Music and drumming

The band and its job

Southern lion dance is a percussion art. The lion has no voice of its own, so the band supplies one, and a troupe is usually heard before it is seen.¹ The band has three kinds of instrument: one large single-headed barrel drum (獅鼓, Cant. si1 gu2, Mand. shīgǔ), one hanging gong (鑼, Cant. lo4, Mand. luó) and several pairs of hand cymbals (鈸, Cant. bat6, Mand. bó). The large lion-dance cymbals are also written 鑔 (Mand. chǎ), which practitioners say as "chaa". The whole set is the 鑼鼓 (Cant. lo4 gu2, Mand. luógǔ), the gong-and-drum band, and a single drum pattern is a 鼓點 (Cant. gu2 dim2, Mand. gǔdiǎn). A Hong Kong school tutor, Wong Kwok-cheung (王國祥), notes that the one drum goes by several names: 醒獅鼓, 瑞獅鼓, 嶺南獅鼓 and 廣東獅鼓.²

Sources from Guangzhou, Toronto and Hanoi describe the same three jobs. The band unifies the dancers' movements, it sets the mood of the show, and it carries the lion's emotions, because a change in rhythm, speed or force changes what the lion appears to feel.³ The Toronto ethnomusicologist Colin McGuire, who studied the Hong Luck Kung Fu Club, says dancers treat drum patterns like signals that coordinate manoeuvres on a battlefield. The dancer under the head cannot see well, and several lions in one street cannot see one another, so the drum is what holds them together.⁴ A Guangzhou Daily feature calls the drummer the lion's conductor and soul.⁵ A practitioner blog and a Cleveland team both call the drum the lion's heartbeat.⁶⁷

The Tang court lion dance (太平樂, also 五方師子舞) was accompanied by 140 singers according to the Tongdian, and Laurence Picken studied a surviving Song-dynasty lion-dance piece in 1984.⁸ A line by the Qing poet Zhao Xi about the "pottery drum" and the nimble head and tail, quoted by Guangzhou Daily, is an early sign of drum-led lion performance in Guangdong.⁵

The three instruments and the size of the band

Band size depends on the occasion, and the sources give different counts. Competition rules set minimums (see Chapter 14).

The drum: construction, size and sticks

Lion drums are made in several Guangdong centres, and drum making is heritage-listed. The Foshan (Chancheng District) process has six stages: choosing the wood, building the shell, choosing the hide, mounting the hide, tuning, and plastering and lacquering. The wood is air-dried naturally for a year, the hide is air-dried water-buffalo hide, the bamboo hoops come from Guangning, and a full set takes five days.¹⁹ The Gam Sing (金聲) lion-drum shop in Kaiping was founded in 1888 and its craft was listed as Guangdong provincial heritage in 2009.²⁰

Drum technique is mostly about posture and a relaxed, even stroke. Teachers in Chicago, the UK and Taiwan agree on the points below.

• Stance. Stand in a horse stance (馬步, Cant. maa5 bou6) so power comes from the ground, with a straight back so the arms reach over the drum.²³²⁵ See Making Lion Dance Music @ 01:17.
• Grip. Hold the stick two to three inches in from the end for balance and speed.²³ Keep the thumb opposite the first finger, not on top.²⁵ The Jow Ga lesson set describes a ring of thumb and index finger with the other three fingers resting lightly on the stick end to smother the vibration.¹⁵ A Taiwanese drum teacher says a thumb on top locks the hand, and adds that the tiger's mouth (虎口) faces up and the forearms stay forward and parallel.²⁶ Taiwan drum class @ 00:30.
• Stroke and strike zones. Bring the stick straight down so it rebounds. The best sound is between the centre and the edge. The dead centre and the extreme edge sound different, and a hit on the shell is a click.²³
• Single strokes first. A UK drummer calls even single strokes the key foundation skill, with the same tone and stick height in both hands, then doubles (right right left left).²⁵ Single strokes @ 02:24.
• Damping. Fingers or the stick pressed on the head give a damped "chick". A fast roll on the rim or shell is a normal part of many patterns.²³²⁷

Cymbals and gong

The cymbal part is a simpler version of the drum rhythm, and beginners start there.²⁸ Cymbals are muted by pulling them into the stomach or onto the wrist, and a wrist stop lets a player hold a pose.²⁷ In the Hok San "three bows" pattern the cymbals and gong stay silent through the three rim clicks, play the three single beats, then stop on the rolls. On the drum's opening roll in the Ji Hua Tou pattern the cymbals again stay silent and enter on the first beat after it, counting in groups of one, one-two-three, one-two-three.²⁷²⁹ The Foshan tutorial says the copper cymbals raise the excitement of the music.¹⁴ Players sometimes cut the cymbals back: a UK "hybrid" style tones them down for restaurants, where six pairs crashing beside a table is too loud.²⁵

