Preserving the precious assets of our ancestors

Phu Yen has 3 parts of land temporarily divided into 3 cultural regions (in the perspective of culture and history). The forest one in the three mountainous districts of Song Hinh, Son Hoa and Dong Xuan; the plain one with the paddy fields stretching along the coast belonging to Ba River downstream, over 198km long with 27 communes, wards, town lets, belonging to 4 districts, town and city.

Le Diem gong group (Hai Rieng townlet, Song Hinh district) performing at the exchanging festivals among villages

PRESERVING CULTURAL FEATURES OF THE COMPATRIOTSPhu Yen is the adjacent part of Central highlands gong cultural atmosphere. The province has participated in collecting, compiling Central Highlands epics, currently collecting nearly 100 epics of three ethnic groups of Ê Đê – Mthur, Chăm H’roi and Ba Na. Some of Phu Yen epic volumes include Ma Vứ, Chơ Lơ Kooc(the ethnic group of Chăm H’roi),Tiếng cồng hờ bia đá…

The Cham researcher Ka Sô Liễng, who is currently residing in Krong Pa commune (Son Hoa district), has collected, compiled nearly 30 historical legends of the mountainous ethnic groups in Song Hoa and Dong Xuan, some of which are some thousands of pages long both in the languages of Cham and Viet. It’s him who has recorded, translated, done research and made collecting works that brought about lots of prizes of Vietnam Association of Traditional Folktale. Author Y Dieng (E De ethnic group, born in 1928, currently living in Song Hinh mountainous district) has also collected, translated and done research into lots of epics on this piece of land. He gained the honor to receive the State prize in arts and literature nearly 10 years ago. Apart from these two researchers, Phu Yen does have more than 50 artists from the ethic groups of Cham, E De, Ba Na who know and preserve the traditional lyrics and songs, particularly epics…These artists are old with the youngest born in 1957 and the oldest in 1923. They are definitely the “alive precious assets” in terms of preserving, developing the local traditional cultural values.

Every March, the mountainous compatriots in Phu Yen organize festivals lasting from about 2 to 3 days. The preparation for these festivals is normally fussily with two separate parts of rituals and festive activities. There are always gongs, trumpets, drums of various types depending on particular features of each ethnic group, also, different ways of use. The common particular features are the use of gongs in any festivals like wedding, funerals, buffalo fighting festivals, festive activities of greeting new rice…

THE PRESS CONTRIBUTING THE PRECIOUS CULTURAL ASSETSIn the past years, the sector of culture and the provincial press offices (Phu Yen Newspaper, The Radio-Television Station, Phu Yen Art and Literature magazine, Phu Yen intellectual magazine) have made numerous efforts in developing, preserving the traditional cultural values, which is vividly shown on media programs in coordination with propagating, advertising on the preservation, development of gong cultural values and festivals of the ethnic mountainous groups in Phu Yen. The sector of culture-information previously and the current sector of culture-sports-tourism has coordinated in implementing lots of projects investigating, collecting, preserving, and developing the traditional cultural values. The province’s system of information, media constantly follows the festive and cultural activities of the three mountainous districts in such a timely and sufficient way.

So far, the entire province has published nearly 50 volumes of investigating, collecting, translating, compiling epics, researches to identify the culture of the ethnic groups of Cham H’roi, E De, Ba Na in Phu Yen. There are always columns of preserving, developing the traditional cultural values on all newspapers and media of other types. Lots of press works have been published related to preserving, developing the traditional cultural values (both tangible and intangible culture). The local state budget sources also give priorities to collecting, researching the traditional culture.

Phu Yen has been intensively doing research into preserving and developing the traditional cultural values under the 5^th Central Resolution tenure 8 on constructing, developing Vietnam culture: progressive, rich in national identity.

Source: Phu Yen NewspaperTranslated by HAI LOAN

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