Sorrowful music

Sorrowful music specially used for funeral or memorial ceremonies. Different countries, different ethnic groups, and different historical periods have different content and performance methods of mourning music. The sad music currently used in China is selected from the folk music of the Ansai area in northern Shaanxi. In the early 1940s, An Bo, a music worker in Yan'an, collected a Shang-style dirge when he went deep into the Ansai area to collect music. In 1942, Liu Zhidan's coffin was moved to Bao'an County (today's Zhidan County). At the people's public memorial meeting for Liu Zhidan in northern Shaanxi, Anbo wrote the lyrics for this song for the first time and performed the song, called "Public Memorial to Comrade Zhidan." At that time, the band of Yan'an Lu Xun Art College assumed the task of playing music. Since then, this business-melody song has gradually spread in Shanxi-Chahar-Hebei and other liberated areas. After 1949, Luo Lang, the first conductor of the Chinese People's Liberation Army Military Band, arranged harmony for this song and used it as a ceremonial song for the military band.

In 1936, Comrade Liu Zhidan led a team on the Eastern Expedition under the instructions of the Party Central Committee, and unfortunately died in Sanjiao Town, Zhongyang County, Shanxi Province. In 1942, the Party Central Committee decided to move Liu Zhidan's coffin to his hometown, Baoan County (today's Zhidan County). In order to make the spirit-moving ceremony more grand, the "Lu Yi" band took on the task of playing music for the spirit-moving ceremony, and formed a mourning music composition group composed of five music workers including Marco and Anbo. They adapted it into formal mourning music based on folk funeral songs that were widely circulated in Shanxi and Shaanxi at that time. This piece of mourning music with Chinese national style is still used today.