Xi'an Drum Music

Xi'an Drum Music, also called Chang'an ancient music, originated in the Sui and Tang dynasties as a large traditional wind-and-percussion music of Xi'an and its surroundings, hailed as a living fossil of ancient Chinese music and an ancient Chinese symphony.

Grand in structure and elegant in style, it is performed by music societies on sheng, dizi, guan, drums, and cymbals, still notated in the suzipu shorthand of the Tang and Song; it divides into seated and processional forms and is passed down through generations of folk societies.

Preserving a vast repertoire and an archaic notation system, Xi'an Drum Music is a classic representative of Chinese instrumental tradition. It entered the first national intangible-heritage list in 2006 and was inscribed on UNESCO's Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2009.

Its societies are mostly based in villages around Xi'an and toward the Zhongnan Mountains, playing at festivals and temple fairs, a living vessel for the surviving sounds of the High Tang.