Changban Slope

Introduction

A Three Kingdoms piece of Jingyun dagu arranged by Liu Baoquan, Bai Yunpeng and others, and one of Liu's signature songs

Changban Slope is a traditional piece of Jingyun dagu, the Beijing drum ballad, taken from the Three Kingdoms story and arranged by Liu Baoquan, Bai Yunpeng and other performers. Liu Baoquan, known as the king of the drum ballad, excelled in Three Kingdoms material, and this piece stands with Zhao Yun Stops the Boat and Borrowing Arrows with Straw Boats among his signature songs. The form grew from the wooden-clapper drum songs of Cangzhou and Hejian in Hebei and took shape in Beijing and Tianjin, where Liu sang in Beijing pronunciation and added the four-string fiddle and the pipa to create a new style. In the early Republic the schools of Liu Baoquan, Bai Yunpeng and Zhang Xiaoxuan became the first of the form, and the 1920s are seen as its golden age. The name Jingyun dagu was fixed only after the Beijing quyi guild was founded in 1946, and the form entered the second national intangible heritage list in 2008.