A Study Of ’East City Tune’ In Northeast Drum

The Northeast Drum,originally known such as ‘Fengtian Drum’ and ‘Feng Tune Drum’,is a form of rap music gradually evolved from the Northeast folk songs such as ‘String Story-telling’,‘Village Big Drum’ on the basis of minor tunes of Northeast folk songs.With distinctive northeast local characteristics,this form of music originated in Shenyang during the reign of Qianlong in the Qing Dynasty,and spread widely in Liaoning,Jilin,and Heilongjiang provinces.In the early 20 th century,the Northeast Drum was enormously popular and thus developed into five major art schools with different styles.They are ‘Feng School’ centered in Shenyang;‘South City Tune’ centered in Yingkou;‘Xicheng Tune’ centered in Jinzhou;‘Dongcheng Tune’ centered in Jilin and Yushu,and ‘Beicheng Pai’ in Heilongjiang.They are commonly known as the ‘Northeast Drum’ nowadays.‘East City Tune’,also known as ‘East City School’,is one of the five major schools of the Northeast Drum.The history of the performance of ‘East City Tune’ can be traced back to the Guangxu period of the Qing Dynasty.It was a kind of self playing and singing performance for farmers to entertain themselves at that time.The tunes are mostly rural tunes,commonly known such as ‘Local Drum’ and ‘Stinky Millet Tune’.At the end of the Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the Republic of China,‘East City Tune’ came into being on the integration of ‘Fengtian Drum’ and tunes of Jilin’s local country drum.In the 1920 s,performances of ‘East City Tune’ were quite active,and famous artists from various schools came in droves.Among them was Ren Zhankui,a famous ‘Feng School’ artist who settled in Jilin city and became the leader of ‘East City Tune’.He raised the concept of ‘using the root to grow branches’,which was to integrate the strengths of various schools into his own style to enrich his singing.‘East City Tune’ has been developed and handed down to this day.Singing tune is an important part of Quyi music,which can fully reflect the characteristics and style of this genre of music.It is also an important symbol that distinguishes it from other genres.The singing of ‘East City Tune’ has the regional musical and cultural attributes,and its transmission has both inheritance and variation.Influenced by many factors such as geography,culture,customs,and pronunciation,it has the characteristics of dynamic transmission.It has derived unique rheological rules and mechanisms through various communication channels.It is not only restricted by tradition,but also innovated in heritance,forming a complex and variable unique music style and character.Starting from Shenyang,the birthplace of the Northeast Drum,the author goes north along its derivation,finally settles in Yushu City,Jilin Province,where the performance of‘East City Tune’ is the most active.In the past three years of field work,the author collected primary data on the musical behaviors,texts and oral traditions of ‘East City Tune’.Through desk work such as recording,sorting,verification,and analysis,the author explored the historical evolution and internal mechanism of ‘East City Tune’,and attempts to interpret it from the dual context of music and culture,and describe and analyze its unique musical characteristics,in order to ‘walk into the scene and hear the history’.There are five chapters in the main content that focus on the ‘East City Tune’.The first one explores the generation trajectory of the Northeast Drum.Through the exploration of the origin of folk music such as ‘String Story-telling’ and ‘Village Big Drum’,this paper seeks to find the commonalities of the performance forms of Northeast Drum,and the origin of it;The second chapter is about the rise of the ‘East City Tune’ of the Northeast Drum.Through review of its development process,this paper takes the approach of ‘from far to near’ to discuss the generation context and current development of this genre of music from different perspectives such as social background,communication mode,and repertoires.The third chapter is the field study of the ‘East City Tune’,with Yushu as the main point of view for fieldwork on the existence and current development of the ‘East City Tune’.The author collected,analysed,and commented on the live performances of the well-known Northeast Drum artists of Yushu – Gao Gui and Wang Gongjun;The fourth chapter talks about the characteristics of the singing of ‘East City Tune’.Based on historical sorting and field work,the chapter comprehensively screens and compares the collected singing of ‘East City Tune’,and then classifies and summarises them to expand the discussion.The singing voice is formed as text,and the music is formed as musical score.The conclusion chapter is a comprehensive morphological study of ‘East City Tune’,which comprehensively validates and summarizes the core points and research process of the papar from four dimensions: the historical interpretation,the evolution and operation mechanism,the blending and transcendence of the singing,and the dynamic development and future expectations.Finally,it draws several common conclusions on the development and expectations of northeast local music represented by ‘East City Tune’.