The gong is the harder part to learn. A UK teacher describes it as a pain at first because it plays against the cymbals, and teaches it by counting groups of one-one-two and one-one-two-three to lock it to the drum.¹³ A Western-trained team notates one special gong beat in 4/4 on every off-beat, hit then muted.³⁰ A 5 Elements tutorial says the goal is to keep the beat with the drum, using the free hand to steady and mute the gong.³¹ Wong Kiew Kit's school gives a simple base: two beats, gong on the second, cymbals on both, with the drum carrying the melody.³² Malaysia's culture department map says the gong marks the lion's entrance, dramatic changes and the climax.³³ The Indonesian federation secretary says it keeps the tempo.¹⁶ A Singapore student study, citing a 2007 Chinese book, records the drill refrain that the third beat of the drum is the first beat of the gong.²⁸

Who leads whom

The question has two answers depending on the moment, and the sources split on it. Inside the band the order is fixed: the gong player and the cymbal players follow the drummer. Between drummer and lion it varies.

The practical rule is that the two must know each other. The Foshan tutorial says the lion and drummer need a tacit understanding (默契, Cant. mak6 kai3), that a new drummer cannot lock in with a lion quickly, and that even a professional needs a dozen or more run-throughs with a new lion team.¹⁴ The communication runs both ways. The drummer signals with each beat, and the lion cannot give audible signals, so it uses subtle gestures.¹² Sar Ping drummers also signal with the body: elbows out for Tam Bou, with a wrist turn as the variation.³⁶

How the drum cues the lion

Every school ties named drum calls to lion actions. The names differ, but the logic is shared: a call announces a stage of the lion's story, and the lion's change of stage tells the drummer what to play next. Chapter 8 covers the movements and Chapter 10 the choy cheng (採青, plucking the green). The table collects the calls that sources link to specific actions.

The Guangzhou Daily feature gives the full traditional Guangdong routine that the drum accompanies, per national heritage inheritor Zhao Weibin: sleeping lion (睡獅), awakening (覺醒), leaving the cave (出洞), patrolling the mountain (巡山), seeking the green (覓青), plucking (採青), spitting (吐青), licking and washing (舔洗) and returning (回歸). Performers may choose one stage or all.⁵ Other drum details attach to rituals. At an eye-dotting the leader shouts "起鼓" (hei2 gu2, "start the drum") as the brush reaches the tail and the whole band erupts.¹ A Vancouver team says to wait for the drumroll after the lettuce has been eaten, a roll that cues the spitting.⁴⁰ A cheng demonstration at the Beyond the Pride exhibition says seven-star ends every approach with a pause, and Ken Morin of Boston Chinatown says seven stars are played while firecrackers go off, to keep the lion dancing livelier and louder.⁴¹⁴²

Etiquette also shapes the drumming. The Hong Kong school notes say a lion plays seven-star before the door to test the doorframe, but once inside it plays only three-star and rolls with kneeling bows, with no seven-star and no kicking.² The Hakka lion tradition of Liudui in Taiwan adds that gongs and drums must not stop while the troupe circles the village, that the gong is never struck alone because it sounds like a signal to withdraw or an alarm, and that a gong alone before an ancestral hall would announce a funeral.⁴³ Folk belief also forbids striking drums, gongs or cymbals for no reason. In Cantonese 空 (empty) and 凶 (ominous) share the sound hung1, which a Singapore student study offers as the reason; in Mandarin they only rhyme.⁹

Three-star, five-star and seven-star

The common vocabulary of southern drumming counts in "stars" (星, Cant. sing1, Mand. xīng): three-star (三星鼓, Cant. saam1 sing1 gu2, Mand. sānxīnggǔ), five-star (五星鼓, ng5 sing1 gu2, also called plum-blossom drum, 梅花鼓, mui4 faa1 gu2) and seven-star (七星鼓, cat1 sing1 gu2, Mand. qīxīnggǔ). A Heshan paper says Heshan used three-star, five-star and mixed drumming before its founder Feng Gengzhang created the seven-star method, which it calls a major innovation in southern drumming.⁴⁵ Malaysia's national register explains what the numbers count: three-star is two beats whose first beat is split in two, five-star is three beats with the first two split into four, and seven-star is four beats with the first three split into six. So a star is a stroke, giving 3 (2+1), 5 (4+1) and 7 (6+1) strokes. The register matches the three rhythms to steps: three-star when the lion inspects, wakes or works around its place, five-star as the most common, and seven-star when the lion walks a long distance.¹¹

