Different regions have different appellations and styles. In the folk, there are two names for yangko: those who walk on stilts are called "Yangko on stilts" and those who don't walk on stilts are called "Tuyangko".
The so-called "yangko" in modern times refers to "local yangko". Yangge has a long history. In the Southern Song Dynasty, there was a record of "Village Dengaku" in the folk dance team carefully introduced by The Legend of Wulin. Wu Xilin's New Year's Miscellaneous Chants in Qing Dynasty clearly recorded the original relationship between the existing yangko and the "Dengaku" in Song Dynasty.
1On May 20th, 2006, Yangko was approved by the State Council to be included in the first batch of national intangible cultural heritage list.
There are broad sense and narrow sense. Broadly speaking, it refers to a song and dance art form popular in the rural areas of Han nationality in the northern provinces of China. In a narrow sense, yangko refers to the songs sung when performing this art form, that is, the "yangko tune" as a dance song.
The genre of Yangko tunes is mostly minor, and a few are local folk art and local opera singing with rap characteristics. For example, Northeast Yangko is popular in Yingkou and Fushun, commonly known as "Yangko Liu Zi".
Most of them are sung at the opening of the Yangko performance, including dozens of commonly used minor songs such as Noisy Five Watches, Flying a Kite, Jasmine Flower, and more than ten rap songs such as Wang Po Scolding Chicken, Seeing the Big Tank, Seeing the Lights for the Blind, and Zhang Sheng Beating Yingying. The music style is high-pitched, provocative and enthusiastic.