Fengyang Flower Drum
01 · Historical Records
Fengyang Flower Drum is also called "flower drum", "beating the flower drum", "flower drum and small gong" or "double-strip drum". It is a folk performing art that combines quyi with song and dance, but the narrating-and-singing performance in its quyi form is the most important and by far the best known; it is generally held to have formed in the Ming dynasty. In the early 1950s new-model literary and art workers reformed Fengyang Flower Drum, adding and adopting some new expressive techniques, discarding the small gong so that only the small drum was used to accompany the singing, and renaming it "double-strip drum" in view of the character of the drumsticks used to beat the drum.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
In its quyi form the performance is given by one or two people, who strike the small drum and small gong themselves as accompaniment, dancing as they sing. Historically artists used this as a means of going out to beg, and it was for this reason that Fengyang Flower Drum spread far and wide, to every corner of the country. In the Kangxi and Qianlong reigns of the Qing dynasty, the poems and prose of many literati recorded the lively scenes of singing and dancing in Fengyang Flower Drum performances. The pieces sung in the early period of Fengyang Flower Drum were mostly the "shidiao" (fashionable tunes) of the time, chiefly Fengyang Ge, Xian Hua Diao, Wang Sanjie Goes to Market and Yangge Diao, each of which was widely sung. As history developed, the drum, the drumsticks and even the method of beating the drum in Fengyang Flower Drum were constantly changed.
Fengyang Ge
The pieces sung in the early period of Fengyang Flower Drum were mostly the "shidiao" (fashionable tunes) of the time, chiefly Fengyang Ge, Xian Hua Diao, Wang Sanjie Goes to Market and Yangge Diao, each of which was widely sung.
Xian Hua Diao (Jasmine Flower)
The pieces sung in the early period of Fengyang Flower Drum were mostly the "shidiao" (fashionable tunes) of the time, chiefly Fengyang Ge, Xian Hua Diao, Wang Sanjie Goes to Market and Yangge Diao, each of which was widely sung.
Wang Sanjie Goes to Market
The pieces sung in the early period of Fengyang Flower Drum were mostly the "shidiao" (fashionable tunes) of the time, chiefly Fengyang Ge, Xian Hua Diao, Wang Sanjie Goes to Market and Yangge Diao, each of which was widely sung.
Yangge Diao (Rice-Sprout Song Tune)
The pieces sung in the early period of Fengyang Flower Drum were mostly the "shidiao" (fashionable tunes) of the time, chiefly Fengyang Ge, Xian Hua Diao, Wang Sanjie Goes to Market and Yangge Diao, each of which was widely sung.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
Fengyang Flower Drum is distributed mainly around the townships of Randeng, Xiaoxihe and other places in Fengyang County. After the middle of the Qing dynasty the dance element gradually faded out of the folk form of Fengyang Flower Drum, leaving only the sung part, which fell into two forms, "zuo chang" (sitting and singing) and "chang mentou" (singing at the doorway).
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
At present the original form of Fengyang Flower Drum is tending towards demise; the rich artistic resources it contains have by no means been fully brought out, and this precious folk art heritage needs protection. Sun Fengcheng (official archive record of the associated inheritor): Female, Han, born in 1951, a native of Fengyang, Anhui. Brought up on Fengyang Flower Drum from childhood by her mother and her aunt's wife, she entered the county cultural troupe on examination in 1971, serving as deputy team leader of the performance group and at the same time as choreographer and director of Fengyang Flower Drum. She absorbed the characteristics of huagudeng and flower-drum opera into her performance, giving Fengyang Flower Drum a grand and imposing scale and greatly enriching its performance movements. Her representative works include Seeing Off Big Sister to Beijing, The Fengyang Flower Drum Chorus, Beating the Flower Drum and Singing Songs, and Singing of Fengyang. She is a representative inheritor of Fengyang Flower Drum under the second national-level batch of intangible cultural heritage projects, and chairman of the Shenzhen Jincai Digital Video Centre. The Liu'an Spring Dawn that she choreographed and directed in 1994 won the second prize in the third provincial huagudeng survey and research awards.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Sun Fengcheng 02-0756
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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