Overview of the development of Qitai Yangko before the founding of New China

According to Kangxi's four-year edition of Qixian Annals, "Zhili Town set up a city to drink houses and receive people's wealth." "Counties, cities and strange streets are open from morning till night. On the fifteenth day, it is the Shangyuan Festival, where people worship heaven, set up turtle hill, hang lanterns, set off fireworks, and get together to sing string songs, which is a peaceful scene. " It can be seen that at that time, Qixian county's economy showed a prosperous scene, folk literature and art were also very active, and artists coming and going from village to village were in an endless stream. According to the decree of the Qing Dynasty's Regulations on Punishing Miscellaneous Officials (Volume 45): "There are first-class yangko girls among the people, and all local prostitutes and actresses, whether in Beijing or not, the local officials will try their best to drive them back to China ..." In the tenth year of Kangxi, women who sang yangko were forbidden: "All yangko girls and lazy women were ordered to go home. This shows that the written records of Yangko are earlier.

In the forty-seventh year of Emperor Kangxi of Qing Dynasty, the first "stepping on words" in Kong's Pingyang Ci wrote: "Fengyang girl stepped on Chunyang and stepped on Pingyang to win her hometown. Don't forget to dance your sleeves and bow your waist, and the street west hooks people's intestines. " From the lyrics, we can see the scene of Fengyang girl performing Fengyang Flower Drum in Pingyang (now Linfen). Qitai's yangko song and dance program "Playing Flower Drum" also said: "Fengyang and Daofengyang are good places. Since Fengyang came out of Zhu Hongwu, there have been famines for nine years in ten years. (gongs and drums: choking) Large families sell mules and horses, while small families sell idleness. Couples have no choice but to bring flowers and drums, which Nanjing took away, Beijing took away, and South Beijing didn't bring them at all, and the two sides of the Yellow River spent the Spring and Autumn together. (beating gongs and drums: embarrassed! Choking to death! Choke! Choke! Choke! Choking to death! )。 Baiqiu Fengyang Flower Drum is mentioned more. For example, there is a saying in "Lantern Festival": "Fengyang female, the flower drum knocks, and the gong player runs with it". It can be seen that Fengyang Flower Drum was popular in the southwest and middle of the mountain in the early Qing Dynasty.

From the second song of Pingyang Zhi Zhu Ci. "Step on Ci" and "Cuju court does not use the ball, gently squints and kicks the eyes, clearly learns the Qin Lou dance, and the colorful skirt shows the phoenix head", which depict the scene of two beautiful women performing a football match. Kicking cuju in Qitai Yangko, also called kicking hydrangea, is also performed by two sisters. The lyrics are: "In February, the dragon looks up, the three sisters play cuju, the eldest sister plays with the dragon and wags her tail, and the second sister catches the ball. I walked three times, twisted once, and kicked a lion to roll an hydrangea. Alas, cough, cough, kicked our two sisters again, two manes and sweat dripping down, ho ho! " Through comparison, it fully shows that tap dancing was really spread by Fengyang ancient painting artists, such as flower picking, lotus picking, rolling bead curtain, December flower matching, jasmine flower, cowherd and other programs, which were also song and dance programs spread to Jinzhong at that time.

The activities of Fengyang ancient painting artists are as follows: everywhere they go, they beat gongs and drums to attract the audience. First, they sing Fengyang Song, Cantonese Opera and Manjianghong. Then they performed a song and dance program, such as "Kicking and Tapping Songs", and sometimes they sang some yangko tunes popular in the north to cater to the local audience's preferences. This activity form was absorbed and melted by Jinzhong folk artists and gradually developed into a street yangko team.

