Yongjia Zaju, as a unique form of villagers' drama, is produced under such a background. It is also influenced by the activities of Nuo, and its history develops with the trajectory of Nuo activities. In Yongjia's predecessors, there was a saying that people depended on the Buddha for food.
According to Guo Zhongyue, an official in Qing Dynasty, in Notes on Oujiang River:
From February/0/5, 2005 to March/0/5, 2005, every household in the city set up a festival in the middle of the road, decorated with lanterns and colored lanterns, and blowing sheng drums and springs, and the six streets were brightly lit. After paying god, I met the east prison. During the meeting, Fang was tall, with neat eaves and glittering eyes, and stood in worship of the dance. There is a song next to it. It must have ended in January.
Nuo worship recorded in this paper is a cultural phenomenon in ancient China where gods chased ghosts and prayed for disaster avoidance. Nuo culture includes Nuo temple, Nuo mask, Nuo dance, Nuo opera, Nuo opera symbols, Nuo costumes, Nuo weapons and so on, among which Nuo dance is a folk dance with the functions of exorcising ghosts and diseases and offering sacrifices.
Dancers wearing ferocious masks, one holding a bow and one holding a shield, shouted "promise, promise ..." while dancing, they rushed to every corner, jumping and searching for ominous things, in order to drive away the epidemic ghosts and pray for peace for a year.
These activities have appeared for many years, which has promoted the emergence and development of Yongjia random bomb. In addition, the early dragon boat races also played a great role in promoting the production of traditional dramas in China. According to the history of poets in Qing Dynasty, it is recorded in Qiongou Biography:
Dragon prince, white robe, I crown halberd.
Dalonghua is like a grass dragon, and people waving flags and beating drums go shirtless.
The "Dragon Prince, White Robe, E-crown Ji" in this poem is actually a dress often worn by early drama actors.
In Yongjia Randomly Playing Club, there is a story about worshipping Jiuhuangye to eat Jiuhuangsu. The Historical Records of Xiaowu written by Sima Qian, a historian of the Western Han Dynasty, explained that Master Jiuhuang was a god with infinite power and three heads and six arms. When the club holds a ceremony to worship Master Huang, all the actors have to bathe and change clothes, worship the Beidou in the north for nine days and be vegetarian for nine days.
The above facts show that Wenzhou local operas are based on Wenzhou people's belief in ghosts and gods. It can be said that without people's attention to sacrifice, there would be no Wenzhou random drama and no Ou drama.
Wenzhou is the birthplace of Southern Opera in Song Dynasty. The so-called Southern Opera is the earliest drama school in southern China and one of the earliest mature forms of China's drama.
After the Ming Dynasty, Gao Qiang and Kun Qiang became popular in southern Zhejiang. In the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, the troupe in Wenzhou mainly sang Gao Qiang and Kun Qiang. Later, after the introduction of random play, high-pitched, Kunqu and random play were gradually sung, and the troupe similar to March became popular in the local countryside.
At first, this class club had only eight actors and could only perform some of the most common random plays. When performing a drama with more roles, one person will play several roles. The performance bases of these semi-professional troupes are mostly in temples and grass-roots teams in rural Wenzhou.
In the rural areas of southern Zhejiang at that time, there were large and small temples in every place. In the annual fixed reward activities, semi-professional troupes gather to perform for local people. Sometimes, the performance will last for several days, and the longest time can reach more than half a month.
During this period, combined with performances, vendors from all over Wenzhou also gathered together and named it "Huishi". For example, after rice is ripe in rural areas, farmers in all villages will perform performances to reward the gods to celebrate the harvest. Sometimes dozens of theatrical troupes can't meet the demands of many rural people. As a result, these semi-professional troupes gradually developed into professional troupes.
Actors of professional class clubs not only perform plays for people in the activities of rewarding gods, but also provide performance services when local people hold weddings and funerals. In this way, Wenzhou random play officially appeared in the form of performance.
In the mid-Qing Dynasty, the actors of professional theatrical troupes absorbed Huizhou tune, Tanchun tune and Times tune, and gradually developed into a multi-voice drama. During this period, the voices of actors singing Kunqu opera and high-pitched tunes gradually decreased, while more and more people performed and reversed.
At that time, the folk called the opera group "class" rather than "troupe" The earliest random playing class in Wenzhou is called Old Jinxiu Class, which was founded in 1736. Hong Quanben, the head teacher, is from Yongqiang, a suburb of Wenzhou. Hong Quan originally pieced together a group of random players scattered in the society into a class. The main actors are Bobby Chen, who plays the leading role, Qin Feng, who plays Lao Dan, Bazu, who plays a foreigner, Fan Renhe, who plays a big-faced woman, and Mao Kui, a drummer.
Old Jinxiu Class is a traditional opera club, which mainly sings Sandiao and also performs a few high-pitched tunes and Kunqu operas. It can perform 84 major plays, and later became a fixed traditional play in Wenzhou.
Other class clubs, because of their small scale and few plays, had a saying in the troupe at that time, that is, "Singing at random":
If you are not clear about the play, you can ask Lao Jinxiu.