Playing funeral drums is a hundred-generation folk custom in Shennongjia. Its origin is so long that there are many different versions. Some people say that it originated from the death of Zhuangzi's wife, and the drums and pots sang together; Some people say that Qin Shihuang built the Great Wall because there were too many dead people, and finally skillfully turned grief into carnival; Some people talk about "Monk's Mourning" and "Drum Beating for Mourning" originated from Tang Zilian. There is also a plain and credible saying that mourning stems from Chu customs. Because they were afraid that wild animals would spoil the bones of the dead, they lit a bonfire and called the convener to knock on the door and sing, which was a great success.
Playing mourning drums is a special ceremony for the dead in Shennongjia. Playing funeral drums in Shennongjia is also called "playing funeral songs", "mourning songs", "Yin gongs and drums", "jumping funeral drums" and "playing funeral". Its main function is to replace the relatives and friends of the deceased to remember the merits of the deceased before his death, wish the deceased ascend to heaven and pray for future generations. It is a common funeral custom, which has a strong ancient national cultural tradition and superstitious color.
Shennongjia's funeral drum songs are in the same strain as those in other places, belonging to "turning to funeral drums" The song of drum burial in Shennongjia is more primitive and desolate in tone and extremely rich in content. Heaven and hell, mountains and rivers, birds and animals and flowers, gods and ghosts, life events, ancient heroes, all-encompassing, nothing involved. It is not only to pray for gods, turn over dead souls and sing praises to gods, but also an encyclopedia reflecting nature and society. For example, The Song of Opening the Way says, "Open the Heaven and Earth Water House, Open the Sun and Moon Starlight, Open the Ancient Buddha in the sky, Open the Temple on Earth, Open the Five Sides, Open the Goddess of Lightning, Open the Wudang Patriarch, Open the donkey kong, Open the Land Duke and Open the Earth City God."
Understanding of death
The villagers think that death in old age is a normal phenomenon:
Life is like duckweed on the water. Millennium is like lightning in the air, spring flowers and autumn moon. Soon, popularity became unsustainable.
Since ancient times, there have been ups and downs, life and death, no death and no life. Impermanence has been thrown away.
Advise the deceased not to go back to their hometown and advise their children not to be sad. There are no trees in the mountains and there are no centenarians in the world.
Perhaps it is based on this understanding that the death of the elderly is a natural phenomenon and an irresistible natural law. Therefore, people's death is not sad, but regarded as a happy event. Seeing old age, illness and death is to drive to Yaochi and return to the mountains for a hundred years. In Shennongjia Mountain Township, whenever there is a funeral for relatives and friends, singers will be invited to play drums to compete for songs, and relatives and friends will come to sacrifice and play drums all night to "accompany the spirits" and "go to the funeral". This is not so much a mourning for the dead as a welcome to them.
Jumping mourning
Although death is an irresistible natural law, after all, people are not as good as death. The dead also miss their relatives and children, and the living are inevitably nostalgic and sad about the departure of their elders. For example:
Survival, Tsinghua building, cold return, hills, red dust, ten snows, a thousand years of empty time.
So when I want to eat, I see the cups, chopsticks and bowls in the mountain are empty, and the water is empty. Green mountains and green waters have died for thousands of generations.
How can a dutiful son hold the pedestal of spirit and feel sad and painful? How can he find a place to kiss and visit his soul before seeing it?
In order to appease "ghosts and gods", comfort the living and dilute this bleak atmosphere, singers who come to "mourn" and "bury with the dead" mainly "compose songs at will" and ridicule each other with songs. For example:
Mansion, big Sang Men, big funeral, one bite in a thousand years, a pair in ten thousand years.
What man-made house, who does not mourn, Luban built a house, mortals do not mourn.
Once in a blue moon, the right man comes out, once in a blue moon, the prime minister protects the country.
From today on, I have mourned for thousands of years.
Therefore, all relatives and friends can sing except the family members of the deceased, and the singer is an active figure in the "mourning". Without singers, there would be no drums. Therefore, whenever there is a funeral, mourners will write letters or send someone to pick up the singer. A singer must be knowledgeable, can play drums and sing. Before singing, he has to clear the way, such as: "The opening ceremony is golden, please sit down and listen to me, and start a concert." Another example is "12345, Jin Mu is in fire and water, and the road to singing has not been opened, so gongs and drums are needed." Funeral ceremonies are mostly held in the filial piety field in front of the dead.
Walking into the door, I looked up at a bright lamp hanging on filial piety field.
Sitting on both sides, singing lang, the singers sang all night, and they didn't feel it until dawn.
The content of playing funeral drums is very rich, both praising the life story of the deceased and comforting the deceased. For example:
Advise the deceased not to be sad and not to cling to Shi Yang. Yao He was buried underground after his death.
Life is not a hundred years old. How many ancient heroes can't help running around and are trapped in mountains and rivers?
A notable feature of playing funeral drums is "noisy". Therefore, it takes several days to play drums to entertain guests, and game songs have become the important content and the most active part of singing in funeral instruments. For example:
Sing as soon as you come in.
The crutch is inserted on the top beam.
Three sentences and two sentences are not speculative.
Pick up the crutches and go back
aria
Shennongjia singing funeral drums has its own characteristics, simple, rough and desolate. It is not only different from the "wailing cavity" and "Taoist cavity" in other places, but also different from the dual use of "Yang gongs and drums" and "Yin gongs and drums". "The sound is sad but not hurt, and sad but not sad" is a kind of turntable that is "longer than the single structure of chanting".
custom
Shennongjia's "funeral drum song" and "ritual song" are superior to other ballads in terms of long history, rich content and language characteristics. Including the ancient and modern world, views on the afterlife, comments on ancient figures, descriptions of real life, and rich associations of the dead going to hell or heaven. These constitute a magnificent picture of history and myth, which is the divine comedy handed down by Shennongjia people.
