The Study On "Gangshen" And Sacred Song In Chu

"Gangshen", which is a popular traditional "worship ceremony" in the Jingshan Mountain area in northwest Hubei, originated in the ancient Chu culture in Qin Dynasty, and is an important part of Chu cultural heritage. It shows mainly in the form of dance, the content of which is singing God, telling things about God, beautiful and wired. Due to the distinct regional characteristics and rich flavor of life, the religious witchcraft performance is favored by local people.The object of this paper is "Gangshen", and the purpose of research is to trace and reveal what the ancient Chu worship songs are truly like, to study and summarize overall artistic features of Chu worship songs in order to gain new understanding of worship songs through systematic analysis of the typical folk tradition. More importantly, in the systematic study of this comprehensive art, this paper interprets unique culture connotations and values of Jingchu society, culture, history, folk beliefs and other aspects displayed in traditional music, causing people’s attention and serious thinking of this ancient Chu culture musical phenomenon, so as to further promote common prosperity and development of Chinese culture and traditional music.By analyzing the collected data and relevant papers, the author has found that there is a small number of specialized studies for "Gangshen", and most of them only discuss the history, ceremony field, artistic features, social class inheritance and other issues of "Gangshen". And the innovation point of this paper is that taking the perspective of ethnomusicology, it combines literature study with folk custom exploration. Based on wide absorption and application of advanced research methods and results in other related disciplines, it focuses on in-depth research from the aspects of ritual objects and musical features of "Gangshen" and this paper alsocompares the analysis of music body with other Chu worship songs which are found both in literature and in folk custom, in order to explain reasonably music features and cultural identity reflected in Chu worship songs represented by "Gangshen".The full text is divided into three Chapters:the First Chapter introduces territory with "Gangshen" and its style, in order to show a group of vivid ceremony scenes and to grasp in general the style and features of "Gangshen"; the Second Chapter is the difficulty of the paper, discussing in detail the ritual objects and worship intention of "Gangshen", in order to further explore its deep and unique national culture; the Third Chapter is where the innovation lies, which is also the focus of the paper. Detailed analysis and interpretation of the musical morphological characteristics of "Gangshen" have been done here from three aspects, namely, musical structure, scales and modes and melodic tone, and comparative study between "Gangshen" and other Chu worship songs has been made in order to explore its relationship with Chu worship songs.