Introduction to China's National Music: Characteristics of Drum Books

Drum lyrics are also called drum songs or drum books. Singers are accompanied by drums and boards, commonly known as drums. This kind of music is mainly popular in northern China, such as wooden drum, Xihe drum, Laoting drum, Jing Yun drum, Meihua drum, Tangshan drum, JD.COM drum, Northeast Liaoning drum, Shandong Lihua drum, Jiaodong drum, Shangdang drum and Taiyuan drum. In addition, there are different drum types in the south, such as Anhui Huaibei Drum, Hunan Changsha Drum, Hubei Drum and Zhejiang Wenzhou Drum Temple.

Although the melody source of drum lyrics is related to ancient epigraph music, it is more from folk music. For example, Wenzhou drum music, which began in Ming Dynasty, is composed of songs and lyrics in the alley. Many drums in the north are mostly developed on the basis of local folk songs or the sound of selling goods in market towns. The singing forms of drum lyrics are solo and duet. However, most of them are soloists accompanied by their own drums, and some people accompany them. The commonly used musical instruments are Da Sanxian, Hu Si, Pipa and dulcimer. Most of the early drum songs were long stories, such as The History of the Three Kingdoms, The Water Margin, Yang Jiajiang and so on, which could be sung for dozens of days. After the mid-Qing Dynasty, the form of "Duan Er Shu" gradually appeared, and the part of the lecture was greatly reduced, mainly singing. This kind of "Duan Er Shu" usually consists of quotation-text-ending structure and introduction. In order to make the aria compact, some stop immediately after the music tends to climax, and there is no end.