1. Folk Music of China

2. Do now: What do you already know about folk music in general
Do now: What do you already know about folk music in general? Be ready to share.

3. Folk Music Cross-Section
United States
Ecuador
China
Zimbabwe

4. Shan’ge: Songs of Agriculture and Dating
Purposes for work:
To synchronize work
To relieve boredom
To forget the heat of the day and their weariness.
Usually song while weeding rice fields.
Singers will develop a short story while they are singing the song – think you can do that?
Purposes for dating:
A guy letting a girl know that she is attractive – how do we do that? Tinder, Kik, Snapchat, Instagram?
If the girl liked him in return, she would sing back; the first person to lose inspiration loses.
Want to see who can get the last word in?
Folk songs showed actual feelings of love instead of fake and shallow love of the upper class.
What do we know about fake love versus real love?

6. How has it survived time?
In ancient China, the emperor sent out officials to gather folk songs to see how happy the people were.
If the president were to do that today, what do you think the response would be?
When Chairman Mao Zedong came to power in 1949, all love songs were turned into love songs…for him.
Weeding songs were lost when chemical weed killers and mechanical weeding was invented, and only exist in rural areas or by folk enthusiasts.

7. Weeding Song Examples
Yundao Ge (“Weeding Song”)
Fang Ma Shan’ge (“Releasing the Horses Into Pasture”)
Hard to find a beat.
Uses vocables (nonsense syllables) and actual words.
Sung by a man (Jin Wenyin) who is older than the average rice weeder and learned the song through collecting folk songs.
Very free-following, no real steady beat.
Listen for:
What his voice does.
Length of words.
How it is different from Zhao Yue
Very Western beat, you can easily tap your foot to it.
Sung by Zhao Yue, a music student who learned this song in a college class.
Uses all actual words to tell a story
Listen for:
The steady beat
The melody.
How it is different from Jin Wenyin

8. Lyrics Releasing the Horses Into Pasture Weeding Song
If you’re weeding, sing a weeding song Weeding…. With knees bent, squelching in the mud I see a six-foot plot, full of weeds, My ten fingers hold six seedlings.
In the first month I release the horse into pasture I encourage the horse to go in the field. The big horse climbs the mountain The little horse follows behind In the second month I feed the horse every kind of grass The little horse eats grass and gallops in the mountain valleys Without grass the horse won’t get fat Grass without dew won’t grow well.

9. VS So which is legit? Folk song learned in the field
Folk song learned in a classroom?
Rap learned on the streets and by experienced artists? VS
Rap learned in a class or lessons?
Reggae learned in Jamaica?
Reggae learned from a weekend class?
Gospel learned in the church?
Gospel learned from the radio?