The performance form of the street yangko team is two sons, one is handsome and the other is ugly, with a folding fan leading the way, and there are twenty or thirty female characters and male characters patting a small hairpin and knocking a small gong. They marched in two rows in the street and performed. As soon as they heard the gunshots, they went to the door of the welcome head of household, where the leader's son sang hymns, such as: "Men cultivate women's knitting and do housework in a friendly way. I hope there will be a good harvest this year, and their descendants will have a family photo." After the recitation, two or three actors entered the center of the venue, sang a ditty while dancing, and performed a small song and dance program. Then keep going until you have trodden all the streets. Performed programs, such as: writing a cross, ten fans, traveling clubs, watching pictures, four babies going to work, etc. Among them, there are first-person song and dance dramas and third-person horizontal song and dance programs. They sing stories, count allusions, write scenes and express the ancients. The stories are simple. When singing and dancing, there is no string accompaniment, just beating drums and gongs to master the rhythm. The dance movement is also relatively simple, but it is a combination of singing and dancing, which is a major breakthrough in the development of Qitai Yangko. The street yangko activity lasted for a long time, until the early years of the Republic of China. Qing Qianlong's 60-year-old issue "Nishang Continuation" says: "Yangge Fengyang Drum, Fengyang Gong, Fengyang Sisters sing Yangge." There is also a saying in Qitai Yangko "Playing Flower Drum": "Both husband and wife leave home, and the sea travels all over the world to sing Yangko." When artists who sing Fengyang Flower Drum go to the north, they also sing Yangko with the customs of the north. Although the tunes of Fengyang Song and Yangge are different in mode, tonality and phonology, they absorb and blend with each other and gradually become an organic whole, collectively known as Yangge. The name of Fengyang Song has gradually disappeared in the north. In addition, it also absorbed the style of "Lotus Falling". According to the Golden Gate Miscellanies, "Those who sing" Lotus Falling "in the north are called" Luozi ",that is, like the southern flower drum opera." Another cloud: "Later, someone renamed Taiping Lyrics Cloud". "Falling lotus" is a kind of rap art, which beats with bamboo boards, and each paragraph is often lined with sentences or endings such as "falling lotus, falling lotus". In Qitai Yangko's "bowl-turning" play, the clown learns to sing the word "lotus drop": "Gua Er Gua Er Gua Er Gua, the ancient painting man makes it clear before calling his wife and children." This is a aria in the form of "Lotus Falls" in "Playing the Flower Drum". Another example is the lyrics of "Little Cowherd": "What gong? Play a peaceful gong; What drum do you play? Play a Fengyang drum. " There is something in the chanting: "What I sing in my mouth is lotus falling cough." Sing again and spray a lotus flower, and a beautiful flower will bloom. "In" Playing Flower Drum ",he sang," Turn this smelly alley around and we will sing Lotus Waterfall again. It can be seen that Fengyang ancient painting artists also sang "Furong Waterfall" after going north. This greatly promoted the richness and development of Qitai Yangko. Since then, Qitai's yangko tunes have increased, and the repertoire has also been enriched, adding several programs, such as chanting, talking and singing. Local artists have also compiled many plays, such as Downtown and Dongliu Branch. In another form, the clown first tells a miscellaneous story that has nothing to do with the plot, such as "Double Call Sisters" and "Mill Cake Noodles". After the appearance of this trinity program of singing, dancing and speaking, it was a great development for Qitai Yangko, which gave birth to the embryo of drama.

During the Jiaqing and Daoguang years of the Qing Dynasty, businesses in Qixian, Taigu and Pingyao counties flourished, with businessmen doing business everywhere and foreign businessmen frequently coming here to do business. The development of business has also promoted the extensive exchange and spread of culture. At that time, people were very interested in fashionable minor and popular opera. Such as: The Journey to the West, Jin Quan Selling Wife, Shang Xiao's Tomb, Flying a Kite, etc. They all came from other places during this period. Under the influence of these plays, folk artists were inspired to create and sing oral plays reflecting local rural life, such as Cropland, Home, The Story of Grapefruit Tube, When Flowers Bloom, etc. This shows that the conditions in yangko opera have been met.

