The history of China music and ancient literature can generally be traced back to the Yellow Emperor. Although the legend about the Yellow Emperor is mixed with the ideal elements of later generations, there are also many supernatural elements, but it is not completely credible (for example, the establishment of the "Twelve Laws" in the era of the Yellow Emperor means that the later creation belongs to the Yellow Emperor, which is inconsistent with modern scientific archaeological discoveries. It is too late to regard the Yellow Emperor as the source of China's music: modern archaeological discoveries have greatly advanced the history of China's music from the era of the Yellow Emperor, far longer than the era of the Yellow Emperor!
1986 ~ 987, at least 16 bone flutes were unearthed at the Neolithic site in Jiahu Village, Wuyang County, Henan Province. According to the determination of carbon 14, these bone flutes have a history of 8000-9000 years! These bone flutes are made of crane ulna, and most of them are drilled with 7 holes. In addition to some sound holes, there are even marks carved before drilling, and a small hole is drilled next to some sound holes, which should be used to tune the height. These conditions at least show that people at that time had certain requirements for the accuracy of pitch and had a preliminary understanding of the relationship between pitch and pipe length. According to the musician's sound measurement of the most complete one, it is said that China, which is dominated by pentatonic scale, actually had a scale form with stable structure and surpassing pentatonic scale as early as seven or eight thousand years ago. This historical fact eloquently shows that China's music is dominated by pentatonic scale, which is not the so-called "imperfect scale development" as some people imagine, but the result of a historical and aesthetic choice. This also proves that the music at that time has developed to a quite high level, far beyond people's imagination. Before this, China music must have a long historical period, and it is difficult to guess whether this period is thousands or tens of thousands of years.
In addition to bone flutes, there are bone flutes, cymbals, ceramic clocks, chimes and drums of the Neolithic age. These musical instruments are distributed in the vast land of China, with a long time span, which shows that they were the main musical instruments in the primitive period of China. Among them, bells, bells and drums have been greatly developed in later generations. As for cymbals and whistles, there are musical instruments with the same shape and principle as bone flutes (called "pieces" today), which are still circulated among the people even today.
Inkstone is a very distinctive musical instrument. It is made of clay. It looks like an egg (or a variety of variants) and is about the size of a fist in China. It is hollow, with an air hole at the top and one or more finger holes in the chest and abdomen. Apart from bone flute, cloud is the only musical instrument that can absolutely emit more than one tone in primitive times. In primitive times, the cloud had only 1-3 sound holes and could only emit 2-4 sounds. This is probably related to the fact that the holes in the small egg-shaped clouds are more difficult to calculate than those in the pipe flute. To some extent, they reflect the development process of China Scale, especially the interval relationship that plays an important role in the development process of China Scale. Now some scholars have pointed out that it is a small interval that has been repeatedly emphasized since the sound hole that can only pronounce two sounds. This view is undoubtedly of great guiding significance for understanding the development of China's scales, the legal relationship between scales and tones, and even the internal mechanism of China's pentatonic scale.
Music and dance in primitive times are inseparable, which is probably a phenomenon in the history of all nationalities in the world, and China is no exception. At the latest in 1 1 century BC, China has called this art form of combining music and dance "music". Even after music and dance became an independent art form, "music" can still refer to both dance and music, and has always maintained a vague meaning. Today "music" refers to music, so scholars generally call "music" in primitive times "music and dance". Some existing primitive rock paintings vividly depict the scene of primitive music and dance, which is a group singing and dancing activity. According to the "memory" fragments preserved in the later literature, it can be seen that the primitive music and dance and the sacrifice of praying for a bumper harvest are "one and two, two and one", so it must include the reproduction of production activities.
In primitive times, music and dance were not the object of social division of labor, and there were no full-time musicians in primitive society. Music and dance are usually all social activities in tribal society. Therefore, music and dance in primitive times did not become independent from society with the appearance and identity of a special art form.
Strictly speaking, music and dance, as a social division of labor, really gained its independent status from society after the establishment of the Xia Dynasty in the 2nd/Kloc-0th century BC. Legend has it that Qi and Jie, the last monarchs in the early Xia Dynasty, entertained themselves with large-scale music and dance, indicating that a large number of full-time music and dance personnel were produced in the last Xia Dynasty, which is a sign that music and dance are independent from society as an art.
Because primitive music and dance are closely combined with primitive witchcraft, sacrifice and other activities, people's mysterious thoughts about music and dance and even some musical instruments may have been produced long ago. After the birth of the country, the rulers will use and strengthen the mysterious concept of music in order to manipulate and control music and dance and strengthen their rule. Some preserved musical fairy tales are the products of this social background. Legend has it that the large-scale music and dance "Nine Debates" and "Nine Songs" were all descended from the sky by the Xia Dynasty monarch. From the musical instruments unearthed in the early years of the Warring States Period (5th century BC), we can still see the image of Kai, as if he had the status of a musician at that time. It is also said that the Yellow Emperor got an animal named Kui, which looked like a cow, so he kept it in the dark with its skin and beat it with Lei Shou's bones as a drumstick. "I heard it was 500 Li", and the Yellow Emperor used this noodle to drum up the world. Both osmium and osmium are imaginary magical animals. In fact, the drums at that time, like later generations, were all made of Mengniu skin, but many of them were made of (now called alligator) skin, so they became mythical materials. Later, Kui became the "man" (god) in charge of music. As the god in charge of music and the drum that dominates the rhythm, it should be regarded as a tortuous reflection of the leading role of this instrument in music and dance.
Jia Hu bone flute was unearthed near the legendary Xiatai, which tells us that the activity area of Xia Dynasty is a highly developed area of China music. Legend has it that the music and dance of the Xia Dynasty obviously surpassed the previous generation, which is completely understandable. If the above-mentioned Nine Changes and Jiu Ge's mythical elements originated from Heaven are separated, then only the reality of Nine Changes and Jiu Ge is truly magnificent and beautiful. Only in this way can we arouse people's reverie that this song should only exist in the sky and further create a myth.