On July 20, 2012, Dong Zhen, dressed in white and wearing a veil, appeared on the stage of "The Voice of China". The song was "Swords Like Dreams". According to Dong Zhen's Weibo post afterwards, the song was specified by the program - "My voice can represent martial arts."

Liu Xinyi

Before telling the story of the "Ancient Style Circle", I would like to start with the moment when it was ridiculed.

On July 20, 2012, Dong Zhen, dressed in white and wearing a veil, appeared on the stage of " The Voice of China ". The song was "Swords Like Dreams". According to Dong Zhen's Weibo post afterwards, the song was specified by the program - "My voice can represent martial arts." When the song ended, no teacher turned around. "Swords Like Dreams" was the opening theme of the Taiwanese martial arts TV series "The Legend of Heaven and the Dragon" 18 years ago, and Dong Zhen prefers to describe her usual music style as "fairy-tale style". In any case, the word "Gufeng" has not yet emerged, but this does not mean that the name "Gufeng" is not recognized. On the contrary, it is closer to a tacit understanding: about how " ancient style music " attempts to break Circle, how can it be broken?

However, it was also at the end of the same year that the ancient music society " Mo Ming Qi Miao " successfully held its sixth anniversary concert in Beijing's Maqiao Washe. The following year, it successfully held the " Jinling Qinhuai Night" in Nanjing. concert. When the society was established, it took "Gravity to the Ancient Style" as its slogan, and it has become the largest ancient style music group to date.

Ancient style music society "Mo Ming Qi Miao"

Six years ago, "The Night Sing of the Tang Dynasty" was born, which almost served as a pioneer for the subculture music genre of "ancient style music". Six years later, "万神记" was covered by Phoenix Legend at Bilbili's New Year's Eve party, breaking out of the music industry again. In the blink of an eye, "ancient music" and the subculture circle it leads, the "ancient style circle", have passed more than ten years.

I don’t remember the cloudy weather or the waxing and waning, I have seen flowers bloom and wither.

- "The Wind Rises in the Sky"

The reason why the opening chapter talks about a failure of the "ancient style circle" (or, about its role in the mainstream world hit a wall), because the birth of "ancient music" shook its foundation of legitimacy - of course, the premise is that "legitimacy" itself is very important - which means that it will inevitably fail, or even fail many times. It comes at a time when it is facing mainstream music production methods.

The original song of "The Night Sing of the Tang Dynasty" is the episode "Leave the Soul" of the Taiwanese puppet show "Thunderbolt" series. The lyrics have nothing to do with "Thunderbolt". Instead, they describe the prosperous scene of the Tang Dynasty in the poet's imagination. Obviously, Ediq’s lyrics, covers and re-creations were not authorized. What is even more obvious is the reason why this behavior was not pursued by the copyright owner: the lack of smooth communication on the Internet, the geographical isolation, the reputation that was not loud enough at the time, and the most important (perhaps imaginary) nature of a death-free gold medal. Reason: It is not used in any commercial activities.

In the following years, countless songs were covered with lyrics, mostly from East Asian ACGN episodes or pop songs represented by Cantonese songs. Even though in recent years, with the improvement of copyright awareness, many song creators have begun to contact the authors of the original songs that were written and covered in the early years, and try to obtain authorization, the relevant disputes have not subsided.

Almost at the same time as the rise of lyrics and covers, original attempts emerged at the same time. However, even if it embarks on the road of originality, or is barely exempted from the "non-commercial" label, ancient music still attracts controversy: creators and listeners strive to "interpret the emotions of the ancients and express the inner world of the ancients with lyrics", and a lot of Uses classical imagery and rhetoric. However, the widespread appropriation of popular songs or foreign ACGN works inevitably makes this retro attempt obscure—at least it seems not justified enough.

On the other hand, "rhetoric accumulation" has also become a common criticism of ancient music, especially lyrics. In 2018, " New Weekly " published an article "You're right, these ancient lyrics are just fabricated"[1], which was subsequently publicized by mainstream media such as " People's Daily " and " China News Weekly " Reprint.

