A renaissance of the township

In 1607, Monteverdi's opera Orfeo premiered in Mantua, and the emergence of this new art form made ** no longer confined to the court and the aristocracy, but became a wider audience's enjoyment, opening a new era.

In 1936, in a small town in Mississippi, the young guitarist Robert Johnson pressed the record button for his "Crossroads", and since then, the country ** has been sung in the South, singing about people's feelings about life and the pursuit of hope.

In 1962, Bob Dylan wrote "The Answer Drifts in the Wind" in a New York hotel, calling on people to find solutions through thinking and action, and became the face of an era.

Unlike the bards who wandered among the nobility of the court in the Middle Ages, art became closer and closer to the life experience of ordinary people, reflecting people's understanding of life and the expression of emotions, becoming part of community and family traditions.

It stands to reason that rock stars have nothing to do with the new farmers, but the world is so twisted, and many of them have spent five years with his "Village Song Project" to inject new vitality into the countryside.

In the process, more and more young people are returning or going to the countryside for various reasons.

In fact, the countryside means more than just rumbling farm machinery and endless fields, it needs many such creators.

Get out of the city and find the homeland. After passing through Loushan Pass and passing through the young man, I am a person who is always walking. In 2021, the Barn Band and Zhang Chu released this song "My Township".

This is the eighth year that many and his barn band have moved to Pinggu, a suburb of Beijing. They built a Tongxin ** commune, planted peach trees in the farm, and settled down. "The biggest feeling is that you can feel the changes of the four seasons, the grass will turn green, and the peach blossoms will turn red. Behind the fruit is the withering of all things, and the energy of winter storage. Change is life. ”

This wasn't the first home of The Barn. In 2002, the band formed in a boarding house in Pi Village. Twenty years ago, they became famous and went through the long march of missionary work. There was a time when rock 'n' roll was there.

When it was first formed, the band members were just kids in their twenties, and today, they are past the age of confusion.

In 2017, this group of middle-aged people set out from Pinggu to hold a 45-day Earth Folk Song Festival in more than 10 provinces and cities, and walked into the fields, ancient villages and alleys, and sang for farmers. Earlier, many bands began to travel to villages and cottages in various places, and co-create songs of their hometowns with local villagers.

They also hold summer camps to introduce children to the countryside. Companions are recruited each spring. When they weren't performing, they rehearsed, grew vegetables, and were self-sufficient.

Many have a wish, he hopes to promote 100 villages to create village songs, and also hopes to pass on the method of collective creation to more people, help rural revitalization in the best way, and inject new strength into the fields.

*Not for urban youth, left-behind elderly, children, returnees, people with disabilities, everyone has spiritual needs. They can't run to the ** section, so we go and get close to them. ”

The Barn Band has a song that says, "When the light is gone from us, go to the earth to find a new way." Many of them and their companions yearn for a new sense of meaning.

In 2018, many barn bands officially launched the "Village Song Project", found local villagers, collaborated with them, combined folk elements and local customs, and composed new village songs. With ** purchase services and crowdfunding, this gave a hundred, he gave fifty, and made up the travel expenses and funds, and helped 50 villages complete the creation of village songs. People sing their own songs and tell their own stories, and the culture is passed on.

What impressed them the most was once in Yurantan Village, Linshui County, Guang'an, Sichuan. On that day, villagers rushed to the Yulantan Village Primary School from all directions, and thousands of people came to the site, which was originally planned to accommodate more than 300 people, and the three-story teaching building was crowded to the point where it was impassable.

Those tunes that grow out of the soil, like the Book of Songs, like trumpets, never leave the land.

A good village song can penetrate time.

Many say that he didn't think he was going to catch up with Bob Dylan in China, that he was just doing what he wanted to do, and that what they were doing was not at all comparable to the Renaissance. However, the inner desires of those specific people, those restless souls that have been bound for a long time, are indeed ignited one by one in a form of ** like matches.

This collective creation triggers individual memories. Only by detaching from a certain grand narrative and respecting and focusing on the value and dignity of the individual can the beautiful and creative side be stimulated.

In fact, many of the changes they have brought about are not the only ones.

In 1970, psychologist Gallup did the famous "mirror test," in which animals were asked to look in the mirror to see if they could recognize themselves. The higher and lower levels of animals lie in whether they know the existence of the "self" and whether they have the consciousness to correctly recognize the "self".

People can recognize themselves in the mirror.

Expression is a kind of voice in the time and place, in the here and now. "When performing in various places, many of them witnessed the common dilemmas faced by the people at the bottom: identity discrimination, competition and oppression, and lack of self-worth.

Many said: "The first song created by the villagers is often out of praise for their hometown and praises the local customs." The further you go, the more and more 'me' you want to tell your story. "It's a process of finding oneself.

Life is meant to love my passion, curiosity to be curious.

