On The Artistic Research And Features Of Castanets Bass Drum

Castanet Bass Drum---a verified story sung to the accompaniment of a small drum and other instruments--- is a peculiar folk art form popular in central and southern Hebei Province. It grows and gets rooted among the ordinary people with unique geographic and cultural characteristics. Through over a century evolution, it has gradually formed a sort of profound quyi (Chinese folk art form) cultural accumulation while its long historical evolution has undergone a whole development from primitive and single free-styled performance to collectively inherited performance. Like other forms of Quyi on their growth, this form becomes self-perfected and self-improved, featuring its tone from bass to high pitch, from simple to complex and from infancy to mature. Weixian Castanet Bass Drum is a kind of Quyi performance style stressing "singing over narration" with its simple style and remarkable enunciation and singing for both voice and expression as well as abundant and flexible musical tones. In addition, its performance is centered on the castanet style tone of singing over narrating combined with high-pitched styles of the arts:telling, singing, relating, and monologue mixing with recounting and lyrical expressions. This unique vocal art has been assimilated by Beijing Dialect Drum Story-telling; Meihua Castanet Bass Drum and Shandong Clapper Ballad for its significant artistic value. Weixian Castanet Bass Drum has an abundant of over 400 folk music stories spread far and wide among people in this form. During its course of spreading, it embodies its collective recreations and the wisdoms of the working people, and in a way reflects people's ideology, emotion and desire. Focusing its core on the service of the ordinary people and catering to the interests and aesthetic needs, this folk art, labeled as "folk art music cavalry", has become a popular entertainment in this area for its versatile and flexible performance styles. Its development and prosperity have played a positive role in the local politics, economy and culture. Weixian Castanet Bass Drum has always stuck to the principle of "turning refined taste style into plain and understanding elegancy in the plain", highlighting its prominent feature in its smooth convey of grandeur in content and richness in potential conception. This paper adopts two methods of survey and observation to comb out its creation and historical development, to make an analysis of its music performance and to evaluate its cultural and artistic value so that more and more people will understand this local folk music form, turn their attention to local culture, inherit and promote it, on the basis of which more proposals need to be put forward to the protection or rescue of this ancient local folk music form.