Chongqing- 2021 China Native Folk Song Festival was held in Chongqing from December 17 to 19, with the theme of "Singing for a Better New Life" to spread the good voice of China and sing for a better new life.

Chiyou Jiuli city in Pengshui county, Chongqing, where the Opening Ceremony was held. (photo provided to iChongqing)

Chongqing is a city with 3,000 years of history. Its gorgeous Bayu culture has nurtured a large number of traditional folk songs and intangible cultural heritage resources of traditional music. Especially in the southeast part, there are five national and 17 municipal-level intangible cultural heritage projects such as Nanxi Horn, Miao Folk Songs, Youyang Folk Songs, Xiushan Folk Songs, and Shizhu Tujia Luo'er Tune, which have a unique mass foundation. At the same time, southeast Chongqing is a national cultural-ecological protection experimental zone approved by the municipal government in 2014 and also a demonstration zone of integrated development of cultural and tourism industries promoted by Chongqing Municipality.

Qianjiang Zhuoshui Ancient Town, the Closing Ceremony and Performance Venue (Wang Xiaoyan/iChongqing)

Among the participating projects, there are folk songs that are familiar to the people, as well as those that are specific to the region and carry unique local cultural memories and customs, such as the canal boatman's horn, the tune of saying goodbye to a boy, and the Yimeng Mountain ditty. Among the performers, there are the representative inheritors of intangible cultural heritage at all levels with excellent skills and folk song players. The inheritors will showcase the excellent programs with rich local characteristics and profound cultural connotations through folk song performances and comprehensively reflect the achievements of China's traditional music intangible cultural heritage protection in recent years, allowing the people to share the achievements of intangible heritage protection, further inspire the creative inheritors, enhance the enthusiasm of creation and improve the level of inheritance and preservation of traditional music intangible heritage projects.

It is worth mentioning that Chongqing Library will launch a special exhibition of Chinese folk songs on its official website, displaying more than 220 kinds of Chinese folk songs and traditional music documents with more than 400 pictures, integrating literature, history, diagrams, scores, instruments, sounds and images.