In fact, the controversy faced by ancient style music shows in a sense that it has a deep "community" nature, so that many years later, looking back at the criticism and self-defense of the year, it feels like an inexplicable criticism from friendly people. Surprised.

The word "fanjin" is now generally defined as "based on already formed texts (usually popular culture texts), borrowing the existing characters, character relationships, basic storylines and world view settings of the original texts. "[2] As far as ancient music is concerned, the nature of "tongren", in addition to the strong secondary creation color, also has another meaning, which is to trace back to its original meaning: people with similar interests, Create and publish non-commercial works.

mentioned above that many of the original songs used for lyrics and covers mostly come from the two-dimensional subculture of East Asia. In fact, a large part of the resources come from a series of martial arts or fairy tale games collectively known as the "Domestic Three Swords". It is worth noting that when providing original songs, these games themselves provide a large number of narrative resources for ancient music.

singer Xinran has been releasing a series of cover works on Decibel.com since 2005, with lyrics taken from game episodes such as "Sword and Fairy III" and "Legend of Sword and Fairy III" - even though as early as 2003, "Legend of Sword and Fairy" "Legend of Sword and Fairy 3" publisher Universal Star has held an event called "Legend of Sword and Fairy 3", inviting fans to write lyrics for the game's theme song[3] to build momentum for the release of "Legend of Sword and Fairy 3". However, players continued to write lyrics and cover songs after the event ended (in fact, the event was only held for 20 days). Later, it became a folk tradition of this type of martial arts-xianxia games and became a supplement to the game narrative.

The online game "Swordsman Online Version 3"

In 2009, the online game "Swordsman Online Version 3" (hereinafter referred to as "Sword 3") was released. After that, expansion packs such as "Ba Shu Fengyun" and "Anshi Rebellion" were released, making it a 2014 One of the most famous online games in China. With the popularity of Jiansan III, ancient fan music based on the game's world view, plot or character settings is booming - not only based on the game background (Datang Dynasty), but also based on the game system and player relationships based on the game system (such as master and apprentice, love, etc.), or wandering between the two.

For example, "Conversion" is based on the sect setting in the game and describes the love between the heroine and the monk, while "Snow Between the Eyebrows" focuses on the joys and sorrows of the game player group. In the landscape of "Sword Three" fan culture, ancient music accounts for as much proportion as novels and illustrations.

It’s you who kisses away the pen and ink, dyeing the corners of my eyes with tears, and acting out the joys and sorrows of separation and separation.

- "Koi Chao"

The importance of ancient music in fan culture stems from its natural narrative at the beginning of its birth. impulse.

Taking "The Night Sing of the Tang Dynasty" as an example, the creator creatively added eight lines of rap in the prelude of the game to match the rhythm:

" Long Gao Liquor I got drunk and gave the luminous cup of grape wine to the ministers. To appreciate its taste, be sure to add cinnamon when cooking sheep in a golden cauldron; the orchid wine shop is decorated with lanterns and tears, and the charm of a night is sold out with gold; the mist and rain gently scratch the back of the beauty, and the silk, bamboo and robes are dancing..."

In the interlude, there is a similar feeling. Processing:

" Pei Min The general danced his sword, and a rainbow moved the heaven and earth; the heroic scroll added ink to the Chang'an song, and the wild cursive one stroke pointed at Zhang Xu... Last night's stars and last night's wind, the west bank of the painting building Gui Tangdong. I don’t have a colorful phoenix with two flying wings, but I have a clear understanding..." [4]

These sentences can certainly be regarded as a simple "Verse" - if some hip-hop music concepts are used here - but the more important thing is , the author creatively opens up a unique narrative paradigm and space in ancient music: Nianbai. The name

comes from the monologue or dialogue in traditional Chinese opera, which is a performance method between spoken words and singing. (There is no doubt that if we go to the root of the matter, the essence of "Nian Bai" in ancient music should be closer to the "Kou Bai" in Peking Opera .) The emergence of this form allows creators to create music without having to match the melody. , adding "lines" recited by singers or other voice actors directly into or before the section, thereby enhancing the narrative function of the song.

