Y Thim performs with one of his ancient gongs

Two minority artists from the Central Highlands are collecting antiques to preserve the essence of ethnic cultures.

The well-known singer and Meritorious Artist from the Central Highlands province of Dak Lak has built a new wooden house in Buon Ma Thuot Town’s Dha Prong Village.

The exhibits in this stilt house include precious drums, gongs, jars, baskets, benches, buffalo-skin ropes used for hunting elephants and other artifacts that he has collected over many years. And about each item, Y Moan can tell a story.

Pointing to a set of Lao gongs made of copper and gold, the 54-year-old singer says, “In the old days, it cost two elephants or 50 cows. People had to spend months driving the cattle to Savannakheth in Laos to exchange them for the gongs.”

At the back of his house is a collection of ancient drums.

“The ethnic people’s drums must be covered with a male buffalo’s skin on one end and a female’s skin on the other end so that the sounds will echo far thanks to the harmony between yin and yang,” Y Moan says. “Drums are considered more sacred than gongs. If strange visitors to ethnic people’s houses beat the drums, they may be punished.”

Today, villages in the Central Highlands have very few drums. Y Moan says drums are no longer regarded as a sacred object in many areas, so they are sold or thrown away.

Y Moan says buffalo-skin drums have mystical elements in their production. Preparations for making a drum sometimes took a few years, he says. People first chose a couple of buffaloes: the male buffalo had to be mature, while the female had to have given birth three times. Then, they went to a forest to choose a hardwood tree with a trunk that two or three adults could link arms around. They had to offer at least one pig to the Forest God to cut down the tree and needed four weeks to turn a section of the tree into the frame of a drum. They killed the two buffaloes in the forest and soaked their skins in the mud for one month before using them to cover both ends of the drum. On the day the drum was carried home, its owner had to offer some buffaloes and cows to sacred beings and hold a party for the villagers.

Y Moan began to collect antiques when he performed at a remote village. At one house, he saw a beautiful but unused buffalo-skin drum on the floor and asked to buy it. The house owner donated it to him because they loved his singing voice. He has since brought home a few items after every performance tour. He even spent a few months’ salary buying a set of buffalo-skin ropes for hunting elephants. “People did not want to sell some items or overcharged, so I had to go there several times to persuade them to sell,” Y Moan says.

“Displaying antiques at home makes me happy,” Y Moan says. “With this job, I want to introduce to my guests and friends our forefathers’ lives in the past.”

Like Y Moan, Y Thim Bja, a resident of Buon Ma Thuot Town’s Ea Bong Village, enjoys collecting antiques of ethnic people. In his early forties, Y Thim is very conversant with Central Highlands musical instruments after learning how to play them in his childhood, studying at an arts college and working in the field of culture and information in Cu M’gar District later. Before working for the provincial Cultural Center in 2005, Y Thim had already been the owner of an antiques collection.

Y Thim has more than 30 ancient drums at present. His stilt house is also a place for preserving gongs, jars, clay pots, copper pots, copper bracelets, silver bracelets, and other items. Among his collection of nearly 40 gong sets of most ethnic groups in the Central Highlands, the system of 24 renovated gongs of the Ja Rai people can be used to play modern songs.

“When I began to collect antiques, many people said I was crazy and my wife also complained,” Y Thim recalls. “One day, a guest [who visisted] our home praised the items and valued them at hundreds of millions of dong. My wife became cheerful then and has since shared my hobby.”

The couple spends more than half of their annual income from coffee harvests on buying antiques, according to Y Thim. They have even exchanged 200-300 kilos of coffee beans for a precious jar which cost three male buffaloes in the old days.

Asked why he spends money and energy on collecting antiques, Y Thim points at well-carved jars that are large enough for an adult to link arms around, saying, “These ancient jars are each said to be souls of dead people that stay and share the joys, sorrows and happiness with the living.

“Precious gongs, ancient drums, bracelets, necklaces, and kpan benches with hundreds of years in existence are the souvenirs from our ancestors. I want to keep them all. If they get lost someday, we won’t know what to use to prove the Central Highlands people’s cultural values.”

Reported by Tran Ngoc Quyen