从荤段子看民歌《集成》保护文化遗产的缺失

″Spicy Tunes″, the Cultural Heritage Missing in The Anthology of Folk Songs

步入新世纪，随着保护文化遗产工作的开展，“守护精神家园、留住传统记忆”，正在成为全社会的一种“文化自觉”。以《中国民间歌曲集成》（以下简称《集成》）的出版为代表，成为中国音乐文化遗产保护的标志性成果。当我们为民歌文化有这样一项成果欢欣鼓舞时，也应看到其存在的美中不足。本文仅从“荤段子”民歌的缺席，试谈《集成》在保护音乐遗产方面的缺失，以期正视不足，弥补缺憾，推动音乐遗产保护工作深入开展。

The so-called spicy tunes, also called ″nasty tunes″ or ″blue songs″, refer to the type of love songs that mainly sing of sexual love as its motive. Its function of expressing love and sex has enabled the genre to attract a great number of followers during its long history of existence, and has therefore become an indispensable folk song type in the traditional cultural life of the general public. But to many of the audience, it is like listening to ″double Dutch″. Sexual life that is usually embarrassing to speak about is illustrated here in a direct and free way in expressing man-woman love affairs, and as a result of its contradiction to traditional values and ethics, it has also become the most controversial type of folk songs in all Chinese music. With their ″dirty″ quality and also the irreplaceability in the history of human development, the spicy tunes are no doubt subject to artistic evaluation and ethical examination from every corner of the society. The history of modern society shows the fact that they keep a great distance from the ideology and aesthetics of the Chinese people, and to some extent, are not in conformity with the growth and needs of the modern society. As early as in early 20th century, the Ballads Society of Peking University became the focus of public attention when it was involved in collecting folk songs. In 1940's, musicians in Yan'an collected folk songs including spicy tunes, which were regarded by progressive activists as ″obscene″ folk songs, and hence were criticized for the low taste and vulgarity of so-called capitalist culture. Moreover, in mid 1940's, in particular, when the policy of folk music collection and protection as well as the future of spicy tunes were taken into consideration, a certain musician said in a serious voice that spicy tunes ″in my opinion should not be included in our folk song collection from now on.″ Since then, the situation for spicy tunes was deteriorated, and more seriously, in terms of research and protection, spicy tunes receded from the vision of cultural science because of their ″negative role″, which resulted in their ultimate marginalization and fell into oblivion for ever. Compilation of folk song collections started in early 1960's, and was resumed in 1979 as the nation's successful attempt to show its intention to develop cultures. While the absence of spicy tunes in The Anthology of Folk S ongs originated from political influence and ″cultural self-consciousness″ based on moral standards, it is necessary today to readopt spicy tunes for the purpose of protection at this present time of cultural rationality when there is strong cultural demand as well as reasonable sense of modernity which requires us to transcend ideological barriers. Even though some of the spicy tunes are obscene due to the fact that they are remains of ancient culture which used to be closely connected with social life of humanity in their early historical periods, we need, nevertheless, to minimize their harms with the help of cultural science research. Just as cultural scholar Edward Tylor said, cultural remains are of great significance, for sometimes they can revive in a trivial or even humorous way what used to be the serious way in which our ancestors used them on certain occasions. This once encouraged some of our pioneers during the era of the May 4th Movement in early 20th century to put forward the idea of collecting even ″obscene″ songs as they were smart enough to realize the unique cultural values of these spicy tunes. In this new century, we the materialists should be more-minded and should have faith in the cultural consciousness and moral values of our general public. With the increasing efforts to protect cultural heritages in the country, how to treat the spicy tunes absent from the Anthology and evaluate their distinctive cultural attributes becomes an unavoidable and urgent issue in the field of cultural heritage protection.