Passing on the "soul" of gong…

VHXQ - Gongs have always been present in traditional festivals and typical dances as well as important worship rituals of the highland people.

Meritorious artist Duong Ngoc Tien teaches music appreciation to highland youth.

If in the past, artisans of Phuoc Kieu bronze casting village (Dien Ban ward) had to regularly travel to villages to help people appreciate the sound, now the echoes of gongs have been and are being passed on to local residents...

Gong sound appreciation

Meritorious artist Duong Ngoc Tien - a native of Phuoc Kieu village, has traveled for more than ten years to the villages of the Truong Son mountain range. He travels to help ethnic minorities "appreciate" the sound of gongs during each festival season.

Mr. Tien said that because it is a musical instrument, over time the sound of the gong will become distorted. And like other musical instruments, the gong needs to be adjusted regularly to ensure the most accurate possible.

Artisan Duong Ngoc Tien said, if alloy mixing technique is considered a family secret to create typical products of Phuoc Kieu casting village, then sound testing technique is the talent of each artisan of the casting village.

And this can only be shaped through practice, experience and talent.

Sensitive ears, deep understanding of regional music , and manufacturing experience have helped artisans create gong products suitable for each ethnic minority region throughout the Central Highlands. This is the reason why these two musical instruments of Phuoc Kieu are highly appreciated by customers everywhere.

Artisan Duong Ngoc Thuan, from Phuoc Kieu bronze casting village, said that in the past, the casting village only produced and supplied gongs to ethnic minority areas. At that time, they also needed artisans with experience in traditional music to adjust and create sounds that matched their own identity.

In later years, when that class of native artisans no longer existed, the sound testing was undertaken by Phuoc Kieu bronze casting artisans themselves. This required bronze casting artisans to be knowledgeable in music, to understand that each set of gongs has a complete set of notes like modern music, and at the same time to understand the art and culture of each region in order to create suitable gongs.

Meritorious artist Duong Dinh Tien demonstrates gong playing to students

Arousing cultural consciousness

Perhaps because of the extremely difficult factor in sound testing, in recent years, many artisans in the gong casting village have not been able to sustain the gong casting profession...

Meritorious artisan Duong Ngoc Tien said: “Once, while following a delegation from the Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism of Quang Nam to the Central Highlands to attend the announcement ceremony of the intangible cultural space of gongs, I witnessed that the gong instruments of the Dong Giang troupe were unfortunately broken and could not be used. So I had to borrow a gong set from the Quang Tri troupe and adjust it a few places to play, because the two sets of gongs basically had similarities. After this incident, I always wondered, if I hadn’t been there that day, how could the artisans of Dong Giang have performed the assigned responsibility? How could they have proactively handled the situation instead…”.

The concerns of artisan Duong Ngoc Tien were later resolved through training courses to impart gong sound appreciation techniques to ethnic minorities in Quang Nam.

Young men from the villages, who have love and responsibility for traditional national culture and arts, and are talented and somewhat sensitive to music... were sent by the villages to attend classes taught by artisan Duong Ngoc Tien.

In these training classes, he talked about the sound of gongs, the role and irreplaceable value of gong music in traditional festivals of the ethnic minorities in the mountainous regions, and demonstrated with a gong set so that students could grasp the basic knowledge of sound appreciation.

But the difficulty here is that there is no standard curriculum for the “subject” of gong appreciation. Therefore, the artisan who teaches it only relies on the sensitivity of the music and the listener’s soul, hoping that they can grasp some of this special technique.

Dozens of gong appreciation classes have been opened for young people from ethnic minorities in all the villages of Quang Nam.

What artisan Duong Ngoc Tien as well as gong casting artisans want is for indigenous cultural subjects to master the technique of adjusting gong instruments.

From there, combined with the cultural and artistic capital available in the blood and flesh of each ethnic group, they can proactively create gong sets that ensure the best quality to serve their cultural and festival activities.

And, once the village artisans master the sound adjustment technique, they can adjust not only Phuoc Kieu gongs, but any gong product themselves to create good effects.

Artisan Duong Ngoc Tien said that no one can understand the culture, art and traditional music of ethnic minorities better than they themselves. Therefore, passing on the technique of gong sound appreciation to the people is also passing on the "soul" of this musical instrument, so that its echoes can blend with festival rituals, blend into sacred dances, and other traditional musical instruments... creating an eternal harmony of the great forest.

Source: https://baodanang.vn/trao-truyen-hon-chieng-3305715.html