Like any ancient nation in the world, China folk songs originated from the primitive hunting, sacrifice, marriage, grazing and other activities of our ancestors, and gradually spread. Therefore, the realistic artistic tradition of "the laborer sings his business and the hungry sings his food" and "feeling sad and happy, starting from things" has long been established. For example, this song "Playing Songs" recorded in "Wu Yue Chun Qiu": breaking bamboo, continuing bamboo, flying soil and chasing (meat). According to legend, it is a folk song produced in the era of the Yellow Emperor. It only uses four short two-character sentences, which describes the whole process of primitive hunting labor very concisely. Another example is the two songs and poems contained in the Book of Changes: women carry baskets and have no reality; Shi Gui sheep don't bleed (the sixth in Guimei). Ben Ru, Fan Ru, Bai Ma Han Ru; Bandits and Bandits, (Married) (Book of Changes June 4th). The former expresses the pastoral scene of ancient men and women shearing wool with mixed sentences of two or three words, while the latter records the married life of the people in this period with mixed sentences of two or four words. Another example is "Lu's Spring and Autumn Annals": "Yu Xinggong, see the daughter of Tu Shan; Yu did not meet, but toured the south of the province. Tu Shanshi's daughter made her concubine equal in the sunshine of Tu Shan. Women write songs. Song Yue,' waiting for someone! Actually, it's a southern sound. Literary historians believe that the song "Waiting for You" sung by this princess should be the origin of China folk love songs. In the same book, it is described as "Ge Zhile, who used to fuck the ox's tail and devote himself to Song Bakui: 1. Carrying the people; 2. Xuanniao; 3. Sui Mu Cao; 4. Divide the five grains; 5. Respect the heaven; 6. Public; 7. Yi Dide. It is a vivid record of people holding large-scale celebrations and sacrifices in the form of songs and dances after the agricultural harvest. On the one hand, these excellent chapters of early national singing provided us with some basis for understanding the social life at that time, and at the same time, they also showed us the amazing artistic level that our ancestors achieved when they observed, summarized and described their behaviors and feelings in oral form thousands of years ago.

Around the 6th century BC, The Book of Songs, the first collection of poems in the history of China, appeared. Of the 305 works in this collection, 165 are folk songs and poems. They have always been called "the wind", and they are also called "the wind of fifteen countries" because they contain folk songs of 15 countries (regions) for about 500 years (before 1006- before 570). As far as the social and historical contents reflected in these works are concerned, they are not only very broad, but also typical and profound, which can be called a "Genesis History" that reveals the civil society of Zhou nationality in the past 500 years by singing. In particular, most of these poems adopt the sentence pattern of "four fonts". The relatively stable and extensive use of this word has laid an important foundation for the further development and diversification of China folk song lyrics in the future. For example, Nan Zhou Guanju, the opening work of The Book of Songs: Guanju's dove is in Hezhou. My Fair Lady, My Gentleman (omitted). Not only is the content fresh and clear, but the sentence itself also contains rich singing.

Since the Han Dynasty, the spread of folk songs has been expanding, and its genre forms have also changed. In order to collect folk songs in time, Yuefu, a specialized music institution established in Qin and Han Dynasties, played an important role in recording and popularizing folk songs. For this reason, people always refer to the folk songs and poems circulated in the Han and Wei Dynasties as "Yuefu", and also refer to the basic style of folk songs in this period-the five-character style as "Yuefu style". Yuefu is another peak of China folk songs after The Book of Songs and National Style. In the long years of five or six hundred years, it was not only widely used by the people, but also directly influenced the literati's poetry creation.

The hundred volumes of Yuefu poems compiled by Guo Maoqian, a poet in the Song Dynasty, are the concentrated expression of the artistic achievements of folk Yuefu and literati Yuefu. Among them, Four Seasons Songs at Midnight in the Eastern Han Dynasty and the Southern and Northern Dynasties, such as Fifteen Recruiting Soldiers, Mulang, Peacock Flying Southeast, Mulan Ci and Wu Ge, are magnificent and beautiful. Even if the song has long been lost, reading its lyrics will immediately move people. As "Two Poems at Midnight" said: There are hundreds of ballads, and midnight is the most pitiful. Generous voicing, voicing is natural. Silk and bamboo sing, and fake musical instruments play a clear voice. I don't know if the ballad is beautiful, but it's powerful. "Five-character style" Yuefu is a reasonable inheritance and new development of the national style of "Four-character style", which provides a prerequisite for the following "Seven-character style" sentence patterns and long and short sentences.

