Exploring And Practicing Jin Tielin’s Theoretical System For Teaching Chinese Folk Vocal Music

The development of the modern Chinese folk vocal music arts is the splendor created under the leadership of a group of outstanding music artists with a strong sense of responsibility and mission, who take the initiatives to integrate themselves into social construction and progress of the times, and participate actively in the world cultural exchanges. Based on social reality, this paper presents Jin Tielin’s theoretical system for teaching Chinese folk vocal music in great detail and analyzes its social and historical value. Through my own folk vocal music practice under the guidance of such a system, this paper provides evidence for the scientific rationality of the system while looking into the direction of development and prospect of Chinese folk vocal music promoted by Jin Tielin’s theoretical system for teaching Chinese folk vocal music.The first chapter analyzes the formation and development of China’s modern folk vocal music, which is a process of completing gradual evolution and transformation of the modernization of traditional Chinese folk music with great difficulty confronted with a strong invasion of Western culture in recent and modern times. The paper, from the current economic and cultural globalization perspective, analyses how Chinese folk vocal music enters a new stage of development by learning from the West while inheriting traditions in the social background of national unity, political stability, economic and cultural boom, and how Jin Tielin’s theoretical system for teaching Chinese folk vocal music emerged in such a context.The second chapter mainly describes my awareness and understanding of Jin Tielin’s folk vocal music teaching system. In my opinion, Jin Tielin’s folk vocal music teaching system is a theoretical system for teaching Chinese vocal music performing arts established by Professor Jin Tielin after several decades of diligent research, accurate grasp of the pulse of the times and people’s needs. With Chinese vocal music performing arts being its objective, the system conducted a systematic investigation and theoretical summary of the nature, rules and performance of Chinese folk vocal music performing arts by comprehensive application of principles and methods of aesthetics, education, performance studies, and psychology. It is the product of the joint efforts and integrated practice of Professor Jin Tielin as well as his students. The main principles of system, namely,"Scientificalness, Ethnicity, Artisticality and Contemporaneity" are the nature and basic law of arts development discovered and summarized by Professor Jin Tielin in his research into the macro-history of the development of Chinese and Western vocal music. With this as a starting point, Professor Jin Tielin uses the system to guide contemporary Chinese vocal music performance practice and to solve problems of universal significance concerning the technical capabilities, social function, value of folk vocal music etc. Meanwhile, used as the aesthetic thought and aesthetic standards of the Chinese vocal music performances, Jin Tielin’s theoretical system for teaching Chinese folk vocal music lends vibrant vitality to the arts of contemporary Chinese folk vocal music. Among them, scientificalness represents commonality, ethnicity is uniqueness, artisticality satisfies aesthetic requirements and contemporaneity means keeping pace with the times. The four elements complement each other to form a complete unity, and are embodied by the seven-character standards of "voice, feeling, enunciation, flavor, performance, cultivation and image".The formation of Jin Tielin’s theoretical system for teaching Chinese folk vocal music works wonders in leading to our national vocal talents flourishing. At the same time, it promotes leaps and bounds in academic research, artistic skills, social influence of Chinese vocal music, making the Chinese vocal music the main theme of the era and putting it in an extremely important position in national political and cultural life at home and exerting a wide-range and far-reaching impact abroad. Therefore, it has great academic value, artistic value and social value in laying a solid foundation for the transition from Chinese folk vocal music art to Chinese vocal music art and building the school of Chinese vocal music theories.The third chapter presents understanding and practicing of the seven-character standards of "voice, feeling, enunciation, flavor, performance, cultivation and image" by reviewing the course of my Chinese folk vocal performing arts in the past three decades as exemplified by my concert works and performances. The seven-character standard is very concise, but it is enormously rich in its meanings, with the seven aspects interlocking, mutually reinforcing, indispensable to each other, thus reflecting the depth and breadth of the overall outlook of the national vocal performing arts."Voice" refers to the mixed sound produced by scientific vocal methods and singing skills, in line with the sound image of pronouncing China’s national language, national feelings and national aesthetic."Feeling" reflects the work content and performance of emotional unification of truth and beauty."Enunciation" is to reflect the Chinese characteristics of the articulation in singing."Flavor" is the grasp and display of the style of the work."Performance" is the physical performance in singing,"cultivation" is the comprehensive quality of the singer, and "image" refers to the singer’s temperament on stage. The seven aspects should achieve harmonization in the second creation of the singing, bringing the audience artistic beauty and enjoyment.In addition to hammering my vocal performance skills, I am also committed to the promotion and dissemination of Chinese vocal music in my singing practice. In the paper, several of my concerts abroad are used to analyze my exploration in spreading Chinese vocal music to the world and to express the urgency and issues worth attention, with the expectation that more artists will be able to take national vocal music art of the Chinese culture to a wider world stage. Taking the current cultural globalization into account, the paper explores the approaches to building a high quality brand for our national vocal music performances, innovating the content and form of our national vocal music as illustrated by my domestic concerts in recent years and through my attempts on the road of industrialization of the national vocal music in order to make a contribution to promoting the healthy industrialization of Chinese vocal music, and flourishing socialist culture.