Understand folk music as follows:

Folk music was called "popular music" in ancient times. It is a concept opposite to court music. It refers to music popular outside the court, including intellectuals. Music composed by people including. It is mainly a collective creation of the people, mainly relying on oral transmission. There are also some individual creations among the people, and there are also individual categories supplemented by written records.

Because traditional music is my country's inherent national music, and because the court music in it no longer survives, the music academic community uses "ethnic folk music" to refer to folk music in Chinese traditional music. Ethnic folk music can be divided into five categories according to the performance methods of the works: songs, instrumental music, singing and dancing, rap music, and opera music.

Ethnic folk music is mainly a collective creation of the people and relies on oral transmission, so it has strong variability in both content and form. In "Questions and Answers on Basic Knowledge of Musicology" by Yu Renhao, Zhou Jingjing and others, its characteristics of locality, improvisation, peopleness and multifunctionality are also introduced, which are supplemented here.

Folk music, also known as folk music, folk short poetry, etc., referred to as ballads, folk songs, and folk music, is defined by the International Folk Music Association (IFMC) as "the music developed through oral transmission." "Popular music", that is, the music dissemination process, is purely the result of the performers or music receivers recording and teaching and passing it on personally.

Music characteristics:

Folk music has a continuity that connects today and the past. Individuals and groups produce different types of creations, and their certain differences determine the form or existence of music. .

"Qu" refers to the performance using musical instruments. As for dance music in dance, opera music in opera, and folk art music in folk arts, they can all be put into dance, opera and folk arts, and be systematically studied and organized as part of their whole.