As soon as "Nianbai" comes out, " plot song " emerges spontaneously: with the help of dialogue lines interspersed or even deeply embedded between the arias, "plot song" pushes the narrative impulse of ancient music to its peak.It looks like a miniature radio drama (and comes with its own theme song), aiming to tell the whole story of the beginning and end within the capacity of a song. "Butterfly on Dead Leaves", also written by Ediq, has a "storyteller" perspective, explaining the background of the story in the song:

"Writer: It has been three years since I finished writing this story, but the dead leaves are... I never came back. This year, during the Dragon Boat Festival, I accompanied her drunkenly in the wine cellar again. I don’t know how long she will be guarding this city gate. I only know that that night I burned a book that I wrote three years ago. Book. "[5]

At the same time, this narrative impulse naturally overflows the framework of plot songs and becomes one of the important features that distinguishes ancient music from other song genres. After all, due to limitations in technology and manpower, not all ancient music has the spare capacity to adopt the "recitation + song" presentation method.

Even if the narrative is stripped away, the narrative dimension of many ancient music is still deeply rooted. It can almost be said that this instinct is rooted in the birth of ancient music - obviously this is not unrelated to his origin as a "game fan". “Copywriting” is another incarnation of narrative impulse. In the ancient music circle, "copywriting" can certainly be used to express creative inspiration, but most creators are more willing to solemnly narrate the background of the song's story in "copywriting". Among them, the representative one should be " pours the world " released in 2008, produced by Mo Mingqi Miao and sung by Hetu . The lyricist Finale fictionalized a dynasty - "Da Zhou", and created three fictional characters: "Emperor Zhou Bai Yan", "Jing Emperor of the former dynasty" and "Concubine Zhu Sha of the former dynasty". The copy reads:

Zhou Emperor Bai Yan died on a snowy night ten years after he became emperor.

This reckless emperor did not like luxury. After forcing the palace to seize the throne, he abandoned the gorgeous palace built by the previous emperor. He stayed in the Nine Dragon Pagoda in the imperial palace every night, and when he died, he sat cross-legged in front of the table in the stone room on the top of the tower. On the futon, facing a portrait on the wall.

If there are any palace ladies who have experienced the previous dynasty, they will definitely recognize that the woman with unparalleled beauty in the painting is the last noble concubine conferred by Emperor Jing of the previous dynasty.

It turns out that ten years after the fall of the country, Bai Yan finally followed that man. He left not a single word behind him. So all the mysteries about the founding emperor of Zhou Dynasty were buried in the thick history books together with the portrait hanging on the nine-layer pagoda and hidden behind the seven-layer veil. [6]

Compared with this quite complete story, lyrics such as "Thousands of red threads were entangled at that time/Marrying as a human being with just one thought" and "The final hexagram/In the end, I will conquer the world for you" are more interesting. Close to a footnote to the story.

What’s interesting is that ancient music authors chose “copywriting” as a carrier precisely because the music websites that published these songs at that time had special “copywriting” or “creative inspiration” columns, which provided the audience with the convenience of reading together. But in the process of spreading the song, the loss of copywriting is inevitable. Not long after "All the World" became popular, some fans edited a fan video of the CP " Yan Kuan original danmei novel. Obviously, at this moment, the plot of the novel and the plot of the song have nothing to do with each other.

"Narrative" has been established, and ancient music naturally began to try to "narrate the world". After "The World" became popular, Mo Mingqimiao released an album of the same name, including "The Wind Rises in the Sky", "A Look at the Spring Breeze" and other tracks. Each track can be a separate piece, but also connected with each other in the plot. From the perspectives of the female general Xie Wan, the young master Mo Li and others, they jointly outline the life and death of "Emperor Zhou Bai Yan" who launched an army to found the country. Since then, projects such as " Feng Hua Lu ", "Ode to the Beauties of the Tang Dynasty", and "Hundred Schools of Scholars" have also aimed to outline the portraits of a generation - and behind these "narrating the world" projects, there are countless people gathered in A community of like-minded people under this banner.

Singing a long song, the pen moves like a dragon and a snake, and the wind and clouds change the colors

- "Fenghua Lu"

After discussing the "narrative-narrative" instinct of "ancient style music", let us return to the name "ancient style" above.

