The answer to the characteristics of Chinese folk music is as follows:
Folk music generally refers to all kinds of music genres formed and spread among the people, such as Chinese folk songs, folk dances, folk instrumental music, folk operas and rap music. Chinese folk music has the following six characteristics:
(1) Oral and collective creation. China's folk music mainly exists among the people in the form of oral creation and oral circulation, and has been continuously screened, transformed, processed and refined by the people in the process of circulation, and has become more and more perfect with the passage of time.
(2) local character. The so-called rural nature. Also called locality or regionality. Topographically, there are plateau, mountain, hill, plain and basin. In climate, there are temperate zones with four distinct seasons, subtropical zones that are evergreen all year round, and tropical zones in the southernmost part. There are different types of economic production modes, such as industry, agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry and fishing.
therefore, under the sameness of great nations and cultures, the geographical climate, natural production conditions, social changes, cultural traditions, dialect sounds and so on in different regions have different characteristics. Locality is manifested in three specific aspects: language characteristics, personality characteristics and music characteristics.
(3) improvisation. The basic mode of transmission of Chinese folk music is oral instruction. Old singers, artists or masters "perform by singing when they pass on their skills, while new singers, young artists or apprentices rely on hearing and memory when they learn their skills, and basically do not adopt the way of inheriting written music scores." On the one hand, there is no perfect notation method for Chinese folk music, on the other hand, all outstanding singers and artists have the opportunity to develop their talents in the inherited folk music and process and adapt it.
the achievement of folk music is the crystallization of people's collective wisdom for thousands of years. The way of word-of-mouth inheritance causes the uncertainty and variability of folk music, which provides conditions for collective processing, and continuous collective processing makes the folk music passed down from generation to generation more and more perfect.
(4) circulation variability. The spread mode of folk music from mouth to heart, as well as the local and improvisational characteristics, led to its variability in the process of circulation. This kind of variability mainly includes regional variation, emotional rendering variation, new variation of performance function expansion, and cross-cutting and infiltration variation between genres.
(5) people's nature. From the book of songs "National Style", folk music has shown the joys and sorrows of ordinary people different from the ruling class, such as praising labor, hating and mocking those who are rich and heartless, protesting against the dark rule of the government, sympathizing with the unfortunate experiences of the poor, praising pure love and longing for a better life.
(6) versatility. The function of professional music is to entertain others and perform for the audience on the stage. Folk music is multifunctional. It can be self-entertaining, and when it is extremely sad or joyful, it sings a song to vent strong feelings. It may also be his entertainment, showing off his ability to control music in front of everyone and getting the appreciation and admiration of others. It can be used as a medium to convey the feelings between young men and women, and it can also be used for weddings and funerals.
it can be an organization and commander in collective labor, and it can also be a means to impart knowledge of production and life. It can be used as a history book to record the changes of the years among illiterate working people, and it can also be used as a textbook to publicize the brilliant achievements of national heroes. It can be a children's game, and it can also be the encouragement and call of elders or leaders to the people. The versatility of folk music makes it closely related to all aspects of people's lives and inseparable, making it an encyclopedia of the people.
Folk music is the spontaneous oral creation of working people, and it is mainly spread by oral form. In the process of spreading from generation to generation, it has been processed and adapted by countless people, condensing the wisdom and talents of the people of all generations in China, and it is the crystallization of the experience of thoughts and feelings and artistic expression formed by the people of China through continuous accumulation, precipitation and screening in the historical process of thousands of years.