Song Hinh: Preserving the cultural features

Song Hinh mountainous district is a locality with densest concentration of ethnic minority groups in the province. In the district, the cultural values form the very particular features. However, currently, lots of cultural features are being gradually dying out in the spiritual activities of the compatriots here.

Song Hinh district's museum preserving lots of precious cultural values

Gongs are considered the soul of the ethnic minority groups in Song Hinh district.The sounds of gongs reecho to be the connecting bridge between people and the deity, which expresses the community together-bounding. Since the very first moments when a baby is born to the time he or she grows up old enough to get enough, the gong sounds joyfully on the happy days and the very last days in life. Therefore, gongs are the inevitable musical instruments in festivals on the land: the ritual of praying for life circle, praying when a child is born, the days of congratulating longevity, house warming party, praying for the water, for the new rice to arrive at warehouse…

For the ethnic minority groups in Song Hinh district, traditional house-on-stilts and long houses are not the living space but also the venues to connect generations of the clans. The space is the symbolic image of the matriarchy ideology in the procedure of life organizing. In that space, every night, the entire great family gathers together. Women, girls weave, embroider; the elderly tell legends to the offspring.

With the unique designs and colors, with the skilful hands, women in the mountainous areas weave their own traditional custumes, so much ingenious, bearing the entire features of the ethnic minority groups. The girls of groups of E De, Ba Na, Tay, H’Mong and Thai…are all dressed-up on festivals, on wedding days or on the days all the villagers gather in the gong sounds, which makes it a so much attractive picture.

Nonetheless, due to the rapid life change and especially the impacts of marker mechanism, with the tendency of urbanization, lots of above-mentioned cultural values are gradually dying out. Oi B’Lu (Ea Trol commune), an artist playing most of the musical instruments of Ede Group, shared, “It requires passion and patience to learn how to play gongs. Young people nowadays prefer modern instruments to the traditional ones. The youth activity sessions lack the gong sounds, and this does sadden me”.

According to the statistics of Song Hinh district’s division of culture and sports (in 2006), the entire district has 555 sets of gongs; over 3,000 traditional houses, half-traditional houses; 562 artists and more than 40 of whom are really skilful at mat weaving, but most of those artists are getting old, some have even been deceased, therefore, the number of those capable of transferring the skills of tomb house, statue whittling, material weaving, legend telling is getting smaller. Regretfully, so is the number of gongs, traditional houses are being gradually replaced by red tile roof houses, traditional folk literature works are being slowly forgotten by the ethnic minorities, the young girls are lazy to wear traditional costumes,…

Facing the deteriorating cultural and traditional values, the cultural sector of Song Hinh district is making efforts to preserve and develop the cultural values here. In order to bring gong sounds more greatly during the festivals, the district’s people’s committee has issued one set of gongs to each commune, from the expenditure to implement the scheme of preserving and developing the nation’s traditional and cultural values of the ethnic minority groups in Song Hinh district. The district’s center of culture and sports is in the process of completing the translation of three long poems of: Dam Dang tuot lua, Xinh Nha lac rung, Dam Di chat mot day and 9 fairy tales of Ede groups.

In the displaying space of the Museum, the collection of Song Hinh district’s traditional musical instruments is being preserved (3 sets of gongs, dinh tut, dinh gui and goongs), so are the traditional costumes, tools for making tomb houses, tomb statues…Song Hinh museum is always open to serve tourists coming for learning about the cultural values.

Mr. K’Sor Y Thu, vice director of Song Hinh district’s center of culture and information, lets known: we are going to frequently propagating on the task of preserving and developing the cultural values on the media; opening classes to train communes’ staff, the village elderly; continuing to conduct the task of collecting, investigating, classifying the cultural heritages; collecting ancient stories; organizing more contests, performances on traditional costumes, people’s musical instruments; timely awarding and commending the individuals gaining excellent achievements in preserving and developing the cultural values.

With the solutions that the cultural sector is implementing, hopefully the cultural values on Song Hinh land is going to be preserved and developed, for the sake of integration without mixing in modern society.

Source: Phu Yen Newspaper

Translated by HAI LOAN

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