*Meizhou Hakka Folk Songs

*Meizhou Hakka Folk Songs

Nominating Unit: City of Meizhou

Meizhou Hakka Folk Songs is a kind of folk song sung in Hakka by nearly five million people in six counties, one city, one district in City of Meizhou. It prevails in the Hakka district in the northeast of Guangdong Province and spreads into the habitation of Hakkas living abroad with Meizhou origin.

With the establishment of Hakka sub-Minority, Hakka Folk Songs was disseminated and developed in the Song and the Ming Dynasties. It is the product of the Central Plains (the origin of Chinese civilization) culture merged with the native culture of Meizhou. The lyrics of Hakka Folk Songs are rich in poetic taste, similar to the Bamboo Song by Liu Yuxi, a famous poet in the Tang Dynasty. It displays not only characteristics of ancient folk songs but also charm of “Guo Feng” and “Wu Song” found in Ancient Classical Poetry.

With about 100 tunes, Meizhou Hakka Folk Songs have the following characteristics: a small range of ups and downs with fluent and stable tunes, a high voice register but a narrow diapason, many tunes in neighboring musical scales but rare in tunes with at least a gap of three musical scales, a free rhythm with varied beats as well as a mixture of various beats.(https://www.daowen.com)

There are tens of thousands of Meizhou Hakka Folk Songs circulates among the people, with the content covering every aspect of Hakka’s lives including songs about work, current politics, rituals, folklore, love and songs sung by children. Among them, songs about love boast the most quantity with the most fascinating characters and the highest literary value.

Meizhou Hakka Folk Songs, an important part of Hakka culture, is the gem of folk music and even folk literature, providing great referential value for the study of art and literature, sociology, history, linguistics, folklore, religion and Hakkalogy. Huang Zunxian and Qu Dajun in the late Qing Dynasty and contemporary scholar Zhong Jingwen attached great importance to the collecting, sorting and studying of Meizhou Hakka Folk Songs.

Meizhou Hakka Folk Songs have always been passed along from mouth to mouth among the people. However, there is a crisis of no inheritors because the singers are getting old and many died while the youngsters are no longer fond of singing or listening to it. It is of great significance to save and protect the Meizhou Hakka Folk Songs so as to preserve Hakka culture, and to enrich Chinese culture and the cultural life of the Hakka people.

Meizhou Hakka Folk Songs was selected into the list of the first batch of state-level intangible cultural heritage in 2006.