Yicheng Flower Drum
01 · Historical Records
From the Qing dynasty to the present, the Yicheng flower drum has become a routine form of performance by which the common people celebrate good harvests and worship their ancestors; the saying that it "makes the round of the city to the northwest and the southeast, and the sound of the flower drum is heard everywhere" is a true picture of this state of affairs. The Yicheng flower drum has been transmitted from generation to generation without waning. It is intimately bound up with the production and daily life of the local people, and it provides later generations with a precious historical source for understanding the social changes and the historical evolution of ancient Yicheng; at the same time it is one of the important research topics in such fields as musicology and folklore studies.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
Yicheng County of Shanxi Province lies in the southern part of Linfen City, Shanxi Province, and has since ancient times been a strategic throat passage linking Shaanxi and Gansu in the west with Henan and Zhao in the east. The Yicheng flower drum has a long and distant origin. A plaque in the Yang family ancestral hall of Yicheng reads: "Emperor Taizong of the Great Tang was enthroned in the city of Chang'an, and the common people were rejoiced at heart; year after year there is a Lantern Festival, the state is settled, the hearts of the people are harmonious, the country is at peace and the people are at ease as they welcome spring, and the flower drum is beaten loud and merry. " The inscription is signed: the first month of the third year of Zhenguan of the Great Tang. The "Guqi" chapter of the Yicheng County Gazetteer records: "In the Wanli reign of the Ming dynasty, when the Empress Dowager Li returned to Yicheng to visit her relatives, three thousand taels of silver were bestowed for the flower drum. " From this it can be seen that the flower drum already existed in Yicheng before the Wanli reign of the Ming dynasty. The movements of the Yicheng flower drum are bold and unrestrained, the rhythm is lively and quick, the mood ardent, and the style plain and unadorned. The main forms of performance are the marching performance and the open-air performance in a square, and there are also stage performances. Its musical instruments are relatively simple: the flower drum, the big su gong (also called "back flower gong" or "big gong"), the dai gong (also called "dou gong" or "yin gong"), the small war drum (colloquially called "jiu gu zi") and the like. Its tune patterns include "five flowing waters", "flower flowing waters" and "five beats of the mallet" and the like; the vocal styles are mostly local folk songs, generally led in song by the flower drum player and the female lead singer known as the nü miaozi, with everyone joining in the refrain.
The Yang ancestral hall plaque
The Yang hall plaque in Yicheng bears verses about the Lantern Festival and the beating of flower drums, dated to the first month of the third year of the Zhenguan era.
The county gazetteer and the empress dowager's silver
The county gazetteer's chapter on imperial relatives records that in the Wanli era the empress dowager Li, visiting Yicheng, rewarded the flower drums with three thousand taels of silver.
The flower drum, great gong, dull gong and small war drum
The instruments are simple: the flower drum, the great Suzhou gong (also called back-flower or great gong), the dull gong (bucket or lead gong) and the small war drum.
The three principal tunes
Its named tunes, sung largely in local folk melodies led by the drummers and flower girls with the crowd joining in.
Led by drummers and flower girls
The basic singing form: drummers and flower girls lead and the crowd responds, meshing with the marching and square formations for a rough, joyful effect.
Yang Zuoliang's three-drums-facing-the-sun
Born in 1938, Yang Zuoliang learned from his uncle Yang Shenghan at nine and excelled in multi-drum playing, his three-drums-facing-the-sun the finest, with many frozen poses.
Zhang Feifei's musical flower drums
Born in 1962, Zhang Feifei studied opera before learning the drums from Zhang Zengfa in 1985, arranged the musical flower drum series and became chief coach of the training base in 2006.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
The Yicheng flower drum is transmitted in the urban and rural areas of Yicheng County, Linfen City, Shanxi Province, with the shehuo performances of the Lantern Festival and temple fairs as its principal occasions of performance; the forms of performance are mainly the marching performance and the open-air performance in a square, and there are also stage performances. Yicheng County lies in the southern part of Linfen City, Shanxi Province, and the Hui River flows through the county. It has since ancient times been a strategic throat passage linking Shaanxi and Gansu in the west with Henan and Zhao in the east. Its shehuo tradition is deep-rooted, and flower drum troupes are mostly organized by village communities; in performance the flower drum player and the female lead singer (nü miaozi) generally lead the singing and everyone joins in.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
Excavating, organizing and protecting the Yicheng flower drum will play a positive role in further enriching folk dance. Yang Zuoliang (official archival record of the associated representative inheritor): Male, Han nationality, born in 1938, native of Yicheng, Shanxi. From the age of nine Yang Zuoliang followed his uncle, the famous flower drum artist Yang Shenghan, to learn to beat the flower drum. His technique is highly accomplished; he is skilled in "multiple drum" performances and is especially at his best in "three drums greeting the sun". His dance movements are nimble and varied, making much use of jumps and turns joined to a single-knee kneel; he uses many frozen poses in performance, giving an impression of crispness, agility, tenacity and strength. His representative works include Welcome Spring, Watching the Lanterns, The Great Alliance of Workers and Peasants and others. Representative inheritor of the Yicheng flower drum, a national-level intangible cultural heritage project in the second national-level batch. Besides taking on apprentices such as Yang Zuotong and Li Qingfeng, Yang Zuoliang has also trained a large number of flower drum artists. Zhang Feifei (official archival record of the associated representative inheritor): Male, Han nationality, born in July 1962, native of Yicheng County, Shanxi Province. At fourteen he entered the county's drama and literature class to study theatrical performance, and later joined the county theatre troupe, where he specialized in the role type of er jing (painted face). In 1985 he apprenticed to the veteran Yicheng flower drum artist Zhang Zengfa to learn the art of the flower drum. His basic skills are solid, and he is good at summarizing and learning the beating methods and performance techniques of the various schools of flower drum, and, on the basis of the ancient tradition, he carried out improvement and innovation, choreographing the "musical flower drum" series. Representative inheritor of the Yicheng flower drum, a national-level intangible cultural heritage project in the fifth national-level batch. As a director and choreographer of the flower drum art, he has repeatedly led performing troupes to take part in gong-and-drum competitions of all kinds and in temple fair and festival exhibitions, winning such honours as the Fourteenth National Xingxing Award organized by the Ministry of Culture. In 2006 he was engaged as chief coach of the Yicheng flower drum transmission base, and has long been active on the front line of flower drum transmission, his footsteps covering more than ten provinces and municipalities, and he has trained several hundred flower drum team members.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Yang Zuoliang 02-0359
- Zhang Feifei 05-2219
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
This static English edition is rendered at the edge for search engines, AI crawlers and readers without JavaScript; it mirrors the bilingual dossier. 阅读中文版，或返回 英文名录。