the relationship between color and folk customs has always been far and deep. The influence of color on China culture is omnipresent and penetrating. Calligraphy, painting, photography, including literary creation, are inseparable from color expression and color aesthetics. The traditional folk culture of Yi nationality contains many elements of color. Color and traditional folk culture of Yi people are connected and complement each other. Color truly and intuitively reproduces the traditional folk culture of Yi people, and creates illusion space for it. People perceive through color to reproduce one or more aspects of Yi folk culture. Yi folk culture has painted a beautiful and shameful stroke for color, which has made color have a new expansion in the deep field.
The traditional folk culture of the Yi nationality is all-encompassing. This paper tries to extract several aspects from it to analyze the integration between color and it.
1. Seeing the traditional folk culture of Yi nationality from the lacquer art of Liangshan Yi nationality
Lacquerware is collectively called "Zugu Ji Da Su" in Liangshan Yi language. About 57 generations ago, it has a history of about 16 years. The Yi people have a craftsman class called "Luoge" for a long time in history. Generations of Liangshan Yi craftsmen have created exquisite and simple articles for civilian use, which is an important component of Yi people's ware culture, among which black, red and Huang San lacquerware are the most unique.
The red, yellow and black painted lacquerware of Yi people is unique in the traditional culture of Yi people. There are many kinds of Yi lacquerware, and the traditional lacquerware mainly includes more than 2 kinds of wine utensils, tableware, saddles, weapons and instruments. The raw materials used in lacquerware are high-quality "Bauhinia" wood grown in the alpine region above 35m above sea level as embryos, precious natural raw materials such as earth lacquer, vermilion and stone yellow, which are refined through dozens of processes such as cutting and making lacquer, selection and treatment of fetal bones, transverse rotation of wooden tires, coloring and painting. The decorative features of Liangshan Yi lacquerware are natural and realistic. Patterns come from nature and life. Lacquer painting patterns are mostly freehand and abstract geometric patterns, including the sun, moon and stars, mountains and rivers, birds and animals, flowers and trees, as well as the humanistic maps in the profound local culture and religious beliefs. Its decorative combination is full and clever, giving consideration to thickness and density, and its production methods include painting, carving, inlaying and painting.
The colors of lacquerware are traditional black, yellow and red of Yi people, solemn black, beautiful yellow and warm red, which constitute its geometric pattern with strong national style and rich cultural heritage. Black, red and Huang San colors are intricately mixed and used at intervals. The keynote is that red and yellow colors form a sharp contrast between cold and warm, strength and light and shade on the black paint base. Bright and bright color, extensive and simple, clear pattern, smooth lines, lively and free, concise and bright, vigorous and bold, elegant and solemn, forming a certain sense of space, thus producing a harmonious rhythm.
The three-color worship of Yi people reflected by lacquerware has a conventional cultural symbolic meaning: black represents dignity and solemnity; Red symbolizes courage and enthusiasm; Yellow represents beauty and light. Lacquerware is also related to Yi people's folk beliefs. For example, drinking utensils such as eagle claw cup and horn cup with outstanding modeling style in lacquerware, whose fetal bones are directly taken from animal bodies and made by grinding and painting, are natural and simple in color. It not only reflects the totem concept of Liangshan Yi ancestors, but also reflects the national temperament of Yi people who are simple, martial and brave.
The production of Liangshan lacquerware has experienced the process from the manual workshop to the factory product based on Apu's traditional production mode. Xide County and Zhaojue County are the main producing areas of lacquerware. The products produced by the factory are not exactly the same as the lacquerware produced by the traditional way in the village. Handmade products in villages are dim, rough and have the texture of folk flavor. Factory products use glossy red and yellow paints to draw patterns, and yellow is more emphasis on lemon, not tan, which makes the color matching of lacquerware tableware more vivid, shiny and smooth, and has a better texture.
second, look at the use of color in the traditional folk culture of the Yi people from the costume culture of Liangshan Yi people
Liangshan Yi people's costumes are colorful and unique in style. Historically, due to the numerous branches of the Yi people and their scattered residence, there are obvious differences in costumes from different places, with different styles and colors and strong regional colors. Regionally, Liangshan costumes can be divided into three styles: Yinuo (East Liangshan), Shengzha (Northwest Liangshan) and Shidi (South Liangshan). Liangshan Yi people's costumes are rich in cultural colors, with bold and hot colors, strong contrast or subtle elegance, and soft colors. It can be said that the colorful use of colors enriches the costume culture of Liangshan, and the colorful costume culture of Liangshan also provides another stage for the research and application of colors.