During the Daoguang period, many "self-music classes" were established in rural areas of Jinzhong Plain. According to Guo (deceased), an activist of Jinju Ticket Agency, when he was in han cun, Taigu, he saw a suitcase of Zileban in the village, which read "Nineteen Years of Daoguang". According to Zhang Jingfang, a 93-year-old retired teacher, "the organization of self-help classes began in the middle of the Qing Dynasty at the latest, that is, when Qitai was commercially developed." At that time, the rural areas usually engaged in yangko activities in the streets and then performed on stage. There is a table at the back of the stage with curtains such as "Le Tong Class" and "Happy Club" inserted on it. The programs include ditty, musical, gossip, yangko and so on. However, yangko opera is dominant, with the cooperation of martial arts venues, such as burying children, witchcraft, persuading women, sewing robes, scolding chickens and selling tofu. Since then, the fetus of yangko opera was born, which is also an important symbol of the development of Qitai yangko, from gradual change to mutation. After performing on stage, yangko artists performed in their own villages, and then left the village and county. According to Comrade Liu Junli of Jinzhong Local Records Office, from Yaocheng Village, Qingxu County, the performance of Guangxu's twenty-two years was recorded on the stage wall: "On the seventh day of May, seven Deying clubs, the first day," eating oil desert "and" picking tea ". In the afternoon, I changed bowls, begged my wife, and cried even more. Late in Cuiping Mountain, fire fortune-telling sells tofu. " Qi Taide Health Society is said to be a semi-professional society organized by two famous artists, Lao Shuanglong and Si Ganqi in Qixian County. The appearance of this class club shows that the development of Qitai Yangko has taken another step forward.

Around the Republic of China 15, yangko artists in Qixian and Taigu compiled and created a number of yangko operas that exposed the dark life of the society at that time, and created some new tunes, which have been passed down to this day. Such as: call sister-in-law, make small shirts, send ten pies, send cherries, work with sister-in-law, etc. However, some of these plays contain lewd, vulgar and obscene contents and performances. Such as "drilling tents" and "taking off pants", this is a countercurrent in the development of Qitai Yangko, which has ruined the reputation of Qitai Yangko.

During this period, some Jin opera artists cooperated with Yangko artists to adapt and create many excellent Yangko operas. For example, Gao Xiyu (dog man), a famous drummer of Shanxi Opera in Gulian Village, Qixian County, and "Evil Son" and "Hoe Tian" created by Zhongcun Yangko artist; Adaptation: accounting improvement, going home, etc. These plays are not only rich in life and healthy in content, but also greatly improved in music and singing skills, and have a strong flavor of opera. They are excellent programs in Qitai Yangko. Besides Bad Family, other programs are still popular. Jin Opera and Yangko, two sister artists, also organized a "wind stirring snow" team to perform Jin Opera and Yangko on the same stage.

Shanxi opera artists have a great influence on yangko in performance, makeup and costumes, and have played an important role in improving the art of yangko. Jin Opera and Yangko artists cooperated with each other to create a unique style of Qitai Yangko, which soon spread to Jinzhong 10 counties and gained a higher reputation among the masses. During the Japanese invasion of China, most of the Qitai Yangko artists in the occupied areas were killed and their performances were basically at a standstill. Even if a few artists have activities, no one cares. Many performances are out of date and some are unsightly. However, in the Jin-Sui border region of the anti-Japanese base area, following the spirit of Chairman Mao's speech at the Yan 'an forum on literature and art, revolutionary literary and art groups such as the July Drama Club, the Popular Drama Club, the May 5 th Drama Club and the People's Drama Club have performed "Noisy Bar", "Liu Qiaoer" and "Fighting Poison with Poison" in the form of Qitai Yangko and vocal music art, which greatly stimulated the revolutionary fighting spirit and production enthusiasm of the people in the base area.

At that time, there were two kinds of yangko tunes and repertoires circulating in the Jin-Sui border region, with different styles and confusing names. After the Shanxi-Suiyuan Federation of Literary and Art Circles convened a consultation among drama workers, it was decided that two names should be distinguished by region, namely "Northern Shaanxi Yangko" and "Jinzhong Yangko". Since then, the name of Jinzhong yangko opera has replaced the "yangko" collectively referred to in history.

The "Qixian Construction Troupe" in the Taihang base area also performed such repertoires as Comparison between the Enemy and the Enemy, Persuading Yu Ying, and Marriage of Xiao erhei in the form of Qitai Yangko. This is the glorious history of Qitai Yangko serving the people in the revolutionary base areas.