Highland Capital - Quang Binh Electronic Newspaper

(QBĐT) - Quang Binh province has two ethnic minorities: Bru-Van Kieu (including 4 ethnic groups: Van Kieu, Khua, Ma Coong, Tri) and Chut (including 5 ethnic groups: Sach, May, Ruc, Arem, Ma Lieng), with more than 19,000 people, accounting for about 2% of the province's population. The ethnic minorities in the province have a small population, divided into many ethnic groups, including ethnic groups with a population of only a few hundred people, such as: Arem, Ruc... living mainly in remote and border communes, where natural conditions and socio-economic conditions are extremely difficult. However, in the process of labor production and facing nature to survive, ethnic minorities have created and preserved for themselves many unique material and spiritual cultural values, including a unique folk art heritage imbued with the ethnic identity.

In addition, in the mountainous region of Quang Binh province, there are about 35,000 Nguon people, an ethnic group of the Vietnamese, who have long lived in close proximity to the Chut people. As a result of this long-standing cultural exchange, there are common, close, and similar elements rather than differences in folk literature between the Nguon community and the Chut people, so they are also considered here.

In the province's ethnic minority folk art treasure, the art of language occupies an important position, especially the genres of folk songs and folk songs that appear frequently in the spiritual life of the people; in addition, there are also proverbs, riddles and some other genres but the quantity is not significant. Quang Binh ethnic minority folk songs (including the lyrics in folk melodies) have quite unique content and art, often focusing on reflecting the main contents, such as: Love for the homeland, village, pride in the wealth and prosperity of the mountains and forests; love for labor that has brought a peaceful and joyful life; love between men and women with many levels of emotions.

“Go to sleep, my child/Let me go thresh rice and come home to work…”.

With rich content and lyrical qualities, Quang Binh ethnic minority folk songs are commonly used in many contexts: reading to each other, singing in response, making lyrics for folk songs and naturally attached to the production life, daily activities and emotions of the people.

For the Nguon people, besides folk songs praising their homeland and villages (First Thanh Lang, Bau La/Second Hung Ai, Third Minh Cam...) ; reflecting love between couples (You are rich, I am smart again/I am hungry and ragged like a weasel, telling me about the rice...) , there are also many other folk songs used in folk songs whose names alone show the diversity and richness in the material and emotional life of the people: Going hunting, My wife, I asked for a long time, Singing five or three stories to relieve boredom, The fish with its head and tail chopped off, The suffering of getting married together, Blaming the lover...

It is necessary to mention here the lyrics - essentially folk songs - in the Hat sac bua and Hat chuc tro melodies of the Nguon people. This is a popular singing style of the Nguon people used to wish each other good luck and fortune during the Lunar New Year. This melodies demonstrate the excellent ability of the artists to improvise lyrics, because depending on each singing session in each family, the performance content can be added or subtracted, the length is different, but does not escape the content of the greeting: Good harvest to eat for profit/To eat for profit and to play for a long time/Congratulations on your longevity and longevity/Le le la le/Congratulations on your longevity and longevity and longevity/Le le la le.

As for the Chut and Bru-Van Kieu people, the number of folk songs that exist independently as a whole unit of folk literature is not much. Most of them have been transformed into folk songs and lullabies, and to consider them, we cannot help but mention the folk melodies of Pa eo-Tơm ta lêng (Chut people); Oát, Prơdoạc, Roai, Adăng con (Bru-Van Kieu people), used when communicating in work, when going to the sim to confess love, at festivals, weddings or funerals, and even when lulling children to sweet, gentle lullabies...

Although the work is hard, the sun and rain are harsh, and material life is still difficult, but rarely do we find sad laments in the folk songs of Chut and Bru-Van Kieu. There, people often have profound metaphorical lyrics, lyrical dialogue between men and women:

- Nam: Go find the kỏm, sister!/Catch it and put it in the cang, sister/Take betel and chew it, sister/Like a bird in the Lao forest/Like a bird in the South/Like a bird in the lowlands, sister!/Lying at the top of this stream/Changing at the top of that stream…

- Female: Looking for a fish, my dear!/Catch it and put it in a ca dang, my dear/Take betel and chew it, my dear!/Waiting for each other/Waiting to meet each other/No matter how heavy the load, no matter how hot it is, I will go, my dear! (Pa eo-Tơm ta lêng, Chut ethnic group).

Or:

- Nam: Your body is smooth like the first white rice grains of the season, my dear!/Your skin is cool like the water in the headwaters, my dear!

- Female: I love you so much, honey! Your body is so well-proportioned and beautiful/I love you so much, honey! Your figure is so cute!/When I see you, I want to take out some rice from my tip to offer you/I want to take off the shirt I'm wearing to give to you! (Oat, Bru-Van Kieu folk song).

Family affection, love between father and child, mother and child is also deeply expressed in daily work and activities through simple, humane lyrics: Grandparents teach grandchildren, parents teach children to be good people: Work hard, don't be lazy/If you want a wife, a husband/Like the world, like the village/You must be as good as the village/Don't talk nonsense/Don't be jealous/But follow your brothers/Follow your relatives and neighbors (Father teaches his child - Chut ethnic lullaby).

Or: Oh, oh! The fox is sleeping, oh, oh!/The rhinoceros is dozing off/The elephant is roaring/The calf is crying, oh, oh!/Let me wear a heavy silver bracelet on my elbow, my daughter/Let me wear a heavy gold bracelet on my wrist, my daughter (Lullaby of the Bru-Van Kieu ethnic group).

Quang Binh ethnic minority folk songs as lyrics are also used a lot when clearing forests to make fields, going to the forest to find bees, making traps for wild birds and animals, going to streams to fish, catch crabs, scoop up shrimp or lying in a hut to guard the fields: Go to sleep, my child/So that your mother can go thresh rice and come home to make a living/So that your father can go shoot a bear and come home to make a living/Go to sleep, my child/So that your mother can go to work/Get sugar cane, get bananas/So that you can eat…

Quang Binh ethnic minority folk songs have rich content and unique artistic values with refined, richly figurative words and profound resonance created by generations of indigenous people, expressing simple but unique emotional levels of their people and thus have been respected and passed down by the people themselves.

It is also necessary to add that the genre of proverbs, a genre of reasoning, although rare, has also been present in the folk literature treasure of ethnic minorities in Quang Binh. These are intuitive observations to summarize life experiences in the face of natural and social phenomena: At dawn, mushrooms begin to sprout/The sun stands at noon, mushrooms spread their canopy; When carrying a gourd, one must look at the strap/When carrying a baby, one must look at the fabric that ties it/When weeding, one must look at the handle.

In the real life of the ethnic minorities in Quang Binh in the past, food and shelter mostly depended on natural products, depending on the natural context, on the basis of an economy that mainly exploited nature and the social organization of the community was still simple, accordingly, production experience was still limited and social activities were still rustic, and that was also a reality that limited the development of proverbs in the folk literature treasure here. Folk songs of the ethnic minorities in Quang Binh are an extremely unique and valuable spiritual product that needs to be continued to be collected, researched and promoted.

Tran Hung

Source: https://www.baoquangbinh.vn/van-hoa/202408/von-co-vung-cao-2220203/