When Liangshan Yi boy was four or five years old, he left a square piece of hair on the top of his head, which is called "Tianbodhisattva" in Chinese. It is believed that it can dominate good fortune and bad fortune, and no one can touch or tease it. Most adult men have blue cotton headgear wrapped around their heads, and the head of the headgear is wrapped in a pointed cone shape, which is vertical to the left of the forehead. The Chinese name is "hero knot". The baby boy's left ear is perforated, and he wears earrings when he is a little longer. Adult men wear large yellow beeswax ear beads with red beads on the top and tassels hanging on the bottom. Sometimes you wear a bamboo hat on your head. Yi men's jackets are generally light blue, dark blue, navy blue and other colors, mostly made of cotton cloth. There are various patterns on the front, nape and cuffs. Young men in Enoch and Saint-Chahar areas are dressed in flowers, gorgeous clothes and women's clothes. The men's shirts in the local area are decorated with buckles, and the colored side buckles are 1 cm long, arranged on the right side, and the buttons are made of metal, which are huge and shiny, and the buckles are decorated with plain clothes. The bottoms are generally light blue, dark blue, blue and other colors, and there are flowers on the trouser legs. The size of the trouser leg is closely connected with the area. The width can reach one or two meters. Wear it with shoulder and chest slung, woven with thongs, lined with red cloth and inlaid with white conch bone pieces. Commonly known as the hero belt. Men often use ivory, musk, wild boar's teeth, Tiger Claw, white bear's paw, etc. as chest ornaments, and almost everyone has them after Bimo's spell cloth (red or blue).
After storing hair, Yi girls comb their hair straight behind their heads. At the age of eight or nine, put a single braid around the top of your head, and braid the tail with red cotton thread. When you get married, you will comb your double braids and cross them on the head handkerchief. A young woman in Saint-Chahar wears a double-layer embroidered head handkerchief with red lining and green face. Enoch area is one or two meters of blue cloth folded into several layers on the head. The area is a long strip of green cloth, with flowers tied at the edge and folded on the head. In all three areas, the handkerchief will be changed after giving birth. Saint-Chahar and Enoch areas were replaced by lotus leaf-shaped caps, and the areas were replaced by bamboo-framed green cloth domes. There are also long black cloth wrapped around the head. Before a woman is a minor, red and green beads as big as peas are often hung on her ears, and red cotton thread is worn in her ears. Earrings are only worn when you are an adult or wear double braids. Earrings are coral, silver bubbles, stone ear beads, jade, shellfish and tremella. Most of them are round stars. There are many styles of silver or copper. The women's jacket's hem, front, back collar and cuffs are patterned with colored lines. The neckline is decorated with gold, silver, jewelry and jade. Some are decorated with buckles and wrapped with colored silk threads, with different shapes and ingenuity. Women wear pleated long skirts, which are made of wide cloth and narrow cloth. Children's skirts are mainly red and white, or several colors alternate with each other, young people are mainly red, blue and white, and old people are mainly blue, blue or cyan. The wool skirt in the region is soft, thick and elegant. The middle part is barrel-shaped and narrow and long, red, and the blue fine pleats in the lower section are even and neat. The red, white and black red stripes in the lower transverse section are harmonious in tone, and then cyan, and the pleats at the knees are scattered and trumpet-shaped. The line is wrinkled and flashing, light and elegant.
both men and women of the yi nationality wear "charwa" and blankets. "Chaerwa" is shaped like a cloak, and it is made of twisted coarse wool yarn. Generally, there are 13 pieces, each of which is seven or eight meters wide, and most of them are dyed dark blue and some are pure white. Saint-Chahar area is the most gorgeous, with red and yellow edges and cyan interlining, and a 3-cm-long rope spike hanging below. The felt is made of about two kilograms of wool, and it is as thin as copper coins. It is folded in 6 cm wide folds, usually 3 to 9 folds, and the top is closed with a wool rope. Mostly primary colors or blue. "Chaerwa" and felt are necessary clothes for Yi men, women and children. They are clothes during the day and quilts at night, which protect them from rain and snow.
From the perspective of clothing colors, young men and women generally wear bright colors, preferring to use contrasting colors such as red, yellow, green, orange and pink, with various patterns. The patterns of middle-aged people's clothing are less than those of young people, and the colors used are sky blue, green, purple, blue and white, which are elegant and solemn. Old people often use blue cloth, generally do not make flowers, only decorated with blue edges of Tsing Yi or blue edges. The patterns and laces of clothing are rich in ethnic and local colors and life breath.
