Festival promotes cultural quintessence

PANO - The Central Highlands Folk Arts Festival 2016, with various cultural activities, has wrapped up in Kon Tum province, leaving a good impression on domestic and international festival goers and contributing to preserving the cultural quintessence of the Central Highlands region.

During the event, cultural festivals, rituals, and ceremonies of ethnic minority groups in the region, such as Ploi Oi village’s sword moving, Ba Na people’s new house celebration, Churu people’s Pothi and Bok Chu-bur ceremonies, Ma people’s ceremony to worship rice, among others, were vividly recaptured by artists and locals from the participating ethnic minority groups in the region. Most of the performances demonstrated their hope for peace, and a happy and prosperous life.

Performing traditional musical instruments at the festival.

Through activities, the relations between local artists and tourists were tightened as they went hand in hand, danced, together enjoyed the best “Ruou can” (wine drunk out from a jar through pipes), and shared stories relating to the birth, development, and significance of festivals and cultural rituals and practices of ethnic groups.

Tran Thai Thien from Binh Dinh province said that this was a special event and he was impressed by the solemn but simple cultural atmosphere, hospitable people, and good services at this year’s event.

Sharing the same opinion with Thien, festival goers considered such meaningful activities an effective method to preserve the cultural quintessence of the Central Highlands in particular and the nation in general. 

Held from March 18^th to 23^rd, the festival aimed to preserve cultures of ethnic minority groups in the region as well as popularize Kon Tum’s potential for tourism and hospitality of the land and its people to domestic and international friends.

One of the key events was a street festival, themed “The color of culture of Central Highlands”, with the participation of more than 500 artists from 14 teams of 5 central Highlands provinces. The participants in traditional costumes, wearing masks, walking on stilts, while playing gongs and and T’rung (bamboo xylophone) and performing traditional dances of the Xo Dang, Ba Na, Gia Rai, Gie Trieng and Brau people impressed the visitors. The display of Central Highlands gongs, recognised by UNESCO as an intangible cultural heritage of humanity, and other instruments attracted  the festival goers as they helped the participants learn more about the gong culture as well as the diversity of instruments in the region.

In the context of market economy and deep integration of the nation, many people worry that beautiful values of cultural festivals and rituals will fall into oblivion. They express their hope that such meaningful cultural events will be boosted in the future to contribute to the common efforts to build an advanced culture deeply imbued with its national identity.