The custom of wooden drums

Wa people believe in animistic primitive religion, and there are many folk myths and legends about wooden drums, which are closely related to the worship of gods, ancestor worship and ancestor reproduction. A series of activities around wooden drums, such as pulling wooden drums, jumping wooden drums, knocking wooden drums and offering wooden drums, constitute a solemn and warm grand festival of Bai nationality tradition, which is a concentrated expression of Wa traditional culture. Every year, 65438+February (Ge Ruiyue of Wa nationality) is the season of pulling wooden drums, and the whole process generally takes 10 days. 【 First of all, some people, led by the chief and Moba, went to the tree selected as a wooden drum in the dark, offered tributes, fired guns to exorcise ghosts, then Moba chanted prayers and waved an axe to cut down the tree several times. Then people take turns to cut down trees all night, pick up three stones and put them on the stump, which means to buy money for the tree ghost, and then cut a trunk more than two meters long, chisel out the tree ears and put on rattan, which is pulling. Early the next morning, all the men, women and children in the village dressed up and came to the mountain. Moba waved branches and sang like a conductor. All the men are pulling vines on both sides, answering the chorus, playing wooden drums, and women cheering and shouting. Old people and children send water, wine and rice, jumping and pulling, and pulling wooden drums outside the village entrance. The wooden drum will stay outside the village entrance for two or three days. After the timing of killing chickens for divination is selected, a grand ceremony of flying pigs and cows will be held. The whole village will pull the wooden drum tree to the construction site next to the wooden drum room and make it by craftsmen.