On25th November 2005, the UNESCO decided to recognize “The cultural spaceof gong in the Central Highlands” of Vietnam as “Masterpieces of theOral and Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity”.

Throughoutthe Central Highlands of Viet Nam, Gong ensembles are parts of variousceremonies and closely linked to the communities’ daily life and thecycle of the seasons. The instruments, measuring 25 to 80 centimetres,are played by men as well as women.

Theculture space of the Gongs of central Vietnam is about original musicalforms, which are performed against the background of the linguistic andethnic diversity of the region. Diversity is also found in thecompositions and customs of the Gong ensembles, in their performancetechniques, in the musical genres and in the ritual functions of thegongs.

In therealm of Vietnam’s musical instruments, the gongs are very well-knownfor their outstanding value and regarded as the privileged languagebridging humanity and the supernatural world. The gongs are made from amixture of bronze and silver, with some distinctive features. Thepeoples living in the Central Highlands of Viet Nam possess many setsof gongs, which would be performed differently. A set of gongs consistsof two to twenty units.

Culture Value

Themost outstanding value of gong culture showcases masterpieces of humancreativity. The masters of gong culture are the ethnic people of theCentral Highlands. Although they can not cast gongs themselves, theyraise the value of a product into an excellent musical instrument withtheir sensitive ears and musical soul. In the hands of talented folkartistants, each gong plays the role of a musical note in an orchestrato perform different pieces of gong music.

Asfor ethnic minorities in the Central Highlands, gongs and gong culturepresent a means to affirm the community and its cultural identities. Astime went by, gongs have become an attractive and appealing symbol ofthe culture of the Central Highlands. It is an activityassociated with cultural and spiritual life, and beliefs of ethnicpeople when they are born, grown up and return to the soil.

Customs
The Central Highlands gong comes from long-standing historical andcultural traditions. In the past, community of people in the CentralHighlands knew how to play the gong. Its sound is either deep orstrong, moving and combining with the sounds of streams, wind and thehearts of people so that it can live with the heaven, the earth andpeople in the Central Highlands.
However, different ethnicminority groups arrange different orchestras. Listening to the sound ofthe gong, people in the Central Highland can know which ethnic group isplaying.
Gong players in the majority of ethnic groups in theCentral Highlands are male. Only in a minority of ethnic groups in theregion, gong players are female.

Visual description of the picture  

Itis a bright sunny day and a group of seven men are outside playingbrown tambourines. Only five of the seven men are clearly visible.Their bodies describe a semi-circle facing the left of the picture.They all wear calm expressions. Each man holds the tambourine in hisright hand, hitting it with a short thick piece of wood held in theleft. The tambourines all have white characters written on them. Allthe men are wearing the same costume: a dark-blue long-sleeved shirtwith multicoloured cuffs and a red square piece of material with goldenbuttons down the front. Some of the men wear caps; the first man fromleft to right wears a yellow cap, the second from right wears a bluecap. In the background we can see a forest with blue sky just visiblethrough the dense foiliage of the trees. Smoke is spiralling upwardsfrom the dirt floor. On the far left of the frame we can see theentrance to a hut.

TheCentral Highlands’ gongs, together with the epics, the treasure offolklore, folk sculpture and folk knowledge, constitute the uniquecultural heritage that have attached to the life of the highlanders forover thousand years.