Several teaching sources treat the three as a ladder. A Chicago teacher presents three, five and seven as slow, medium and fast, with three the easiest and seven the hardest, and says the three-five-seven is the foundation.²³ The Jow Ga lesson set gives a recipe: link a three-star beat to a five-star beat, leave out the rim beat, and you have seven-star. A performance rarely consists only of three-star and five-star, but most other techniques either contain them or use them as transitions.¹⁵⁴⁶ 7 Star and 3 Star Drumming @ 01:32 demonstrates the recipe in narrated form. The Hong Kong school notes name the main beats as three sounds (三聲, three-star) and seven sounds (七聲, seven-star), and add basic strokes named for the lion's state: walking, peeping, tossing and biting the seven stars.²

The five-stage Hong Kong sequence

The clearest short written account of a basic southern drum sequence is a set of teaching notes by Wong Kwok-cheung for a Hong Kong primary school. It is copied word for word on a mainland training site and a how-to site, so it circulates widely.²⁵⁰⁵¹ It splits the drumming into five stages that make a story: bow, set off, search, test, eat. He compares it to driving, with first gear, then second and third.

Only 得 (dak1) is explicitly glossed in the sources, as a hit on the rim. In Cantonese opera notation the same syllable marks a strike on the double-skin drum (雙皮鼓), and the Hong Kong Education Bureau's glossary adds that 巴 or 打 can also represent it.⁵² The rim reading from the lion sources and the double-skin reading from opera are not yet reconciled. The other vocables are read here in the usual way, which is an interpretation because no source consulted defines them for lion drumming: 咚 (dung1) an open stroke on the drum centre, 洞 (dung6) a lower stroke, 撐 (caang1) a simultaneous strike on the big gong (大鑼) and double cymbals (雙鈸) in Cantonese opera notation,⁵² and 切 (cit3) a choked ending. A Cantonese dictionary entry for the compound 咚鏘 (dung1 coeng1) describes it as the sound of drums and clashing cymbals in music for traditional performances such as the lion dance, without assigning each syllable to an instrument.⁵³ Such oral percussion syllables are called 鑼鼓經 (Cant. lo4 gu2 ging1, Mand. luógǔjīng), and patterns are taught by mouth before they are played.²⁸ A drum sheet reproduced on the same mainland site, apparently Taiwanese, uses 叉 for a stick on the side of the drum and 戚 for the stick tip pressed on the head to mute it.⁵⁰ The same notes add a five-to-eight-minute choy cheng drill built on the five stages.

1. Bow (參拜) Three bows, left, right, centre, with about five steps forward and five back in a horse stance and an open mouth. Drum: the roll.
2. Raise the lion (起獅) Right hand grips, left hand presses the mouth, shake left and right, walk one circle. Drum: rim clicks, then the cymbal run.
3. Search (庄獅, three-star) Look for food four or five times. Drum: three-star.
4. Probe (拋獅) A feet-together hop forward, three probes. Drum: the probing pattern, three times.
5. Wash the feet (洗腳, "play seven-star") The lion washes its feet left, right, left, then shakes its head and stops when the music stops. Drum: seven-star.
6. Eat (食青) Chew slowly and spit left, right, centre. Drum: rolls, three rounds.

The saying "three, seven, Lo Leung, eighteen roads"

A familiar line in the lion-drum community is 三七羅梁十八路 (Cant. saam1 cat1 lo4 loeng4 sap6 baat3 lou6), the title of a three-minute video by a lion dancer channel.⁵⁴ No source found explains the phrase, so its meaning is not settled. The natural reading is a list of the drum systems a drummer meets: three-star (三), seven-star (七), Lo Leung (羅梁) and the eighteen-road drum (十八路). The table below treats it that way and says where each system is covered. A web search for the phrase found no explanation either.

Sar Ping: the eighteen patterns

Sar Ping (沙坪, Cant. saa1 ping4, Mand. Shāpíng) is the town of Heshan where Feng Gengzhang came from, and it is the name of the Lui Pai (呂派) lineage of Grandmaster Lui San Yiu (呂新堯) taught in Singapore. Chapter 5 covers the lineage. This section covers what the drumming is. The curriculum is titled 沙坪(呂派)獅藝十八路正統鼓典為本, "Sar Ping (Lui Pai) lion arts, eighteen traditional drum patterns".⁵⁵ Shifu Nelson Ferreira of the Zhong Yi Kung Fu Association in Madison describes it as eighteen drum patterns with cymbal and gong parts, eighteen core steps that match the patterns, seven postures (ways of raising the head), eight lion actions or emotions and six traditional sets, and says it is hard even for trained musicians.⁵⁶³⁴ In a PBS program a Zhong Yi teacher says the style's beats are prescribed because each has a meaning and a lion movement attached.³⁴ A Phoenix coach who switched from Fut San to Sar Ping says what he learned was which steps the lion does to which beats.⁵⁷

The table gives the names as recorded by the practitioner Kenneth Chuen in an archived 2025 snapshot of his site, which also had audio of each name's Cantonese pronunciation, with the variants other lineages use.⁵⁵ The Jyutping is standard dictionary Jyutping, so a few readings differ from Chuen's own tone-number spelling.

