The Yi nationality has a long cultural tradition, and folk songs and dances have been held for a long time. During traditional festivals such as the Torch Festival, Flower Arranging Festival and March Festival of the Yi Nationality, people all dress up and gather together to sing and dance. The man danced while holding the small three-stringed string, while the woman clapped her hands and stepped on the ground while dancing.

In 1930, Zhang Chongren, a young man from Lanniqing Village in Xishan, made the second-generation big sanxian. 

Since then, he used the big sanxian to accompany dance music, which spread to every village in Axi. Since then, Shi Fenglin, a folk artist of the Yi nationality, has reformed and standardized the dasanxian, and it has become the now widely popular Yi dasanxian.