The music pestle is a clustered melody musical instrument with local characteristics that emerged with the rise of Taiwan's tourism industry. As early as more than 1700 years ago, the wooden pestle and the wooden drum were used by the ancient Gaoshan people for gathering and summoning.
There are two types of mortars: wooden mortar and stone mortar. Hit the stone mortar or wooden mortar with a wooden pestle, and the rice in between is threshed into rice. According to "Taiping Yu Lan" (Volume 7 and 8) citing the article about "Yizhou" (today's Taiwan) in "Linhai Land Zhi" written by Dongwu Shenying during the Three Kingdoms period: "Call the people as Milin, and if you have a call, take the big empty material. It is more than ten feet tall, with the atrium and the pestle beside it, and it smells like a drum for four or five miles. When the people hear it, they all go to the meeting." It can be seen that as early as 1,700 years ago, the wooden pestle and The wooden drums were also used by the ancient Gaoshan people for rallying calls.
"Taiwan Series Books" says that the Gaoshan people "have no tools for milling rice, but use a large wood as a mortar, a straight wood as a pestle, with spikes and pounding, so that the millet is removed, and the plan is enough to provide food for a day. Men and women work together, and it is normal to rate." The pestle has a very close relationship with people's daily life. The industrious and simple Gaoshan people live on the beautiful island of Taiwan, where there is the rippling Sun Moon Lake and the cloud-shrouded Alishan Mountain. The mountains and rivers are beautiful and colorful. The Gaoshan people have a long tradition of culture and art, and both men, women and children can sing and dance well. In the area of the Gaoshan and Thao tribes on the south bank of Sun Moon Lake, when people are pounding rice, they often dig a cave with a diameter of about one meter in the house. In a stone mortar), several girls or women stand around, each holding a wooden pestle about two meters long to pound the rice, and while pounding the rice, they sing the melodious "pestle song".

Wooden pestles like this one, which are specially used for pounding grains, are mostly popular among the Atayal tribes. The pestle song of the Atayal tribe in Nanao Township, Suao Township, Yilan County, Taiwan Province is actually a song for pounding rice. Wooden pestles are also used in Gaoshan festivals. In the harvest festivals of Yami tribe, women use the pestle to hit the mortar as a ritual. This kind of pestle only has rhythm but no melody. Celebrate the harvest. The Saixia tribe has a ceremony to welcome the spirit. The priest leads the crowd to stand and sing the song of welcoming the spirit. At that time, the mortar is put upside down and rolled out of the house.
In the 1920s, the intelligent people of the Gaoshan and Shao tribes, after long-term practice, found that wooden pestles of different lengths and thicknesses could emit sounds of different heights, each with a fixed pitch, and could play a lively, lively rhythm. Harmonious music, it is called the music pestle. Songs accompanied by it are called pestle songs, and songs played with it are called pestle music. The graceful gestures of the girls when pounding rice formed a unique pestle dance with the accompaniment of singing. The Gaoshan people love labor and life, so they have created the art of singing and dancing with a strong local flavor in their labor.