Mashan folk songs are a traditional folk song form that is popular in Mashan Town, Jingzhou District, Jingzhou City, Hubei Province. It is one of the national intangible cultural heritage lists of China. With a long history and a specific geographical environment, it has formed its own unique folk song style. It is known as the cradle of Jingzhou folk songs and occupies a very important position in the entire Hubei folk song music treasure house. On June 7, 2008, the "Mashan folk songs" applied by Jingzhou District, Jingzhou City, Hubei Province were approved by the State Council to be included in the second batch of national intangible cultural heritage lists. Heritage serial number: 580-81. Mashan Town, Jingzhou District, Jingzhou City, Hubei Province, is known as the hometown of folk songs. The rare cultural relic, the Sword of Goujian, King of Yue, was unearthed here. With a long history and a specific geographical environment, it has formed its own unique traditional folk song style. It is known as the cradle of Jingzhou folk songs and occupies a very important position in the entire Hubei folk song music treasure house. Mashan folk songs have distinct regional cultural characteristics and have been passed down for a long time. Its history can be traced back to the "Yang Song" and "Tian Song" in Chu around the 1st century AD. In 298-263 BC (during the Warring States Period, during the reign of King Xiang of Chu), Song Yu said in his “Answering the Questions of the King of Chu”: “There are guests singing in Yingzhong. At first, they sang “Xia Li” and “Ba Ren”, and there were thousands of people in the country who sang along with them.” Later, there were records of “Yingzhong Field Songs” in the Tang, Song, Ming and Qing dynasties from the 7th century to the early 20th century. Mashan folk songs represent the overall morphological characteristics and musical features of folk songs in the Jianghan Plain, with a strong original ecological flavor. Its melody is smooth and pleasant, the rhythm is lively and bright, the lyrics are concise and easy to learn. Its peculiar structure of five sentences forming a song and the lyrics that point to the theme at the end of the sentence is a treasure of Jingchu culture. The five major tunes and five-sentence songs of “La Ba Tune”, “Huo Ji Tune”, “De De Tune”, “Ding Kou Dang Tune” and “Oh Ho Tune” are even more famous and have been sung for a long time and are widely circulated among the people. Mashan folk songs cover stories from historical dynasties, knowledge of production and life, flowers, birds, insects and fishes of the four seasons, customs and etiquette of weddings and funerals, and lanterns and celebrations during festivals. There are dozens of types of songs, including field songs, calls, ditties, lantern songs, children's songs, folk songs, religious songs, etc. The "five-sentence songs" in field songs occupy an extremely important position in Mashan folk songs. The "five-sentence songs" are divided into "shouting five sentences", "chasing five sentences" and "wearing five sentences". The structure of the songs is quite different, but the basic melody is similar. [2] Representative songs: "Five major tunes" (1) "Balala tune": "Turning over a pair of peonies" (2) "Walker tune": "I said the boss is a cow" (3) "Dede tune": "There is hope for a good harvest this year" (4) "Dingdang tune": "First collect the clothes and then look at the man" (5) "1 tune" "One 1, one mouth".