Weixian Yangge, also known as Weizhou Bangzi and Wei Opera, originated in Weixian and is popular in Zhangjiakou, Hebei Province, northern Shanxi, and as far as some counties and banners in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. It is a local opera that is deeply loved by the local people. Weixian Yangge was sung in "Xun Diao" (folk songs) in the early days, mainly in "two small" (male and female) or "three small" (male, female and clown) plays, and was often performed in rural "community fire". There are about 200 Weixian Yangge plays, including "Huilong Pavilion", "Beating Clay Pots", "Eight Diagrams", "Going Down the Mountain", "Selling Tofu", "Borrowing Crowns", etc., and plays such as "Beating Cakes" and "Catching Tigers" are rarely seen in other operas. Shanxi Bangzi flowed into Hebei, and Weixian was one of the main channels. Weixian Yangge was deeply influenced by it. It not only absorbed the robe and belt drama of Bangzi, but also borrowed the music system of Bangzi, and produced various styles of singing that evolved from Bangzi tunes. The singing style of Weixian Yangge is composed of five basic styles: [touxing], [erxing], [sanxing], [jieban], [gunbai], and auxiliary styles such as [daoban] and [dunban], as well as special styles attached to some basic styles. The sentence structure of "xundiao" is a single music segment composed of two or more phrases. The same "xundiao" can sing multiple lyrics in the form of strophic songs. There are more than 20 types of songs left today. Its prelude and interlude use percussion instruments or a combination of percussion instruments and string instruments. The singing rhythm can be divided into three types: slow, medium, and fast. Weixian Yangge Wenchang is composed of instruments such as banhu, flute, and sanxian, and the martial arts are composed of instruments such as bangu, big gong, cymbals, and small gongs. There are about 20 strings and 10 suona tunes used as accompaniment in Weixian Yangge. Most of them are borrowed from Jin Opera, Shanxi Beilu Bangzi, and Hebei Bangzi. There are only a few that have the characteristics of this type of opera. There are more than 70 kinds of gong and drum beats, and about 20 kinds are commonly used. They are composed of two parts: the opening gong and drum and the accompaniment gong and drum. Most of them are transplanted from Bangzi Opera. Weixian Yangge has a complete range of roles, including red (old male), black (also divided into big painted face and second painted face), male (young male), female (also divided into green clothes, young female, sword and horse female, broken face female), and ugly. Xiaosheng and female can sing "training tunes", red sings less "training tunes", and black does not sing "training tunes". The singing tunes of Bangzi Opera are roughly the same except that black has a specific singing tune. Weixian Yangge is sung in the Weixian dialect, and its singing mostly uses a combination of true and false voices, that is, true voices are used in the middle and low ranges, and false voices are used in the high ranges. With the addition of main instruments such as qudi, banhu, and sanxian, personal playing skills can be fully utilized without affecting the melody, and improvisations similar to polyphony can be played. As an ancient small drama, Weixian Yangge is currently facing great survival difficulties. First, there is a lack of successors, and old artists have passed away one after another. Few young people are willing to learn this kind of art with relatively ancient vocal tunes and programs; second, due to the diversification of today's art forms, its performance market has shrunk and the number of performance groups has decreased significantly. Information source: Hebei Intangible Cultural Heritage Protection Center (no pictures yet, welcome to provide.) Information source: Hebei Intangible Cultural Heritage Protection Center (no pictures yet, welcome to provide.)