What is Chinese New Year Lion Dance Music?

Series Summary

The traditional Chinese New Year Lion Dance is a long-practiced ritual, with over a thousand years of history and performance. It finds its origins in the story of a Chinese village that was being threatened by a monster, ravaging the crops and killing the villagers. As the story goes, a wise Buddhist monk came along and organized a resistance against the monster. He instructed the villagers in how to build a monster of their own to scare the beast away. Though there are variations on this story, essentially, the lion dance today is performed to ward off evil spirits like the monster, as well as to celebrate, to entertain, and to remember important Chinese history.

In these free lion dance video instruction clips, learn about the music of the Southern style Chinese New Year Lion Dance and how it influences and directs the ceremony. Listen to the cymbals and drums as the Buddha puts the lion through its paces, taunting him with his fan. Learn how the different instruments create emotional soundscapes related to the narrative of the lion dance. Get an in-depth look at Chinese lion dance drum music in this video series, a thousand years in the making.

Video Transcript

"Hello! I’m Julio Anta of Anta’s Fitness & Self Defense in Miami, Florida. This is one of my instructors David Landrian-Shrewsbury, and on behalf of Expert Village, he will be demonstrating the lion dance drums and percussion. The lion dance has a long and varied history: part of it is the music. The music brings excitement and even gives the lion a sense of life. In order to play the music, you need at least 3 musicians. One to play the drum, one to play the cymbals, and a third to play the gong. The lion dance drum functions as the heartbeat of the lion and plays the basic rhythm which the metal instruments, the cymbals and the gong, follow. "