Gajin singers are called singers, usually middle-aged farmers, who have certain artistic accomplishment and rich life experience. In the past, singers often sang outside the village during the slack season, which was very amateur. Because the Dong people love this art, when singers sing, they often hold a village to listen and give them reception and gifts.
Gajin is usually sung by the singer himself, mainly singing, with oral narration in the middle and a story connected with the lyrics. The structure of lyrics takes the form of segmented songs, and a work consists of dozens or even hundreds of sections. The number of sentences in each paragraph is not fixed, mostly even. The syllables of each sentence are not fixed, and most of them are odd numbers. Rhyme feet are divided into tail rhyme and waist rhyme. Waist rhyme is used where the tone stops in the middle of a long sentence.
Gapipa is divided into short songs and Long song. Short songs are lyrical folk songs, and Long song is a story-telling rap.
During Jiaqing period of Qing Dynasty, a Dong teenager named Wu Wencai was born in Liping County, southeast Guizhou. Wu Wencai was born beautiful, intelligent and wise, and later admitted to the scholar, but he was neither arrogant nor impetuous, and respected the people, women and children.
Wu Wencai likes to sing big Dong songs since he was a child, and he is an excellent Dong singer in Zhai Village. At the age of 20, I began to practice writing Dong songs, and gradually reached the realm of exporting into songs. The Dong folk songs he created are apt in content, appropriate in metaphor, lively in rhythm and easy to sing, and he soon became a well-known Dong folk singer. Handed down are the earth of creation, the ancestors of the Wu family, dynasties and exhortation songs, such as wine, sex, wealth and old corrupt officials in rural areas.
One year, a young Dong man and a young Dong woman got married while singing on the moon. They are very loving and inseparable. However, the good times did not last long. Less than a year after marriage, her husband was arrested by the government and sent to a distant place to be a Ralph. Five years have passed, and there is no news. The wife thought that her husband might be exhausted in other places and remarried to another Dong village.
Not long after his wife remarried, her husband came back. Facing the empty house, he remembered the sweet words of the past, and her husband was miserable. Finally, he went to Wu Wencai for help.
After a little thought, Wu Wencai agreed happily and said, "I will write a song for you to sing. As long as your wife hears this song, she will come back to you. "
Wu Wencai compiled the couple's love experience into a tearful Dong song, and her husband took it to the Dong Village Drum Tower where his wife remarried and sang it. When the wife heard this, she really made up with her husband, for the second time. My husband gave Wu Wencai a few taels of silver as a reward. This song is called "Song of Two taels of Silver".
As he became famous for composing music and singing songs, at the age of 29, he was invited by people from the county seat to sing Dong songs in the city.
One day, Wu Wencai took his younger brother Wu Wenbin to the Drum Tower to listen to music, and listened to an old man named Wu Laosong rap Jin, Meng Liang and Jiao Zan, and Xue Gang Anti-Tang. In that cold winter, the fire in the Drum Tower was warm and harmonious, and the lyrical rap of old Wu Man's old songs made people sleepless all night.
Wu Wencai and Wu Wenbin are in need every night. They always sit next to old Wu Man and old Song. When the old man finishes a paragraph, he will put cigarettes on the old man's hookah. Wu Wenbin and others are busy handing tea to the old man.
In the process of listening and singing, Wu Wencai was thinking about a question: "Although Gajin is a good rap form and everyone likes it, after all, there are only a few people listening to it in the Drum Tower, and there are many grandmothers, women and children spinning and weaving at home, but they can't appreciate it. It would be great if this rap form evolved into a drama form, put on the stage and performed in festivals for all Dong people to watch and listen to. Han people have Chinese dramas, but Dong people can't have Dong dramas? "
The night is quiet. The fish in the fish pond next to the Drum Tower got into the grass nest and went to sleep. The moon sets behind Gu Song in the back hill of Ladong Village. Before dawn, people who listened to the horn left one after another. Everyone went out of the gate of the Drum Tower and turned around and said, "Gong Song, listen again tomorrow night!"
Wu Laosong said, "As long as you listen attentively, I will sing every night."