The last two are not endings. In Leroy Lee's and Kinmen's versions every named pattern is entered through dense and sparse points, in the formula 密點疏點接 followed by the pattern, and Kinmen's titles read 五拍疏點接 (five-beat sparse point, then the pattern).⁵⁸⁵⁹ They are connective tissue. Sar Ping teaching materials say the system is standardized and that only the walking and transition beats vary, which fits this structure.

Read in order, the patterns trace a story: bow, explore, display at set heights, press or rub through the cave, jump, climb the mountain, see the reflection, test the water, come down to the plain, then seven-section and seven-star. This reading is the guide's, and no source states the full narrative, but it matches the landscapes and animal behaviours that rule texts for traditional lion list for a cheng, such as mountain, ridge, stream, water, bridge, cave and well (see Chapter 14).

Only a little rhythm notation is publicly available. Leroy Lee's video descriptions give three of the patterns in a bar notation. The sources do not explain his key, so read X as a stroke and the hyphen as a rest as a working assumption.⁵⁸

The people behind the eighteen

The Heshan lion reached Singapore with Li Yi Sheng (李怡生), a student of Feng Gengzhang's, who founded the Yi Yi Tong troupe; this became the Hok San Clan Association after the Second World War. Lui San Yiu, Li's favourite student, taught there from 1946.⁶⁴ Separately, Liang Zhao Fu (梁肇富, 1928 to 1986) created the "18 Continual Drumming Method" (連環十八路鼓法, Cant. lin4 waan4 sap6 baat3 lou6 gu2 faat3), described as eighteen techniques played consecutively, with tempo and dynamics standing for human emotion. He and his three-drum showpiece earned him the title "Southeast Asian Drum King" (東南亞鼓王), and he died in 1986.⁶⁴⁶⁵ Chan Siew Kee (陳紹箕, born 1947) learned at the Association from age eight, led the drumming for 200 lions at Singapore's National Day in 1990, was called "World Drum King" after the 2002 World Dragon and Lion Dance Championship, and founded the World Sar Ping Lion Dance Federation in 2014. A 2016 Lianhe Zaobao profile says that when he hears the drum he wants to dance at once.⁶⁵⁶⁶ He is the third-generation leader of the school. A 2023 USDLDF seminar in Houston, taught by masters from Singapore and Malaysia under his name, covered basic beats and rhythms for drum, gong and cymbals and harmonizing the lion steps with the beats.⁶⁷

Multi-drum showpieces come from the same world. The Singapore Hok San Association played a linked three-drum piece (連環三通鼓, lin4 waan4 saam1 tung1 gu2) at Ulu Tiram, Johor, on 8 December 2007,⁶⁸ and Albert Fong (馮廣業) of Khuan Loke, Sungai Way, Malaysia, played a Sar Ping three-drum array at the Zhong Yi Kung Fu Association's twentieth anniversary in Madison in 2015.⁶⁹ Whether the three-drum format descends from Liang's piece is an inference from the lineage, not a stated fact.

Heshan, Foshan and the other school systems

Heshan versus Foshan. A practitioner blog from 2011 says Hok San drumming is almost completely different from Fut San drumming, and that many Hok San beats represent a real heartbeat, with the drummer returning to a repeated dong-dong beat and circling the arms. A Singapore student exhibition repeats this and calls the double beat the lion's heartbeat.⁶⁶⁵ A Heshan government text says experts who hear the seven-star drum know a Heshan lion has arrived.⁷⁰ Feng Gengzhang's seven-star method is one of three hallmarks of Heshan lion art, with the cat step and the eight emotions.⁷¹ Foshan kung fu hall lion societies, for example under the Hongsheng hall (鸿胜馆), are said to have been accompanied by seven-star (second-hand, medium confidence).⁷²

Hok San routines outside Sar Ping. UK tutorials by KSK Dragon and Lion Dance show how one Hok San team labels its patterns; none of them names Sar Ping. The three bows (San Bai or Xing Li, "pay respects") is built in threes: three rim clicks, three single beats right-left-right, three rolls. A double on the first beat punches the sound through.²⁷ Their Ji Hua Tou pattern has the drum, cymbals and gong each play something different. Their shu dian, the steady walking beat, is 疏點 in Mandarin reading.⁶²²⁹¹³

A Taiwanese competition drum routine

A Taiwan drum teacher, Fang Yun-ching (方韻晴), teaches the second "trial" of a competition drum routine, "Hundred Yue Heroic Wind at the Tournament" (賽會之百粵雄風), under the label 岫派醒獅戰鼓 (the school name is uncertain). She calls the lion drum a war drum (戰鼓, zin3 gu2). It is a different system from the Sar Ping eighteen, and its named beats are worth knowing as an example of how a routine chains beats, counts and shouts.²⁶ Her routine's second trial, as she teaches it, runs in this order. Taiwan war drum class @ 01:05.