Of course, as the name suggests - "ancient style" points to a retro or antique aesthetic orientation: the widespread use of pentatonic in composition, the selection of flutes, zither and other instruments in orchestration, and the large number of lyrics taken from ancient poetry traditional imagery, as well as the addition of the singing style of "drama".

Guqin

However, in 2003, Jay Chou 's song " Dongfeng Breaks " had already taken up the banner of the "Chinese style" music style. In other words, two years before the birth of ancient style music, it became popular Nationwide; and today, represented by the emergence of the variety show "国风美男", the reference to the word "national style" seems to more or less overlap with "ancient style". For "Chinese style" or "national style" that also uses these elements and creative methods, the "ancient style circle" tries to draw a line. Common rhetoric is as follows:

"Chinese-style lyrics are more vernacular than ancient-style music. Ancient-style lyrics often use ancient poems, and pay more attention to wording and rhyme."

"In terms of orchestration, compared with "archaic style", Chinese style has less orchestration The proportion of Western instruments or electroacoustic instruments used will be slightly more, basically half Western instruments and half ethnic instruments; while the ancient style emphasizes the use of ethnic instruments and electronic synthesizers. "

" Chinese style is involved. In the entertainment industry, creators such as Jay Chou, JJ Lin , Xu Song, and others all have a certain status in the entertainment and music circles, but for now, ancient music is still only developed on the Internet. "[7]

" Feng focuses on the 'country' in space, and ancient style focuses on the 'ancient' in time." [8]

Obviously, these words contain more or less biased and absolute meanings. However, behind such attempts to define, there is implicit a kind of "highbrow" imagination and an almost decisive attitude: behind "more elegant" and "more national", it points to "more grassroots" and "more ethnic". More niche”—a rejection of the already mature industrial production system of popular music.

This so-called "highbrow and low-key" imagination reveals another, almost completely opposite nature of the "ancient style circle": it is not the self-entertainment of the literary youth who stay alone in the study, but the gathering of friends. , with the most stubborn seriousness, wreaking havoc in the cyber tribe.

The production of ancient music is not dominated by record companies or music producers, but by "communities" or "studio": "planning" provides inspiration and creativity, and at the same time recruits personnel; "lyrics" and " After cooperating with "composer" (or directly writing lyrics for existing works), it is handed over to the "singer" to cover it. After mixing and shrinking in the "post-stage", it is published on dib.com, , 5sing and other music websites. At the same time, we are looking for "artists" Visual design for the song. All these "types of work" are gathered into various "clubs", using QQ groups as a basis to communicate with each other's needs, store project documents, and promote songs. With the help of the extremely low-cost QQ group and the corporate-style production model, the creation of ancient music has become decentralized.

Even though there is still a distinction between "masses and little transparents" (which is difficult to avoid in any online fan community), any interested fan can participate in co-creation in the group chat - at least this will not be the same. A lonely thing.

Note:

[1] Zhang Jiaming. You are right, these ancient lyrics are just fabricated. New Weekly. 2018. https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/FTohy5BiSKYQPq_wKJgTww

[2] Zheng Xiqing. Broken Wall Book ：Internet culture keywords[M]. Beijing: Sanlian Bookstore.2018:63

[3] See http://games.sina.com.cn/newgames/2003/07/07253855.shtml

[4] Ediq. Night of the Tang Dynasty Sing. NetEase Cloud Music. 2016. https://music.163.com/#/song?id=81532

[5] Mo Ming Qi Miao. Dead Leaf Butterfly. NetEase Cloud Music. https://music.163. com/#/song?id=366257

[6] Ediq.Hetu.NetEase Cloud Music.2016.https://music.163.com/#/song?id=27571867

[7] Mo Luo Jiutian.Chinese Style and Harmony What is the difference between ancient styles? .Sohu.com.2018.https://www.sohu.com/a/285312862_763990

[8] M3 Little Mushroom. Does national style = ancient style, or is ancient style just a kind of national style? .zhihu.2018.https://www.zhihu.com/question/304459647/answer/605474809

Editor in charge: Zhu Fan

Proofreading: Zhang Liangliang