Dong Sutra music was introduced to Kunming from the Dali area in the late Ming Dynasty. It began to spread throughout Yunnan from the middle to late Kangxi period to the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty. It was at its peak during the Jiaqing and Daoguang years.

In the late Guangxu period, Dongjing music began to move out of the elegant music hall controlled by the feudal scholar-bureaucrats and literati, and quickly spread to all walks of life in agriculture, industry, and business, and spread to many rural towns.