Hong Kong drumming and Lo Leung

Hong Kong teams drum from the shared Guangdong vocabulary above, but the style most associated with Hong Kong and Macau is Lo Leung (羅梁, Cant. lo4 loeng4, Mand. Luó Liáng, also spelled Lo Leong). The name joins the surnames of two sworn brothers, Lo Yuet Sing (羅悅勝) and Leung Kwok Wing (梁國榮), who each opened martial halls in Guangdong in the 1930s.⁷⁷ They fled the Japanese invasion to Macau, where the Lo Leung Athletic Association (羅梁體育總會) was founded in 1938 as the Lo Leung Brothers Martial Arts Troupe, teaching Choy Li Fut and southern lion. The Zhongshan daily says the name changed in 1948.⁷⁸⁷⁷

Practitioner descriptions say Lo Leung drum was invented in Hong Kong and Macau from traditional Foshan drumming and is slightly faster, denser, heavy on rim work and full of variations. A Zhongshan Daily feature of 21 December 2024 confirms that Lo Leung lion and drum are fast-paced, and gives the cause: a television director asked for a routine that had run about thirty minutes to be cut to five, so the group had to speed up.⁷⁷ The feature names no strokes, patterns or syllables, so the rim-work, density and Foshan-origin claims remain practitioner accounts of medium confidence. The same summaries say Hong Kong lion music is mainly the "money all over the ground" drum (遍地金錢鼓, pin3 dei6 gam1 cin4 gu2), also called Lo Leung drum: bright, cadenced and rim-heavy, sounding like coins scattered across the floor.

Lo Leung demonstrations exist as videos without speech: 罗梁鼓 (5:08) and its companion clip have around 54,000 to 56,000 views each, and a Bilibili demo from December 2021 has about 18,000.⁷⁹ A 2017 Australian practitioner post lists Hok San, Fut San (Hong Kong style or variations), Vietnamese and Lo Leung (Macau) beats as styles now heard side by side, with no good or bad, just evolution.⁸⁰ Hong Kong also runs drum contests, including traditional and innovative lion-drum divisions at a Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra event.⁸¹

Malaysia and Indonesia: the high-pole drum

Prof. Tan Sooi Beng's documentary on Malaysian lion dance says apprentices learn the instruments too: a big drum with springs inside, cymbals and a flat gong, playing specific rhythms for specific lion movements, with the musicians building tension as the lion tries to grab the greens.⁸² Lion Dance in Malaysia @ 17:02. In Tan's earlier paper the Penang troupes' apprentices first learned drum, gong and cymbal rhythms and three basic stances, then the tail, and were allowed to carry the head only at about fourteen.⁸³

High-pole competition changed the drumming's job. The Genting World Lion Dance Championship, first held in 1994, scores high-pole difficulty, form and expression, and music pairing, all integrated, and it gives a Golden Drum Award (金鼓獎) chosen by judges (USD 1,000 in 2023).⁸⁴⁸⁵ A listing for a 2021 Universiti Malaya master's thesis by Lim Hong Zhi says Kun Seng Keng of Muar won twelve of the thirteen Genting titles from 1994 to 2018 and studies the re-contextualised music accompaniment of its finals, but the thesis itself could not be read for this guide. The Malaysian master credited with creating high-pole lion dance in the 1980s (Siow in English sources, Xiao Feihong in a Mandarin profile) says the art was taught by word of mouth and compiled a textbook of drum notation and the shouted commands.⁸⁶ Profile of the Malaysian high-pole master @ 10:04. A popular explainer says that in many Malaysian troupes the most experienced member controls the drum since rhythm controls the story, and that a roll prepares a jump, a heavy strike marks the landing and a pause builds tension, though this is the narrator's generalisation.³⁹ Beyond these items, the guide has no source that records high-pole drum patterns by name.

