangible cultural heritage protection projects, and through various effective ways to promote and protect the Shinyang shadow play. Has organized the "good neighbor" shadow play cool evening, sports square "cultural heritage day" shadow play exhibition and municipal square "civilized city creation inspection" shadow play report performance and other large-scale performance activities. The performance activities.
During the national "Eight Arts Festival", the city's cultural department also specially organized shadow works in the provincial museum to participate in the physical exhibition of intangible cultural heritage, which increased the popularity and reputation of Shinyang shadow. Last year, the city's three professional teams performed more than 1,050 shadow plays, with an audience of more than 300,000 people. on May 20, 2006, the Jianghan Plain shadow play was approved by the State Council to be included in the first batch of national intangible cultural heritage list. 2009 Xiantao City's fisherman's drum shadow play was selected as the intangible cultural heritage of Hubei Province.
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