At the annual Torch Festival of Yi people in Butuo County, there are always many girls holding pholiota adiposa's hand walking and dancing in groups, no matter around the sports field or in the streets and lanes. There are more than a dozen people, ranging from dozens of people, dressed in colorful clothes and covered with moonlight-like silver ornaments, which rattle as soon as they leave, attracting others to look askance. There was no pholiota adiposa in Butuo in the past. People relied on their hemp fiber to shelter from the rain. Since the 197s, Butuo Yi people, who love black, have fallen in love with Huang Cancan's yellow paper umbrella. At present, pholiota adiposa has become an essential ornament of the Yi women's Torch Festival. Rain or shine, Butuo girls are always pholiota adiposa. On the Torch Festival, Butuo women are mainly black, with black or cyan hats on their heads and a rectangular black felt on their upper bodies, which forms the best combination of movement and movement with the smart black-and-white and blue pleated skirt below, and also constitutes the three colors of Butuo's Torch Festival: black, white and yellow. Black is square, yellow is circular, and white dots are linear.
Due to horse racing, bullfighting, cockfighting, sheep fighting and wrestling, the torch field is generally round, surrounded by many people watching, and the crowded pholiota adiposa fills the field, forming the pholiota adiposa Circle. Pholiota adiposa, which leads to the torch field, slowly moves from the green fields and rugged hillsides to the torch field, forming a flowing dragon of pholiota adiposa, which makes the surrounding corn fields greener. During the torch race, the hillside is always full of people or spectators. There are many people and umbrellas. In a sea of yellow umbrellas, people can't tell whether pholiota adiposa is in the clouds or the clouds are in the pholiota adiposa. Butuo girls are mostly shy. When tourists take pictures of them, they block the umbrella in front of them, and the girl's face disappears, leaving only a piece of yellow in the lens. The umbrella seems to be a wall of shame.
The use of yellow is widely publicized here. To a certain extent, pholiota adiposa has achieved a unique traditional folk culture in Liangshan. In the use of color, we may like one color combination and reject another. But in Liangshan national costumes, the fusion of any color is so bold and direct, which makes people feel strongly that the traditional folk culture from nature and life brings visual impact and visual beauty.
Third, the color factors in the traditional folk culture of the Yi people are seen from the hierarchical history of the Yi people in Liangshan
The Yi people in Liangshan are called "black Yi" and "white Yi" by the outside world. Originally, there was no distinction between "black, white and red" among Yi people. How did "black Yi" and "white Yi" come from? In this way, it is extremely rare for other nationalities to use color to describe and define the difference of grades.
Liangshan Yi people call Heiyi "Nuo" and Baiyi "Qu". "Nuo" and "Qu" are the inherent languages of Liangshan Yi people. "Black Yi" and "White Yi" are foreign annotations. Taking Ganluo County in Liangshan Prefecture as an example, the concepts of "black" and "white" are used to distinguish the two sub-ethnic groups of Yi people. Taking Erjue River as the boundary, Hexi is a "white" area and Hedong is a "black" area. There are some differences between Bai Yi and Hei Yi not only in language, but also in costumes, customs and habits, weddings and funerals. For example, in clothing, the Yi people in Heiyi District like to dye "Chaerwa" black, and the dye is mostly made of pig blood mixed with pot smoke. Chaerwa in Baiyi district is not dyed, and it is mostly made of pure white wool, which costs a lot. The embroidery of women's clothing in Baiyi district is more vivid, with bright red, purple and other colors, and the silk thread used for embroidery is rich and varied, while the Yi people in Heiyi district mostly use black cloth or blue cloth as the background of clothing, and the embroidery thread is mostly green, with darker colors.
Since "Nuo" and "Qu" were misunderstood as "black" and "white", some Yi people themselves have been influenced by their symbolic meanings, showing different sub-ethnic identities. When corresponding to "black" (promise), we should emphasize "white". Color, as a symbol, expresses different ethnic identities. From the eyes of the people in the Tusi-ruled area, it is not good that the people in the "Nuo" area are barbaric and uncivilized, which is consistent with the Chinese saying of "being savage"; It is good to be civilized and close to the government, so I emphasize white. However, in the eyes of people in Norway, they are authentic Yi people, keep the tradition of Yi people, do not succumb to government forces, and do not want to blindly imitate Han people. The distinction between "Wu Man" and "Bai Man" in historical documents may also have this reason. From the dominant position of Chinese, the civilized Yi people are Bai Yi, and vice versa. It just happens to be the pronunciation coupling with the self-name, grade and color of Liangshan Yi people, so there is a phenomenon that Yi people are divided into black and white.
To talk about color research from the perspective of the extension of traditional culture and history, it must be based on scientific facts and require clear and systematic. Therefore, we will not make a conscious and far-fetched discussion on this textual research. Investigating the relationship between color and related traditional culture is of positive significance for further understanding and using color, creating and expanding the theme and creative form of artistic works, and for better carrying out art education in colleges and universities.