The 24 Festive Drums (二十四節令鼓), created in 1988 in Johor Bahru by Tan Chai Puan and Tan Hooi Song, were built on the Guangdong lion drum because it was cheap and easy to find, thanks to the many lion troupes, and because its bold sound stood for the Cantonese pioneering spirit. They became Malaysian national heritage in 2009.⁸⁷

Indonesia's federation secretary describes the lion orchestra as three instruments: one drum player, two to four cymbal players, who are the noisiest, and a gong that sets the tempo. Local instruments may be blended in as long as they suit, and provincial teams at the national championships showcase local music as part of the scoring.¹⁶ Indonesian Wikipedia says a separate "tambur" (drum) competition category was first held in Indonesia on 23 April 2017 at the Living World International All-Star Lion Dance Championship, that harmony of lion and music is part of the 3-point expression score in pole judging, and that a piece of the music team's gear falling costs 0.1.⁸⁸

Vietnam: trống lân

Vietnamese lion dance (múa lân) uses a drum (trống), cymbals and a small gong. The drum's job is practical as well as musical. Vietnamese press reports (Người Lao Động and VnExpress; their web addresses were not recovered) say it tells the dancers about speed changes and greets other troupes, because the front dancer sees only about 30 per cent of the scene and the rear dancer almost nothing. A Hanoi television documentary says percussion unifies movement and sets the atmosphere through rhythm, speed and intensity. It calls the drum the main leader, at times unhurried and at times relentless like a battle charge, and like a whip that makes the lion leap, bow, lie down and climb, always shaped to the lion's footwork.³ Hanoi documentary on lion, sư and dragon dance @ 23:04. A short explainer says the drummer must play set patterns suited to the lion's steps for bowing, coming, lying, eating, climbing up and coming down (a reading of garbled captions).⁸⁹

The Saigon memoir is an audio reading of an unsigned essay recorded through poor auto-captions, so treat its details as colour rather than record. Saigon lions of the 1950s @ 07:20. Vietnamese teams also teach Hok San drum material: a Đà Nẵng group posted a Sar Ping Tam Bou lesson in 2015 with a US source, and a Hong An team posted a 25-minute basic Hok San drum video.⁹⁶ No Vietnamese drum pattern names and no documented link between Vietnamese drumming and Sar Ping were found.

The "ha" calls and other shouts

Some patterns end with a shout, and this guide found no fixed written description of the Sar Ping "ha" calls. Some Sar Ping teaching materials mark "ha" calls beside patterns 9 and 10 (擦洞 and 拋步), but no written source describes a fixed Sar Ping call at those points, and the auto-captions of Albert Fong's Sar Ping three-drum array merely catch shouted syllables at several points.⁶⁹ What can be documented is how shouts work in neighbouring traditions.

• Taiwan war drum. In the Taiwanese routine, a shout 嘿 comes with the last double stroke of the first beat, and the drop-and-stop seven-star beat is vocalised with four calls (厚, 嘿, 厚, 嚇) with body movements.²⁶ Drop-and-stop seven-star @ 06:31.
• Malaysian commands. Siow's drum textbook includes the shouted commands, so the commands are taught as part of the drum.⁸⁶
• Eye-dotting. The leader shouts "start the drum" (起鼓) when the brush reaches the tail.¹

If "ha" calls are part of a lineage's script, the teacher who taught them is the authority. A student at the Madison school says the team always opens a performance with a rim click that is really loud, which is the drum's own call.³⁴

Teaching children: cymbals, then gong, then drum

Sources agree on the order of learning: start on the cymbals or gong, and put the drum last. Wen Yansen, the Songgang Seven-Star inheritor, puts it bluntly.⁴⁷

"You must play cymbals before you can drum." (一定要先打镲才会打鼓)

Wen Yansen, Songgang Seven-Star Lion inheritor, Guangdong TV, January 2022

Lion Blogs says playing cymbals is a lot easier than playing the drum, and a Singapore student study says beginners start on cymbals or gong.⁶²⁸ The French heritage inventory says every new student begins with the music.¹⁰ A 5 Elements teacher in Edmonton says new drummers are shy of the drum and tap it gently, then play stronger and stand taller as they gain confidence, so the drum is the first confidence exercise.⁹⁷ Edmonton club panel @ 20:35.

A children's class usually cannot wait years for the drum, so the progression below is assembled from the sources. It is not a published curriculum.

