"The phoenix hubs here, and the birds are hoisted and feathered", which is said to be the place where the wings of the phoenix fly. Xu Xiake once stayed here for a full week, leaving more than 3,000 words to praise this "paradise" in his heart.
Behind the Cangshan Mountains, the source of the Erhai Sea, today's "China Is So Beautiful", the low absinthe band came here - Fengyu Town.
Grandma's heart was full of flowers
Once an important town on the Tea Horse Road, time flies, the sound of horseshoes on the bluestone slab road has long gone, and the hustle and bustle have dissolved into the leisurely years, looming in the gray sculptures and brick carvings in the courtyards of the streets. Stepping on this land, it always feels like time has gone back a lot.
The entire population of Fengyu town is almost all Bai, and people wearing ethnic costumes abound in the street market, but the folk customs of the Bai ethnic group are not only reflected in the costumes. The eldest sister who sells chicken bean cold powder on the roadside is the "hermit master" of the Bai overlord whip (the overlord whip uses hollow bamboo or flat wooden strips about one meter long, chiseling four to five holes of about ten centimeters long, each hole contains two sets of copper coins, and each group uses two to three pieces. It is a percussion instrument that is performed with a pole and strikes the body, knees or elbows with both ends of the dance, accompanied by singing and dancing);
Casually turn around on the street corner, the girlfriend partner hand embroidered folk little tiger grandmother, can also sing a song of the hard shell of the river crab.
The best of these is Yang Ruoqian's grandmother, known as the "lark". Grandma Yang was born in 1942, sang as a soloist in the third grade of primary school, and joined the pipe band in the fourth grade - not for anyone, all the musicians here are juniors. The 79-year-old grandmother sang "Singing the Motherland", still high-pitched and loud, and her voice was like a natural sound.
Grandma Yang, who always has a smile on her face, life is not smooth. When her father died at the age of ten, the family could no longer provide for two children to study at the same time, as the eldest sister, she could only drop out of school and sell vegetables to subsidize the family; arranged marriages to marry her husband's family, run housework, serve her in-laws, and live in poverty for decades. Everything is a last resort, but Grandma Yang uses singing to dispel the bitterness in her heart, "still have to be happy, sing when you are happy, and sing when you do things." The song is a remembrance of childhood dreams, and it is also a spice and embellishment in ordinary life.
"Night
Endless and long
I felt like I was singing in solitude
I'm not looking here
Just wait ahead
Waiting for my lost dream."
- Low Absinthe Band, "Little Flowers"
Between the shooting, Grandma Yang and all the grandmothers in the neighborhood distributed the candy to everyone, everyone had to give, everyone had to be healthy and happy. Drummer Wen Feng said: "She knows the power of happiness, the song is her life, and time has shaped her to the ultimate beauty." ”
Maybe Grandma no longer needs to put small flowers on her head, grandma's heart is already full of flowers.
Full range of musicians
Shi Wenqing is the band's guide at Fengyu.
After graduating from high school, he worked as a postman in the town, and because he liked calligraphy, he was often asked by the villagers to copy family trees. Almost every family of Fengyu has a family tree, but most of the family history recorded above begins during the Hongwu period of the Ming Dynasty, whose ancestral home was Jinling Yingtianfu (present-day Nanjing, Jiangsu Province). So before this, where to find the history of the indigenous people of Fengyu?
A question in his heart, a little obsession with the history of his hometown, supports Shi Wenqing's collection and research over the years, without asking for returns, without asking for the future, his dream is to produce a "Fengyu Culture Encyclopedia", so that people can open the book to find everything about Fengyu, "even a bag of laundry detergent money can not be earned."
Pushing open the door of Shi Wenqing's house, you will see a group of fellow villagers gathered in the courtyard. The information printed on the paper is still insufficient, and the vivid history of the Fengyu Bai people still beats in the folk songs sung by the fellow villagers and flows in the Bai language between talks and laughter. Lead singer Liu Kun couldn't help but beat the drums and harmonize, with music as the medium, whether the language was communicative or not has become unimportant.
Stepping out of this courtyard door, they are farmers who have returned from hoes, housewives who are busy working in front of the stove, small businessmen who set up stalls and sell goods... But here, they are singers, they are musicians, they are full musicians.
"O world, let him go
The war of love and hate has finally stopped
Dear ones
Our hearts are like mirrors
Sing in lightning, youth"
--Low Absinthe Band: "Early Morning Twilight"
Everything in bai life can be expressed in music. Even if it is just to cut down a piece of bamboo to make a bully whip, it must be sung to the bamboo: "Today we use a machete to take your bamboo knot, and we use copper coins to guide your voice", Shi Wenqing said, which is telling bamboo that we will take your beautiful voice out of the mountain.
For music, for all the beautiful sounds that come from nature, the Bai people have a heartfelt yearning and awe. Here, you don't need to talk about music, because their life itself is music.
"China is so beautiful"
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Edit | He Jiayi
Editor-in-Chief | Wei Bennie
Producer | Wang Shengzhi