13 National-Level Inheritors Perform Native Yangtze River Folk Songs!

From November 14 to 17, the "Majestic River Sounds, Timeless Ballads: Yangtze River Basin Indigenous Folk Songs Exhibition and Performance" was successfully held in Wuhan. The event was co-organized by the Leadership Group of the Comprehensive Collection of Chinese Folk Literature Publication Project, China Folk Literature and Art Association, Hubei Provincial Federation of Literary and Art Circles, and Wuhan Conservatory of Music. It was jointly undertaken by the Compilation and Publishing Committee of the Chinese Folk Literature Great System, Folk Music Art Professional Committee of the China Folk Literature and Art Association, as well as the folk art associations of Hubei, Hunan, Jiangxi, Chongqing, Anhui, and Jiangsu provinces, and the Yangtze River Traditional Music Culture Research Center and Department of Musicology of Wuhan Conservatory of Music.

The performance invited 13 national-level intangible cultural heritage inheritors and outstanding folk singers from more than 10 provinces and cities along the Yangtze River to perform original folk songs on-site, presenting a cross-regional and multi-ethnic music and cultural feast.

The exhibition constructed a "musical and cultural map of folk songs in the Yangtze River Basin" stretching from the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau to the Jiangnan water towns. The repertoire arrangement was deeply rooted in the natural and humanistic geographical features of the river basin, deeply focused on the representative forms of folk songs in the upper, middle, and lower reaches of the Yangtze River. It selected 17 original folk songs from the Yangtze River that possess artistic value and historical significance, presenting a blend of songs and dances from different periods and regions of the Yangtze River Basin.

In terms of performance approaches, the exhibition embraced both steadfast preservation of original ecological forms and innovative exploration to meet contemporary demands. Nearly ninety-year-old Chen Jiazhen, a National Intangible Cultural Heritage inheritor of Xingshan Folk Songs, performed on stage with her daughter, their combined profound artistic depth and emotional authenticity deeply resonating with the audience. Similarly, Huang Qingfang, a representative inheritor of the Mashan Folk Songs (another National Intangible Cultural Heritage project), shared the stage with her daughter, creating heartwarming scenes of intergenerational artistic legacy that vividly illustrated the enduring transmission of folk music traditions.

As an academic-vision-based, era-responsive music dissemination practice, this exhibition not only systematically mapped the geographical distribution and artistic characteristics of folk songs across the Yangtze River Basin, but also vividly interpreted—through dialogue between tradition and modernity, and the fusion of multi-ethnic cultures—the profound heritage of Yangtze culture as an iconic symbol of the Chinese nation. It thus offered a replicable model for intangible cultural heritage protection and living transmission in the new era.