Lizhou drum was originally called funeral drum, filial drum, and also known as Xiangbei drum. It is popular in the border area of Hunan and Hubei. There is no written evidence of its origin. It is said to be derived from the table-beating of a king in the Eastern Zhou Dynasty or Zhuangzi's drum basin song. Now Lixian artists still circulate the saying that "Duke Zhou governs the rituals, Confucius governs poetry and books, and Zhuangzi governs the funeral drums". According to the known inheritance relationship of artists, it has a history of at least 400 years. Lizhou drum is a kind of rap art. The props are a big drum, and special songs (such as sending the singer) are added with gongs and cymbals. The basic structure of the lyrics is a seven-character sentence, and later developed into a ten-character sentence. Except for the lyrics of "Sending the Singer" which are three sentences in a group, the others are two sentences, four sentences, six sentences, and eight sentences in a group. Multiple groups constitute a paragraph. Each paragraph requires a rhyme to the end. There are 11 commonly used rhymes: heaven, earth, man, harmony, dragon, tiger, leopard, jackal, yellow, flower, and black. In the early days, one person and one drum were sung in the filial hall. After the reform and opening up, it entered the teahouse and changed to two people standing up to sing, and it could also be sung with musical instrument accompaniment. Lizhou drum has rich singing styles, which are divided into two major categories: special tunes for filial halls and storytelling tunes. There are many small tunes for filial halls, such as "Fengyang Song", "Jiang Nv'er Tune", "Inviting God Tune", etc., especially "Big Sending Song Boy Tune" is the most distinctive. The lyrics structure is that two people sing seven-character sentences and five-character sentences alternately. The music is voiced by one person in the original voice and one person in the small voice. Storytelling tune is derived from Taoist music. During the Jiaqing period of the Qing Dynasty, there was a failed scholar in Lizhou named Su Jinfu (1779-1842). Because he failed in the exam many times, he wandered around the world, met many folk artists, and fell in love with the art of funeral drums. He used his talent to reform the funeral drum, standardized the singing style, and set the first-class, second-class, third-class, slow-tempo, and count-tempo styles. Each style has many variations, such as the first-class "flat tune" and "hard tune"; the second-class "soft tune" and "begging for rice tune"; the third-class "flowing tune" and "haha tune"; the slow-tempo "great sorrow tune" and "great chant tune"; the count-tempo "duozi tune", "chanting tune", "complaining tune", etc., which greatly improved the artistic expression of the funeral drum. He devoted the second half of his life to the creation of drum lyrics, and successively adapted and created more than 20 song books such as "The Legend of the White Snake" and "Half-day Yama", which were regarded as models by folk artists in Lizhou. In the past, Lizhou drum was a means of livelihood for poor people. They begged from door to door for years and sang while beating drums, which made the "sorrow", "chanting tune" and prayer elements in its singing style particularly obvious. After going through three stages, from beggars to drummers and folk artists, and after more than 400 years of tempering and continuous improvement by artists, it has become increasingly mature and has formed four major schools based on the "Lizhou Mandarin", namely Dongqiang, Nanban, Xidiao, and Beilu. Three of the artists have been included in the Chinese Quyi Artists Association, and 22 have joined the Hunan Quyi Artists Association. Lizhou drum is deeply loved by the people because it sings out the voice of the people, and has won honors for the local area. It has won national and provincial awards several times and has been broadcast many times on central, provincial and municipal TV stations.