Jingzhou Flower Drum Opera

Jingzhou Flower Drum originally was the "door-to-door flower drum" and weeding yangko that poor people in folk used to beg for a living. This kind of "flower drum" involved one person beating the drum and singing lyrics, with several people helping to sing the refrain and harmonize. In recent decades, Jingzhou Flower Drum has evolved into a unique local flower drum opera.

In 1955, an old artist collected and recorded all the arias of the flower drum opera, sorted out the first complete set of flower drum music scores that had never existed before, and boldly used national musical instruments such as erhu, banhu, pipa, yangqin, bamboo flute, and suona to accompany the flower drum opera, thus ending the history of the flower drum opera being "sung by one person with others joining in the chorus" and accompanied solely by gongs and drums.

　　Still from "Standing by the Flower Wall"

Nowadays, Jingzhou Flower Drum Opera is full of strong local flavor, with melodious, sweet and pleasant singing. There are dozens of plays such as *Family Case* and *Water Town Love*, which are not only based on the life in the lake area but also show the style of the lake area. Among the people, men, women, old and young often hum flower drum tunes while walking or working, and it has great "charm".

Some people say: "After listening to the 'yo wei yo' of the flower drum, you can get rid of illness without taking medicine!" "If you don't sing flower drum opera while working, you will feel weak all over." When you come to Jingzhou, you can hear Jingzhou Flower Drum Opera playing in the radios carried by primary school students after school, in cars and at store counters.