Any custom has something conceptual. There is a folk proverb in Shennongjia that "there is a hard lesson in front of every house" to illustrate that every family may have an accident. Therefore, if a family is in trouble and everyone comes to help, that is, "everyone dies and everyone loses." Sang Song, a funeral: "I heard drums blaring in the middle of the night. I felt a seven-meter-long stick in my hand regardless of my life and death. I am not afraid of mountains and roads, and I am not afraid of tigers and leopards blocking the road. " Don't ask about the grievances of the deceased, even if the popularity is not good, send the deceased to heaven. This is called life does not bear grudges, and the dead are the biggest. If the deceased's family is poor, everyone will make a coffin for him.
When people die at dawn, it is often twenty or thirty people carrying coffins together and helping each other. For those who help, if conditions permit, filial families can entertain one or two meals. The mutual help and friendship between people is manifested in Shennongjia through the ancient funeral custom of ringing the death knell, and it also reflects the reverence for life caused by the care for the deceased. The funeral drum in Enshi is said to be a legacy of Tujia people's mourning for the dead, which is popular in the red soil, sandy land and Xintang area on both sides of the Qingjiang River in Enshi. Dongxiang area called the mourning drum "mourning drum" or "mourning drum". The funeral drum is a dance performance composed of three people, which is performed around the dead body after the Dojo. One beat drums, one screened gongs, one danced filial piety, and sang and danced around the coffin. Among them, "three main combinations" is one of the forms of mourning drums, and Dongxiang area is called "three main combinations". It is said that the ethnic descendants of Tujia people are "Man Zi people" and "Hakkas" (later divided by surnames). In order to fight against the invaders, their grandfather died in battle, and the three fathers and sons could not afford gongs and drums and Taoist priests to make food, so they used "sheng Zi" (an instrument for holding food).
There is no written record of "Sanyehe" in Enshi County Records and Shinan Prefecture Records. It can be seen that after this form is changed to local government, the inheritance area is not very wide. The form of jumping funeral drum is popular in Dongxiang area of Enshi city, and there are still customs scattered around the city and in towns and villages in the north and south. However, in the Ming Dynasty's "Badong County Records", Badong, our state, once recorded: "After four miles, local customs were mostly vulgar, and there was nothing like crying for friends. In the old customs, on the eve of his death, his family invited relatives and friends to buy wine and food, blow gold and cut drums, and sing great Dan, or one night or three or five nights. " It means "Salho" sung in Badong area when fasting for the dead. The area around Jianshi Guandian is called "spreading sorrow and disaster". Because Sanyehe, Salho and Sadness are very similar in pronunciation, Sanyehe, Salho and Sadness should be drums of the same clan and origin in essence compared with popular areas and content forms.
As early as the Song Dynasty, Enshi County (now Enshi City) belonged to Kuizhou (now Fengjie, Sichuan Province), and it still belonged to Kuizhou in the early Ming Dynasty. The Kuifu Tujing once recorded: "Ba people are martial, beating drums and stepping on songs to cheer up their grief, and their parents are at the beginning of mourning, and their songs will be crazy and people will jump." Accordingly, the dance form of mourning drums was formed in Ba State in Shang Dynasty more than 2,600 years ago. It should be the Ba people who lived in the Qingjiang River valley in ancient times. They sang praises for the soldiers who died in the battle, inspired future generations, and sang drums. Later, they spread among the people and developed into a funeral dance to mourn the parents' upbringing-jumping drums.
Later, the death knell developed to four people, two with long handkerchiefs (playing with towels). Funeral drums can only be started after the Taoist teacher "dresses up". Duan Gong and Taoist teachers called it "before stepping on the spirit". This form must be injury without sorrow, madness without evil, making a lively event to accompany the deceased, holding a funeral with joy, paying tribute to the deceased, and "dispelling worries" and "relieving worries" for the families of the deceased.
The knell drum is headed by the drummer, who dances and sings with it. "Four steps" and "stepping on four doors" are the basic movements in the funeral drum, with clean steps and rough dance. "Beating gongs and drums and stepping on songs across the street" is the basic law of mourning drums. When dancing, the dancers danced and sang rhythmically with the drums, sometimes kneeling high, sometimes kneeling low, sometimes elbows around shoulders, and sometimes wiping their backs. Their hands, waist and feet trembled together, the dancers were fascinated, and the viewers were staring, staying up all night, mixed with sadness and joy.
"Baotuo" is the warmest ending scene in the funeral dance drums. The so-called "treasure" is a flat slate that the dancer found near Xiaojia in advance. When the funeral dance reaches its climax, the dancers will lead all the dutiful sons, dutiful sons, dutiful daughters and onlookers to dance in the wild, tie the "treasure" with ropes, and drag the stone by one person, while dancing and dragging the stone around.
The lyrics of Enshi's funeral drum are mostly seven words, with the content of "filial piety before death and death after death" as the main aria, such as "pregnant in October", "twenty-four filial piety" and "Manglian looking for his mother". Music from the drums, gongs, singing a single, up and down, mostly four or two beats. Burial drums are still popular in other remote mountainous areas of Enshi, but they are gradually simplified. Now it's called "sitting at night" or playing mourning drums.