1. Say it before you play it. Teach each pattern aloud with the vocables (咚, 得, 撐, 切), because patterns are passed on by mouth and proficient dancers can accompany themselves vocally.⁴²⁸
2. Cymbals. Teach holding, the ring and the mute into the stomach, then play in counted groups, silent on the opening roll.²⁷²⁹
3. Gong. Teach hit-and-mute with the free hand steadying the gong, and count the gong against the cymbals because it sits off them.¹³³⁰³¹
4. Drum posture and strokes. Horse stance, grip, even single strokes, then rim and side rolls, then centre rolls, building from slow to fast. In a Chicago group class each student had to be satisfactory at one step before moving on, and the lesson was that rhythm matters more than speed at that stage.⁹⁸²⁵
5. Three bows, then the ladder. Start with the three-bow pattern in threes, then three-star, then five-star, then seven-star. Triplets are the key skill.²⁷⁴⁸ A repeatable set done three times without a mistake is a workable class target.⁹⁹
6. Dynamics and listening. Teach the quiet walking beat and varied volume, and tie each call to a lion action.⁶²
7. Play with a lion. A drummer needs a dozen or more run-throughs with a given lion team before the two mesh.¹⁴ For a Sar Ping class, match each of the eighteen patterns to its core step.⁵⁶

Two cultural points can matter in a mixed class. Drumheads are hide, and a Malaysian coach told a Muslim member that this must be understood and respected; the team treats lion dance as sport, and non-Muslim members enter the temple in her place.⁸⁴ Historically, women were often limited to the cymbals or gong and barred from the lion.¹⁰²

Music in competition rules

Chapter 14 covers the rule books. For the band, the USDLDF 2023 traditional score has two music items: "Music Coordination" (drum, gong and cymbals in perfect coordination, 0.05 off for any error or out-of-beat playing) and "Music and Lion" (setting off the atmosphere of the southern lion). Timing starts when the drum is hit, and the drummer may use a single rim click to signal the team. The first USDLDF national championship, at Quincy High School in Massachusetts on 26 and 27 May 2018, included a Drum Showcase for music only. By 2019 it was one drum, one gong and two cymbal pairs, played for 1.5 to 3 minutes and judged on rhythm, harmony between instruments, variety of beats, showmanship and presentation. Sing Yung of Hawaii won the 2018 showcase with 9.19.¹⁸

The Chinese traditional-lion criteria that USDLDF's 2018 and 2019 lists translate include a music item worth 0.5 to 1 point.¹⁰³ The 2011 IDLDF rule book (no web address recovered) asks that southern lion competitions use mainly percussion or music, with a clear, accurate beat and order in light, heavy, fast and slow. Taiwan's 2025 dragon-and-lion drumming rules are the closest official model for a children's drumming event: the piece must include at least once the traditional three-bow drum pattern of any school, or lose a point, and taiko-style or other non-traditional drumming may fill no more than a tenth of it.¹⁰⁴

Other lions' music, briefly

Northern lions use Beijing-style percussion (京鼓, 京鑼, 京鈸), while southern lions use a bigger drum, gong and cymbals.⁷⁶ Hakka lions in Dingnan, Jiangxi use gongs, drums and the Hakka suona (嗩吶, a double-reed horn).⁷⁶ Suona is not standard in Cantonese lion music. Dr. Sun Hui, a Taiwan-born ethnomusicologist, says recordings are now accepted as a substitute for live percussion, and the tension of improvisation between percussionist and lion has been lost.¹⁰⁵

Jow Ga's lessons: three-, five- and seven-star steps and drum beats

Jow Ga (周家, Cant. zau1 gaa1, Mand. Zhōujiā) is a southern kung fu style. A YouTube channel, Jow Ga Kung Fu NYC Chinatown martial arts Community, posted a six-part lion dance series with the Chinese title 周家傳統醒獅教程 (Cant. zau1 gaa1 cyun4 tung2 sing2 si1 gaau3 cing4, Mand. Zhōujiā chuántǒng xǐngshī jiàochéng), "Jow Ga traditional lion dance course". The video descriptions credit a Jow Ga sifu (師父, Cant. si1 fu2, Mand. shīfu, teacher) from Chai Wan, Hong Kong, named as Sifu Gam Wai-Kong and, in another spelling, Kam Wai Kwong. The Chinese in the descriptions reads 甘偉光. They date his school to about the 1970s, say he is also a registered Chinese herbal medicine doctor, and add that Jow Ga is known in Vietnam as Nhon Nghia Duong. The descriptions list the series as lesson 1 basic steps, lesson 2 drum beats, lesson 3 lion routines, lesson 4 instructional part A, lesson 5 instructional part B, and lesson 6 three-, five- and seven-star step and drumming.¹

This chapter already uses lesson 2 for the thunder, passing and great drums, the stick grip and the recipe for seven-star (see How the drum cues the lion and Three-star, five-star and seven-star). This section adds the rest of what the readable lessons teach, with timestamped links.

