10-08-2007

The Taste of Folk Stuff

---Appreciation of the 7th China International Folk Art Festival

Folk stuff refers to the basic level and the grass roots, and it is the name for the most natural, unreserved and sincere part of culture. Art means more than the cultural form that stirs people in the glittery and gorgeous atmosphere of magnificent places, and people usually use the word “highbrow art” to represent its lofty quality. When “folk” and “art” are combined together, the integration means that each possesses some meanings and elements of the other. However, if we consider the phrase “folk art” as a structure of modification, I would prefer to believe that the first part takes more weight, because the core quality and basic function of the structure is within its confines. Therefore, I hold the view that the release of the taste of the folk stuff is the true meaning of the existence of folk art.

What is lucky with me is that ,17 years ago, I had the chance to participate in the planning and preparation of the first China International Folk Art Festival. Now, over ten years later, it still stands vigorously on China’s cultural stage, and becomes more complete in its scale, presence and impact. No wonder that people get astonished by its development in such a society where everything could lag behind as long as it fails to catch up with the tempo of change.

Then, How did the 7th China International Folk Art Festival to be held in Beijing and Suzhou this year come into our eyes?

Folk-based: Value Judgment

In fact, the China International Folk Art Festivals of these years all pursued pure folk art; the hosts always stuck to the cultural orientations—nationality and folk customs, with a proper guidance and clear thinking. In my opinion, such an approach brings two benefits: first, it respects the intrinsic rule of the occurrence and inheritance of culture, and the perspective of thinking has a strong sense of culture; second, it highlights the theme of original cultural pattern that the participants pursue, and encourages the original appearance of folk behavior. On the premise of respecting cultural diversity, it does its best to preserve all the thematic pursuits of the participants and, therefore, it preserves the basic value of folk art to the most extent and makes its multi-facet exhibition possible or inexorable. Nowadays, in particular, when the globalized cultural thinking takes an attitude of “mutual respect and intergrowth”, the concept of the China International Folk Art Festival is more far-sighted, and the space for international communication becomes more wide and substantial.

Folk character lies in the original meaning of the participants themselves, that is, they take on the fewest decorations and the non-folk elements added are minimized; there is processing, but it is limited to the least extent. For instance, the dances and dance troupes participating in this festival fully displayed their colorful folk dance art. Moreover, the feast was not only full of the breath-taking shock that the primitive form of dance civilization brought to the contemporary people but also filled with the special visual effect that the folk emotional release could display. On the contrary to stage performing arts, it is rich in the fragrance of mud and contains the power of grass roots---the prime power of grass roots civilization that could not be neglected. Therefore, its meaning is more profound and far-reaching!

Entertaining: Aesthetic Guidance

Besides the folk character closely related to grass roots, another feature that folk art possesses is entertaining. If folk culture carries such civilized elements as history, religion, belief and customs, then the folk culture that exists at the present time has probably weakened such thinking fields, comes toward the public’s cultural living instincts and guides people’s entertainment and aesthetic consumption. This art festival on the whole displayed such a tendency. 

In terms of region, it included many kinds of dances of the five continents and possessed the typicality. It had the European dances from as far as Germany, Hungary and Greece in the north, indigenous multi-race dances from Austria and South Africa in the south, American folk dances along the Atlantic Ocean in the west, and hula-hula dance from Cook Islands in the Pacific Ocean in the east. In the organic connections between culture and region one could see the traces of dance change and dissemination. As regards style and aesthetic features, the dances of many countries and nations carried their national culture and came directly towards us, which gave us a chance to enjoy the charm of foreign culture to the maximum in relatively confined time and space.

At the festival there were the South American beauty of Cuban dances, Arabic characteristics of Lebanese dances, the consummate skills of Hungarian performers, the passion of Japanese Ryukyu drum dances, the peace of Korean dances, the piety of Sri Lankan dances, the joy of Singaporean dances, the harmony of Lithuanian dances, the dynamics of Tanzanian dances, the elegance of German dances, the vigor of Greek dances, the luck of Austrian dances, etc. No matter what dances are, they all display such a traditional feature of folk dances as being self-entertaining, and they all expect to achieve the freedom, comfort and relax of spirits from the dynamic indulgence of the forms of matter so as to repel as much as possible the pressure and burden that complicated psychological factors and realistic problems bring to people and attain real joy and complete relax. This is the fundamental sense of folk art! The meaning of the existence of art festivals is just to call for and preserve this sense.

Cultural: Pursuit of Meaning

The Exploitation and exhibition of cultural quintessence is the conceptual pursuit of all the previous China International Folk Art Festivals, and this festival is not exceptional.

The forms are diverse. To see from the whole forms of dances, to present the diversity of traditional arts all over the world in terms of region and cultural circles became the theme of the festival, which could be detected from the variety of dances, that is, it included almost all dance categories, moreover, the concept of being from grass roots ran through many forms ranging from the primitive style to stage style; therefore, the whole arrangement of the programs presented the intersection of three-dimensional expressive aspects with multiple interface, which was just what folk art should possess. A great many dances had the value of explaining the meaning, including Hungary’s Csardas Dance, Sri Lanka’s Kandyan Dance, Singapore’s Malay dance, Lithuania’s polkas, Japan Okinawa’s Drum Dance, Maori people’s Hula-Hula Dance, South Africa’s Reed Dance, Turkey’s Black Sea Krakowiack, etc. For Chinese audience, it had a great popularizing meaning.

The meaning is indisputable. The essential meaning of folk dances lies more in expression of its cultural function. The dances performed at the festival faithfully displayed the value orientation of culture. In fact, it is also a kind of returning to nature of cultural mentality. To see from the horizontal level, it is not difficult to discover that the cultural functions of folk dances that have accumulated through history, such as emotional expression, wedding customs, male and female instincts, religious belief, chant praises, funeral customs, etc., were almost all displayed in the dances at the festival. Moreover, the unadorned way of manifestation was also appealing to the audience. From the perspective of the renaissance of folk culture, it deserves praises.

In general, this China International Folk Art Festival not only sets a historical record on the aspect of coverage; moreover, as time goes by, the quality of its folk art will receive more and more attention from people.

I hope that the international platform of folk art would become larger and wider, the means of promotion more mature, the idea and concept more exact and the cultural taste more pure.