Gaotai folk songs are typical Han folk songs with a long history and a long history. They fully reflect the production and life of the local people and the development and changes of social history, and have a wide and profound impact on people's thoughts and behaviors. Gaotai folk songs have a simple, high-pitched and heroic style, which fully reflects the aesthetic taste of the local working people. The characteristics of Gaotai folk songs are to express the thoughts, feelings, will, requirements and wishes of the working people. They have a strong sense of reality and are an important part of Gaotai local culture. Gaotai folk songs have a slow rhythm and are melodious. People feel like drinking sweet wine, which makes their bodies and minds comfortable and deeply comforted. The content may be gods, historical figures, young men and women, or ordinary people. They often praise the excellent qualities of loyalty, filial piety, chastity, righteousness, and integrity, or chant life, express the yearning for beautiful love, express the love of life, or express inner pain, reflect the local customs, or punish evil and promote good, educate people's hearts, and have strong moral content. Gaotai folk songs can be roughly divided into four categories: string and bamboo minor tunes, community fire minor tunes, custom minor tunes and localized foreign minor tunes. Gaotai folk songs are mainly in the Zheng mode, followed by the Shang mode, and other modes coexist. The mode scale is mainly the pentatonic scale, and there are also six-tone or seven-tone scales based on pentatonicity. On the basis of the integrated survey of Gaotai folk songs in 1981, in the county-wide intangible cultural heritage survey from 2005 to 2009, we conducted some investigations on the inheritance of Gaotai folk songs, and now more than 360 Gaotai folk songs have been collected. At present, most people who can sing Gaotai folk songs are in their sixties and seventies, and the inheritance is not good. 12 county-level inheritors and 10 city-level inheritors have been identified. Gaotai folk songs have been announced as the second batch of intangible cultural heritage list items in Zhangye City, and have been applied for the third batch of provincial intangible cultural heritage list items.