The origin of Ansai waist drum was originally the old waist drum in Hengshan County, Yulin.
Hengshan waist drum is widely spread in towns and villages in Hengshan County, Shaanxi Province. It is the most popular folk dance form in the area and is deeply loved by people in northern Shaanxi. Hengshan County is known as the "authentic nest of waist drum" .
Hengshan Laoyaogu has been around for a long time. There is a legend that in order to adjust to the lonely and monotonous life of herding, shepherds in ancient times dug a hollow with a tree root and stretched dead sheepskin on both ends to make a drum, which they beat to train the sheep and also served as entertainment. Later, with the addition of improvisational performance movements, and in conjunction with wind and percussion music, it developed into a waist drum art that is simple, unrestrained, free and easy, and full of mountain style.
Some scholars have studied that during the Guangxu period of the Qing Dynasty, Hengshan old waist drum artists went to Yan'an and Ansai to teach their skills; in the 17th year of the Republic of China, hungry people from Hengshan fled to Yan'an, Ansai and other places, leaving Hengshan Where did the waist drum spread;
According to the research of Yulin folklore scholar Meng Haiping, it was the great immigration of the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region in the 1930s and 1940s, when folk singer Li Youyuan sang the folk song "The East Is Red" "At the same time, they also brought the waist drum art of Hengshan County to the Yan'an area, especially Ansai Zhenwu Cave and Xihekou Village, which are now the most famous for waist drum. Some entire villages in Hengshan County have moved here. It is they , brought the old waist drum from Hengshan to Ansai.
So it can be said that Ansai waist drum is a genre developed on the basis of Hengshan old waist drum.
The Hengshan Old Waist Drum is a unique dance form used by the local working people to adjust their spiritual life and express their emotions. Its movements are rough and bold, vigorous and passionate, powerful and powerful, but also smooth and elegant; the formations are alternately interspersed during the performance. , the footwork is changeable, there are two, four and eight people fighting, and the field they walk on is a Bagua pattern. Combined with wind and percussion music, it is lively and exciting, inspiring and empowering. It fully demonstrates the brave and powerful yet honest and simple character of the people of northern Shaanxi. To this day, the old waist drum in Hengshan County is still played during festivals and danced at every meeting, and it also has a certain degree of competitiveness. Once the drummers jump on the field, they will never leave until they can compete
In 1985, professional dancers from the Shaanxi Provincial Song and Dance Theater discovered and compiled "Hengshan Waist Drum" and participated in performances at folk art festivals in Portugal, Spain, and France.
In 2007, named after "Hengshan Old Waist Drum", Hengshan Waist Drum was successfully declared as one of the first batch of intangible cultural heritage protection lists in Shaanxi Province. In 2008, it was approved by the Ministry of Culture and entered the second batch of national intangible cultural heritage protection lists.