[Ma Zhiyao] On people and environment of intangible cultural heritage

The protection of intangible cultural heritage has entered the work agenda of governments at all levels, but when protecting intangible cultural heritage, what we should protect should be made clear.

It is important for governments at all levels to organize experts and scholars to conduct field surveys and write materials, pay attention to and allocate funds to inheritors of intangible cultural heritage, but what the inheritors of intangible cultural heritage inherit deserves our attention.

We know that all art requires artists to have a consistent spirit of artistic creation, and the most important core factor is its uniqueness.

For folk art, it depends on the performers 'understanding of their own culture and their sensitivity to the art they inherit.

The vast majority of objects for intangible cultural heritage protection are in the folk and rural areas.

Folk art or intangible cultural heritage, as a folk event, cannot be separated from the specific context in which it is produced or the land under its feet.

The understanding of art passed down from generation to generation in this land, the feeling and expression of art, should become the knowledge that inheritors should master.

It is not easy to maintain the mellow nature of the countryside and maintain the essence of original folk art.

On the one hand, the government is protecting it, on the other hand, the villagers are suffering a huge impact from urban civilization.

Folk art has been deconstructed by the city, rural people's life has been assimilated by the city, and rural people's consciousness has also undergone tremendous changes.

These are enough to deal a major blow to the intangible cultural heritage originating from the local area.

Folk art survives paradoxically in a protected and violated situation.

On the one hand, it has to be inherited and developed, and on the other hand, it faces the deconstruction and impact of urbanization.

The art passed down by the ancestors of the villagers may be of extraordinary value to anthropologists and folklore, but in an era of increasing urbanization and commercialization, most traditional crafts or skills have or are about to withdraw from the historical stage, and many intangible cultural heritage is only protected but not inherited, and its artistic spirit is even more difficult to maintain.

In cities under the temptation of commercialization and interests, although original ecological art can be popular for a while, it is only for a while after all.

The birth of any trend will inevitably mean the arrival of a low tide.

You can imagine the difficulty of protection work.

One fact is that while the protection of intangible cultural heritage continues to advance, its empty shell phenomenon has gradually become prominent, which is mainly reflected in the lack of inheritors.

In order to protect the integrity of some intangible cultural heritage, some local governments have protected some ancient villages.

This is important and can completely protect the specific context in which cultural heritage is generated.

However, the problem is that most of the indigenous people in the village have gone to work and live in other places, and most of those left behind are old, young and sick.

The absence of young and middle-aged people who master the customs of ancient villages and can serve as the main force of cultural inheritance leads to the "empty shell" of ancient villages.

In addition, when the government and experts call for the overall protection of a village's culture or original ecological art, must the village still maintain its past traditions or even backward customs? These are all debatable.

On the one hand, social customs are constantly changing with the times, and it is impossible to go back to the past; on the other hand, we should realize that in order to restore or reproduce endangered intangible cultural heritage, we must protect those inheritors, especially protect the artistic spirit of the inheritors, which also require the inheritors to experience and live in the original ecological context.

This will become a dilemma in the protection of intangible cultural heritage.

An American anthropologist said: "Country music has been described as a special regional subculture that is closely related to a special geographical and social experience, the special experience of rural life in the South and Midwest.

Recently, in the process of selling this style of music to a national audience, the music has no longer been closely related to this group and its experience, losing its authentic, pristine nature." How our inheritors team can truly inherit and understand the essence of intangible cultural heritage and truly achieve the purpose of protection and inheritance will also encounter this problem.