Folk Song Assembly

Folk Song Assembly, a variety show of the Dragon TV, has recently attracted broad attention in all social circles. With a watchword of “Let’s Sing Folk Songs”, the program invites stars and guests from various fields and, through appealing to lively and volatile program formats, makes people sing folk songs. It first magnetizes TV audiences with popular program forms and pop stars. On this basis, it awakens TV viewers to classical folk songs through excellently “singing folk songs in new ways.” Meanwhile, the program puts forward the concepts of “international-oriented folk songs” and “fashion-oriented folk songs”. Many musicians joining the program apply currently most fashionable music elements, such as “rhythm and blues”, “jazz music” and “hip-hop”, to re-compose folk songs.

In recent years, singing folk songs in new ways, similar to Folk Song Assembly, has set off an animated discussion in the society. People who criticize it bring forward the concept of “primitive folk songs”, believing that such a practice of “singing folk songs in new ways” deviates from the connotation of pure folk songs. Some people even utter a loud shout “stop acting the goat with the gem of traditional cultures.” In contrast, people advocating the experiment hold that “singing folk songs in new ways” is actually reform and innovation associated with folk songs. We should cheer for such an attempt to popularize folk songs.

Some experts keep a foothold in criticism by emphasizing the concept of “primitive folk songs”. Primitive folk song is a popular form of original folk music for singing that comes into the world on the basis of the living and production practices of Chinese people of all ethnic groups. The term of “primitive folk songs” was borrowed from natural sciences. The ecology is a condition of living and development in which living beings and the environment act on each other. The primitive refers to all the things existing in natural conditions. It is a matter spontaneously expressed by common people.

In the eye of some experts, “primitive folk songs” largely meet crisis in the following two aspects:

First, modern science and technology, in their development, exerts some impacts on primitive folk songs. In general, primitive folk songs come into being under specific ages and environments. Primitive folk songs present “natural” features in sounds and contents. During the agricultural civilization period, primitive folk songs “attached themselves to” their environments of existence. It had been basically true from ancient times up to the first half the 20th century.