About the captions. Every caption below is YouTube's automatic English caption of the narration, so it contains errors. The obvious ones are corrected here, with a note where it matters: "biting the seven stars" is heard as "fighting the seven stars" in lesson 1 at 6:17, "accompanied by" as "a company to buy" at 5:39, and "toe" as "tough" in lesson 6 at 2:52. Parts of lesson 6 are unreadable (about 2:04 to 2:24, 3:13 to 3:52, 5:03, 5:25, and 5:51 to the end), and nothing is taken from them. The captions also go quiet where only the drum is heard, so they cannot tell you how any beat sounds. Watch the videos for the sound.

Lesson 1: basic steps and the head-to-tail cue

The narration reads like a textbook. It goes through the moves twice: first on their own, then, from 3:02, with a partner and with three-star, five-star and seven-star drumming.¹ Here, head dancer and tail dancer mean the two people inside the lion.

Lesson 2: the drum beats

This lesson names each pattern and says what the lion is doing when it is played.² The captions go quiet between labels, which is where the drum is heard, so the patterns themselves are only on the video.

Lesson 6: the three-star step and the hook step

This lesson opens with the same lines as lesson 1 at 6:17 and then repeats lesson 2's grip and star-drum wording almost word for word, so it reuses the same text.³ It then turns to the feet. The Chapter 8 table already has the three-star step, from another video that reads out the same lesson.

How the lesson names may line up with Chapter 8

The captions are English renderings, and the Chinese names never appear in them. The table sets each name beside the nearest step in the Stances and steps table of Chapter 8. These are matches to check, not findings.

What the set adds to the drum chapter

• The cue runs in both directions. In lesson 1 the head dancer's movement is the signal: raising the head after the wave tells the drummer to change beat, and the head dancer calls a cue to the tail dancer before the wave. In lesson 2 the gong and cymbal players follow the drummer's variations. That sits with the "both, by phase" reading in Who leads whom. That is this guide's reading, not a statement the lessons make.
• Biting the seven stars is taught twice. Lesson 1 shows it first on its own (1:45), as a low bite on the front leg after the wave, and then with the drum (6:17), where the raised head after the wave is the cue to change to seven-star drumming. The Hong Kong school notes use the same words, 咬七星 (Cant. ngaau5 cat1 sing1), for testing food. The shared name suggests a link, but the lesson does not explain why the move has that name.
• Drum patterns are tied to parts of the dance. The great drum opens a section, another pattern pauses or ends it, and the thunder drum goes with the salute or the green. The cues table lists these as separate calls, and the lesson shows how they frame a section.

Lessons not read

Lessons 3, 4 and 5 have no captions, and the footage has not been described for this guide, so this section does not describe their contents.⁴⁵⁶

• Jow Ga Traditional Lion Dance lessons #3 (Routine Sets) @ 0:00 (9:38). The descriptions list lesson 3 as lion routines, so it is the likeliest to show full routines.
• Jow Ga Traditional Lion Dance lessons #4 @ 0:00 (7:08). The descriptions list it as instructional part A.
• Jow Ga Traditional Lion Dance #5 @ 0:00 (8:57). The descriptions list it as instructional part B.

Sources for this section

1. Jow Ga Traditional Lion Dance lessons #1 (Basic) @ 0:00 - Jow Ga Kung Fu NYC Chinatown martial arts Community, English narration, automatic English captions, 7:55. Descriptions of all six lessons also read.
2. Jow Ga Lion Dance lessons #2 (Traditional Drum Beats) @ 0:00 - same channel, English narration, automatic English captions, 5:09
3. Jow Ga Lion Dance lessons #6 (3 Star, 5 Star, 7 Star steps) @ 0:00 - same channel, automatic English captions, partly unreadable, 6:09
4. Jow Ga Traditional Lion Dance lessons #3 (Routine Sets) @ 0:00 - same channel, no captions, 9:38, title and description only
5. Jow Ga Traditional Lion Dance lessons #4 @ 0:00 - same channel, no captions, 7:08, title and description only
6. Jow Ga Traditional Lion Dance #5 @ 0:00 - same channel, no captions, 8:57, title and description only

Open questions

• Whether the Lui Pai eighteen and Liang Zhao Fu's 18 Continual Drumming Method are the same eighteen, or "eighteen-road" is a wider Guangdong term.
• What 展 means in the pattern names (testing, or unfold and display), whether 七節 means seven festive or seven sections, and the order of the last two patterns.
• Whether Sar Ping has a fixed shouted "ha" call, and what it is.
• The meaning of 三七羅梁十八路, and whether Lo Leung drum equals "money all over the ground".
• Vietnamese trống lân pattern names and any link to Sar Ping.
• Malaysian high-pole drum patterns (the 2021 Kun Seng Keng thesis could not be read) and the music clauses of the IDLDF and Genting rule books.
• Rhythm notation for most of the eighteen patterns, of which only three are in print here, and pattern structure in Hung Gar and Choy Li Fut. A student's own teacher is the authority.