Melodies of the Dust Land Chapter 55

In addition, labor chants, children's songs, custom songs, and religious songs are popular all over the country, so I won't introduce them one by one here.

Collection and sorting of folk songs in northern Shaanxi: Starting from the "Yan'an Period", organized excavation and sorting of folk songs in northern Shaanxi were carried out three times. The first one started in the early 1940s, with some literary and artistic workers from Yan'an as the main focus, and lasted intermittently for four to five years. This is the first organized excavation and compilation of folk songs in northern Shaanxi in history. 

Later, he compiled and published "Selected Folk Songs of Northern Shaanxi" (edited by He Qifang and Zhang Songru). The second time was in the early 1960s, mainly composed of some literary and art workers from Shaanxi and Yan'an, who later compiled and printed the "Collection of Chinese Folk Songs". Shaanxi Volume------Northern Shaanxi Part" (mimeograph). These two organized collection and sorting efforts were very effective, and basically collected some of the widely circulated folk songs. However, due to the limited manpower invested, the collection scope is still relatively narrow, and the folk songs compiled are naturally not comprehensive enough. (Especially the first collection, which was during the war years and conditions were very limited).

To this end, between 1981 and 1982, literary and artistic workers in Yan'an and Yulin conducted a comprehensive survey of folk songs in northern Shaanxi. A lot of people were involved in this census, and a "net" was almost completely cast in northern Shaanxi. So far, nearly 8,000 folk songs have been collected and compiled (calculated in terms of music scores). Judging from the three collections, the folk songs of northern Shaanxi are very rich.

2 Formation and development