In the Tang Dynasty, under the historical background of Li Dynasty's vigorous cultural exchanges with foreign countries and extensive absorption of neighboring national music, folk singing remained vigorous. Liu Yuxi (772-842), a poet in the middle Tang Dynasty, was very excited when he heard a local folk song "Zhuzhici" in Bachu, so he imitated its style and wrote ten poems in succession. Among them, the most praised ones are: the willow trees are green, Jiang Shuiping is green, and the Langjiang River is full of songs. Sunrise in the east and rain in the west, the Tao is sunny but affectionate. Another example is: the top of the mountain is full of red flowers, and the spring water of Shu River hits the mountain stream. A girl saw it and thought that her husband's love was as fleeting as this peach blossom, and infinite sadness was like this endless river of water. Through his imitation, we can appreciate the folk style of this "seven words" folk song, which is characterized by its ease and flexible thinking.

In addition, Liu Yuxi also wrote a song "Transplanting Tian Ge", describing the real scene when he saw farmers singing "Tian Ge" when transplanting rice in Lianzhou, Guangdong. This kind of folk song with a long history has left a precious record for future generations. Another genre of folk songs that appeared in this period is the Biography of Prince Wugeng and the Biography of Women Wugeng in Dunhuang Quzi Ci. This new form of "Geng" is very suitable for expressing the emotional content of yearning and expectation, so it was widely spread after the Tang and Song Dynasties, and even spread to all parts of the country in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, and various "Wugeng" folk songs can be seen everywhere. Generally speaking, in addition to the emergence of new genre varieties, the most important feature of the folk song style in Tang Dynasty is the comprehensive maturity and wide application of the "seven-character style" sentence pattern.

Since the Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties, on the one hand, various original folk songs have been circulating, such as Tian Ge sung by farmers, Fishing Song sung by fishermen, Folk Song sung by villagers and Boat Song sung by boatmen. On the other hand, with the prosperity of urban commercial economy, the genre of folk minor is widely spread. As seen in the song dynasty, "the bright moon shines on Kyushu, and several families are happy, several families are reunited, and several families are worried about leaving the state." The lyrics are very typical "seven-character four-sentence style", and the tunes are all kinds of Jiangnan minor. Among them, the most popular is the four-sentence prefix "Spring Tone" based on the principle of "starting, inheriting, turning and combining". Another example is Folk Songs, Hanging Branches and Oleander edited by Feng Menglong, a scholar in Ming Dynasty, colorful plumage edited by Wang, a scholar in Qing Dynasty, and Legacy of Snow edited by Hua Guangsheng, Yuefu and Ji, which are mostly popular folk songs in northern and southern towns during this period. Eight folk songs with Gongchi notation in Xiao Hui Ji (1837), such as Embroidered Pocket, Screen Tune, Hong Xiuxie, Yangliuqing and Flower Tune (namely Jasmine), almost all belong to minor (folk songs) genre. From this, we can roughly understand the development and special status of minor major in this period.

In short, by the end of the Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the Republic of China, after thousands of years of dissemination, evolution, innovation and accumulation, China folk songs have reached a very rich and mature position in terms of subject range and genre categories adapted to different social classes and different folk scenes. On the other hand, it is a comprehensive display of ethnic and regional styles accumulated by different ethnic groups and regions in a specific environment. As a result, this kind of folk music has become a treasure house of national culture with a long history, continuous inheritance, diverse genres, brilliant colors and rich inside information. It is in this sense that it is clearly pointed out that China folk songs are an encyclopedia of the social life of the Chinese nation and an inexhaustible source of rich nutrition for other ethnic music.