People left happily. Wu Wencai and Wu Wenbin help the old people, and everyone walks out of the Drum Tower. Wu Wencai attached it to Wu Laosong's ear and said, "Grandpa, I want to make a play out of the story you sang, and make up the Dong opera of our Dong family, just like the Han opera played by the Han people, so that the characters can act, sing, talk, dance and have music. How nice! "
Wu Laosong said happily, "That's great, but there must be a play book. Can you make it up? "
Wu Wencai said confidently: "I can edit, I can edit the script."
Wu Laosong took Wu Wencai's hand and said, "Don't come to listen to me tomorrow night. All you have to do is compile the script of Dong Opera in ten days and a half. Let Dong Jia watch Dong Opera this year. "
Wu Wenbin said, "Don't brag, you can't play Dong Opera. My husband will hit you on the head with a cigarette rod. Besides, this Dong opera has never existed since ancient times! "
Wu Wencai said: "Ghost skulls are carved by people. Didn't people carve human skulls? When I write the script, just copy it for me. "
After 10 days' efforts, Wu Wencai created two Dong opera scripts, Feng Jiao Li Dan and Mei Liangyu. These two plays have been adapted from the purpose of China's plays.
After listening to Wu Wencai's plays, Wu Laosong excitedly said to everyone, "We Dong people have our own plays. This is our Dong Opera. Cai Wen, a scholar of the Dong nationality, has achieved a great event! "
In Gulou Ping, people threw Wu Wencai up and cheered. After Wu Wencai created Dong Opera, he immediately set out to set up a Dong Opera Troupe in Zhai Zhai and rehearsed it intensively. He is both a director, an actor and a singer, and his Dong Opera Troupe soon caused a sensation in Dong township, with ten villages and eight villages competing to invite him to perform.
The Spring Festival that year was the most lively day for Ladong Dong's family. Dong people from nine villages and eight villages nearby came to Ladong with smiles and passions to watch the Dong opera choreographed by the Dong people themselves.
Dong opera has no stage, so people set up a stage with Chinese fir in the square outside the Drum Tower. The stage is surrounded by bamboo mats with stools on both sides. There are also musical instruments and props, namely two huqin, a small drum, a small gong and two pairs of cymbals.
The actor chose Ladongzhai, with a local accent and a strong local flavor. Feng Jiao Li Dan took to the stage, where they sang a duet around the word "Eight". The music is well coordinated, and the dramatic conflict of the plot goes from shallow to deep, full of twists and turns.
The whole song written by Wu Wencai is so meaningful and melodious that the actors' performances enter the scene. There were three or four thousand people, men, women and children, and no one coughed. When a play is over, the audience will set off firecrackers on the stage to congratulate the success of Dong Opera. People always throw Wu Wencai up like a hydrangea. Cheers resounded through the sky.
Then, the iron cannon sounded, and people gave the highest courtesy to the Dong family in Wu Wencai, and gave it to the Dong national elite who came out of the deep suffering of history, in order to express the national elite who showed their national wisdom and cherish the memory of the heroes who innovated the Dong national culture.
Later, Wu Wencai compiled Dong Opera scripts such as Liu Zhiyuan and Bao Gong Yu Mei. With the passage of time, the Dong Opera compiled by Wu Wencai has spread to every corner of the Dong area and is deeply loved by the Dong people, which has greatly improved the art of the Dong Opera itself.
Wu Wencai was later known as "the originator of Dong Opera". In order to commemorate him, directors all over the world should recite words and offer sacrifices to him before the performance:
Master Yin, Master Yang, Master Originator, please come quickly without asking disciples. Please come tomorrow, please come in the evening, please come in the evening, please master, and start the stage at once.
Because of its emphasis on characterization, Dong Opera shows strong realism, whips evil, promotes righteousness and vivid performances.
On one occasion, he led a troupe to a Dong village and performed his own Dong song Mei Liangyu for the first time. After the play was over, the actor who played the traitor Qilu was reviled by the audience, and even camellia oleifera was not given to the actor as breakfast the next day.
On another occasion, when performing in a Dong village, a young Dong people believed it when watching the drama, and even impulsively jumped on the stage, grabbed the sword, and injured the actor who played Qilu, which triggered a lawsuit.
Dong Opera constantly absorbs the nutrition of other operas, such as Guangxi Opera, Caidiao Opera, Qiyang Opera and Guizhou Lantern Opera, and gradually improves and perfects them, and finally evolves into an independent opera with rich tunes and unique styles.