Sister-in-law Peng and Brother Wang, from Xingshun Village, Wulong, Chongqing. When participating in the workshop "Individual Life Stories", Mrs. Peng told the story of her own experience in the past 40 years:

Peng's husband used to be a coal miner in the village. After the coal mine was closed, the couple went to work in the south. Eleven years ago, my husband became ill and was diagnosed with uremia, and the hospital issued a death notice. Sister-in-law Peng is determined to take her husband home regardless of whether she lives or dies. After returning home after the ordeal, her husband miraculously survived, but he also needed frequent dialysis. "Now I do all the heavy work, he just feeds the pigs, just rest assured. ”

Brother Wang said that when he was a child, he had to take a coal truck every time he went back to the county. At that time, the road was dirt and narrow, and there were no guardrails on the side of the road. If the driver makes a mistake, he will fall off the cliff. When he was a teenager, Brother Wang witnessed several accidents of the year, and saw the familiar life withering like mustard, and he was full of emotion.

The villagers spoke these words and recorded them in the lyrics. The song sings: "Holding my mother's hand, I think of when I was a child, the mine was black and sweaty, and it was difficult to look back on the past." ”

For a long time, China was a relatively closed and quiet traditional agricultural society. Rural history is often ghostwritten by traditional literati, and those who can describe the historical fate, survival and spiritual picture are not the villagers themselves, but narrators with a certain creative ability. The creation of village songs creates a new public spaceThis space allows individual people to achieve a certain self-expression in the narrative, find their own uniqueness, and regain their long-lost sense of hope.

The sense of accomplishment and joy that an individual experiences in creating gives life a deeper meaning.

We shape and we are shaped", many said.

More than two hundred years ago, the Brothers Grimm of Carson, Germany, published a collection of stories. In the folktales collected by the two brothers, the world imprisoned by power and poverty is bizarre: only the world is realistic during the day, and at night, ghosts and wizards roam around;Only a few dozen miles of villages are safe, and once you leave, there are monsters and ** castles everywhere. In fact, this is not only the way that medieval Europeans saw the world in fairy tales.

Sometimes, the values that people Xi take for granted may not be the way to a better world. It needs to be re-examined and some conventional notions challenged.

In the winter of 2021, many teams of Japanese village songs came to Jiumiaowan Village in Ordos with the intention of conducting a workshop there. The most peculiar thing about Jiumiaowan Village is that there is a spring in the village, and even if the weather is cold, there is still warm spring water.

There is a literary team in the village. There is a folk band in the art team, and the musicians are all big men.

In some villages, the idea of male superiority and inferiority of women still exists. The right to speak is in the hands of the male clan, and women rarely have the opportunity to find their place in the public sphere.

Several of the women in the village who participated in the workshop timidly said that they did not read much and that some had not gone to school at all. As soon as I mentioned that I wanted them to write songs, I hid in the back.

After some encouragement, bold women would come up with their own lyrics and invite people to discuss them. When there is an argument, it is not to listen to one person, but to vote, and the minority obeys the majority. Slowly, the women spoke more, and some took the initiative to sing. Many times, many are struck by this kind of creativity that comes from life, "Their creativity is amazing." ”

A glance at the well-beamed Zhaizi Beach, the small Kebo Haizi is shining with silver, "The old temple bay is thick and beautiful, and it is the cradle in my heart". Once the lyrics were available, some of the villagers immediately sang them in local mountaineering tunes and Menghan tunes, and many musicians would hum a passage based on the materials collected from the previous collection as a melody reference.

When it came to the audition, someone directed the scene: "Men sit in the front, women stand in the back". At this time, there will be objections: "Men and women sit apart, men and women are equal." "People felt the power of co-creation, which evolved into a transformative experiment in the small village.

The "Village Song Project" didn't stop there. The project is attracting more and more people, creating opportunities for ordinary people to have equal value as individuals, at least for a moment.

The process of creating a village song is not only a cultural healing, but also a dialogue and cooperation between men and women.

Zhang Chu commented on the barn band, saying that they started with "Hey!".The World" began, from the style of laughter and scolding in the past to a vast and caring world.

670 years ago, Boccaccio wrote the Decameron. It writes about the joys and sorrows, joys and sorrows of ordinary people, the real and the ugly, and the people who struggle in the mud. Truth returns to the world, and the powerful fall from the altar.

When people's freedom was shackled, their backbones were broken, and their eyes were covered, the darkest Middle Ages descended on the continent. Art is a ray of light in dark moments, and it shines on everyone.

To create a village song, the collective creation method with the villagers as the main body is often adopted, and people's collective emotions and memories are integrated into the song.

There are three steps to creation: visiting the village, setting up a collective creation workshop, and recording professionally. In the process, many people have made many friends, including grassroots civil servants, young people who have returned to their hometowns, rural entrepreneurs, and villagers who live in the world. Many of them and their companions walked the fields with their musical instruments on their backs, like barefoot doctors, to get to know everyone there.

Qiantou Village is an ancient village hidden in the depths of the mountains of eastern Fujian, with a history of more than 700 years.

The mountain is covered with bamboo, and the locals use it to make bamboo weaving and make paper by hand. "The firecrackers of Guan Yang, the paper of the head".

In the past, there was only one road to the outside world, and it was not until 1997 that there was no water or electricity. Back then, people who loved to make a fortune found an opportunity to sell shiitake mushrooms, grow mangoes, and do seafood business, and then return to the countryside to feed it.

