Study On Xinyang Folk Songs In The Folklorism Perspective

Chinese folk culture has been regarded as feudal superstition and impediment to the realization ofmodernization since the revolution of1911, and during the Cultural Revolution, it was severely criticizedand denied and was even referred to as “old four”. Until the1980s the country began to realize theimportant role of folk culture and launched nationwide activities of collecting folk songs, which led to thebirth of “the integration of ten major”. In recent years, with the emergence of various intangible culturalheritage protection movement, these “old things” was dug out,entered into the modern society, and someof them are even made into public culture, becoming the regional sharing resources of folk culture.This paper is based on Xinyang folk songs, explored the relationship between tradition andmodernity through field investigation in Luoshan county, my hometown, and Nanchong village of Balifantown in Xinxian county, which is a Folk Song village, aiming to make a modest contribution to the researchof traditional culture. After unscrambling the academic study in the past,the author focus on discussing thecurrent survival state of the folk songs in Xinyang from the perspective of folklorism. Folk culture is neverisolated, according to the investigation of Xinyang Folk Song, the author hopes to explore the relationsamong traditional culture and national politics, economy and people’s life in further detail.The full text is divided into four chapters. The first chapter discusses the traditional morphology andformation of Xinyang folk song from four aspects: its historical origin, type and distribution area, maincharacteristics, geographical and cultural diversity. The second chapter mainly discusses the traditionalfunction of Xinyang folk song. The author divides its function into four parts: entertainment and leisurefunction, educational function, Catharsis compensation function and ceremony function, and analyzes it by citing the fieldwork. The third chapter mainly introduces the present state and the main form of Xinyangfolk songs. Xinyang folk songs takes three forms: one is the traditional form which is hard to inherit, suchas playing boats, singing folk songs with lion dancing; the other is the folk songs preserved through textimages; another one is the traditional invention, illustrated by folk village and song and dance ensemble.The fourth chapter analyzes Xinxian county ensembles’ protection and inheritance of traditional folkculture through innovation in performing forms and promotion by modern digital media, discusses thetransformation of the function of folk songs in contemporary society and makes a prediction to thedevelopment of Xinyang folk song. According to the investigation, the author finds that folk song is nolonger “existing culture”, maintained by local residents, but “expression culture”, told by peopleassociated with regional and authority.Today with the integration of the global economy and culture assimilation, many intangible culturalinheritage has changed, and is gradually disappearing and experiencing variation. It is a thought-provokingquestion how to make the extinction of traditional culture to better adapt to the modern society and developa way of double-win in protection and development. based on the analysis and research of Xinyang folksongs, it is found that folk songs, a symbol of unique regional culture in Xinyang, is highly influenced bythe time and is experiencing constant improvement and innovation. This paper is to re-examine howtraditional culture in the contemporary was invented and constructed on the foundation the study ofprevious study.