The villagers were divided into three groups, and they created and then concentrated on each other. The material is in daily life, "What season to dig bamboo shoots?"."Tea picking in **"What farm tools should I bring?"The first group quickly agreed: "The bamboo leaves are whispering in the wind, and the streams are roaring and the egrets are flying." The second group followed "it is so good to go up the mountain to pick flowers, and always use sand as fine salt". The third group believes that "on the Feng Mountain in Shuangxikou, the five mountains are full of flowers and fragrant" is good enough.

Compared with lyrics and songs, celebrities can form opinions on village songs, and they have their own preferences. "Feng Qian Tou", "Gong Tou Song", "Moon Sprinkling Gong Tou", "Dream Gong Tou", more than a dozen names came out at once. What should I do if I don't agree on it?In the simplest way: voting, and one person, one vote.

Dream Boss received the highest 29 votes. The lyrics were also settled in repeated collective discussions:

At the foot of Fengshan, the stream is long, the wind blows the bamboo leaves, and the Jiugong Zhaoji Qiangtou Village has experienced vicissitudes of wind, frost, rain and fire.

The clouds and mist rise, the egret flies, the flowers of the five mountains are fragrant everywhere, the branches and leaves are scattered for 700 years, and the camellia is smiling and bathing in the sun.

How many times, look back.

This is, my hometown.

The creation of village songs has also brought about a return to language.

Orwell set a kind of "new words" in "1984". What he wants to tell people is that language affects thinking, and the dissolution of language is the dissolution of thinking. When one day, the antonym of good is not bad, but better;The antonym of agreement is not to oppose, but to agree more, and the person loses the concept of "bad" and "against".

When "slow employment", "slow talents", "stock couples" and other formatted neologisms are becoming more and more perverseWhen the vocabulary in people's minds is more and more overlapping, when the language wraps up all the bad, people become insensitive to the danger

Language is truth, language is knowledge, language is aesthetics.

In Waipula Village, Yongren County, Chuxiong, Yunnan Province, many of them invited local Yi musicians and non-genetic people to compete. Ethnic materials such as the yiqin, flute, and gourd sheng are melted into new creations. The main body of the creation of village songs is the people, and the measure is whether the locals are willing to sing them.

The process of the birth of a song is the process of endogenous motivation being stimulated, and only the locals know its meaning best:

Three mountains and two rivers, cranes and shrimps.

Mango kapok, red-tailed black goat.

Fire Bonoma danced with her left foot and sang.

Amizo, brother, blah, brother.

In Yongin, everyone can hum "Wai Pula".

The first village song "Song of Mahai" in Mahai Village, Longsheng, Guilin, Guangxi Province sings: the mountain road bends and the birds chirp, the river goes up to hear the singing, the Nashan Waterfall arrives at home, and the Zhuangxiang water is drunk with relatives.

How a person or a group expresses it, how they think and how they act. When language comes alive again, people come alive with it. When aesthetics are established, the goodness in people's hearts is established, and empathy is established.

Rice nourishes the body, and songs nourish the heart.

Many say, "A person may be squeezed so slumped in life that once he sings, he can stand up." ”

Insects and birds, mountains and rivers, rivers, valley echoes, wind and rain, forests and waves, all become natural. For example, in "Returning Youth", you can clearly hear the cicadas in the Dong village.

Deconstruct first, then reconstruct. Many summarize his ** career as a search for self.

Whether it is the wave of migrant workers in the 80s of the 20th century, or the current wave of returning to their hometowns, many of these people build a housePick up the images and symbols scattered on the ground and place the suspended souls

More than 400 years ago, Cervantes's "Don Quixote" told people that the world outside their hometown is the same ordinary world as the world in the night, the demons in their minds are expelled from life, the monsters are just windmills, and the one who charges at the windmill is not a high-flying savior hero, just a stupid and lovely old man.

Respect the memory of individual life and awaken the inner strength of the village. The process of creating village songs has always been a process of revival of rural culture.

In the early morning of November, Pinggu was a little wet and cold. Many wore hats that held down unruly curls. I asked: How do you define yourself now?

I want to be a poet and singer who walks in the city and the countryside. ”

I asked: From a rocker to a poet, is it simpler or more complicated?

Many lit a cigarette and paused for six or seven seconds: "I think I need more wisdom." “

He has heard a lot of stories, seen a lot of pain, felt a lot of struggles, choices, rifts, and perseverance under the times, and wants to become richer, and he also wants to enrich the world in which he lives. Only creation can bring revival.

The greatest revival always comes from the natural evolution of individual freedom, not from some top-down design.

Many wrote in "My Hometown": We come to this world for a trip, one point of spring, two points of desolation, smiling and wandering in life, wanting to hold the gun of fate hard. Forgive me, goodbye to all those who will never see you again, this place of peace is my home.

Michel Foucault in The Life of the Nameless reveals the possibility of writing the historical story of an unknown little person, as opposed to the heroic epic:"Countless hardships, many hardships, condensed in a few words. A short life, left out of chance. They are also role models, but they are the opposite of those shining sages. ”