Conserve | The Space of Gong Culture
There have been a handful of instances in my travels where while it was happening, even I was thinking, “What the cluck…I cannot wait to tell someone about this!” I think this will always remain one of my top three unbelievable stories. I hope that something more iconic happens, but this story has layers.
Highlights first; nobody has time to read anymore!
Spent the weekend with Montagnards of Central Highland, Vietnam
I learned about UNESCO’s list of Intangible Cultural Heritage
The last group of men from The Space of Gong Culture played for me
I met a centenarian, and he gave me a bunch of bananas
I crashed a Bahnar (ethnic minority group) wedding
This unexpected experience was a few years in the making.
I passed through Kon Tum while I was exploring the Central Highlands of Vietnam by motorbike. It was a nice city to be in after a while in the countryside. As I was researching where to stay/eat/explore, I came across a few interesting things about a cafe in town, a tour guide, and a hospitality training hotel. As mentioned, I was passing through, so I made some mental notes, and that was it.
A few months later, I ended up in Kon Tum again because I wanted to experience one of our other tour guides’ favourite legs of the Ho Chi Minh Highway. I made sure to stop by the cafe for my morning coffee before I headed out again. The man I was looking for was not there…a quick trip to the big city, apparently. So I got his contact information, started emailing him, and planned a proper time to dedicate a trip out.
It took me about a year to find myself back in Vietnam again. I booked my flight to the closest city, Pleiku, and a few nights at the hospitality training hotel.
It’s 27 Jan 2018. I know this only because Vietnam places second against Uzbekistan in the AFC. I am not a football fan, but there were parades of people everywhere. When I flew into Pleiku a couple of days later, I was again greeted by a parade of people. It turns out the head coach for the football team is from this area! Everyone was very excited. It was so hectic that I could not find my taxi driver for an hour. The excitement was tangible, and I think all that joy continued with every interaction I had that long weekend.
The day has finally come, and I meet Mr. A at his cafe. It turns out he is an artist. He works with metal and wood, making sculptures. The cafe looks and feels like it should be in a fairy tale, with faces on trees. We have a couple of coffees and some breakfast, and Mr. A tells me about his life, his relationship with the Montagnards, and so much more. We plan for a two-day, one-night trip into the mountains. And suddenly, he has to rush back for a wedding!
Of course, this was the third time I had been to Kon Tum, and I did not have my bike, so I piled on the back of Mr. A’s scooter. He always brings as much as he can for his Montagnard friends—blankets, donated clothes to stay warm, fish sauce, and packet noodles.
During the day, he explained to me about the community houses, the lifestyle of the Montagnards, and why they are also referred to as such. He also explained what each water buffalo skull represented and the importance of the shapes of the community homes, as well as where the shape of their homes originated. Everything has meaning.
It had been months since he had visited, so it was as much of a welcoming party for him as it was for me as a visitor. We sat and sipped rice wine with the village head. Then we sat and sipped wine with the local healer. Both interactions were hilarious in themselves. I was just endlessly amused, on the inside, by everything that was happening around me. As we went around, Mr. A was giving away things, and people were taking only what they needed.
We reach the top of the village, which is as far as the scooter can go, and walk over a small hill to the house we are staying at. The Montagnards are completely isolated, not only by choice but also financially. They are no more than 10km from Kon Tum, yet they are subsistence farmers who barter their crops and continue on with ways from time’s past. This was one of those moments when I thought, “This is what time traveling must feel like.”
The whole experience was nothing but also everything.
Photographs can never capture the incredible essence of this place. You just have to go. You have to sit in communion with them as Mr. A patiently translates the local dialect into English.
I don’t want to take away that special moment from you, but if you are lucky enough to meet Mr. A and the Montagnards he grew up with, you must remember to ask him to explain the importance of fire and how their language is fire-centric. In the Bahnar language, the word for family is the word for fire and house combined, which loosely means a house united by fire. It is poetic.
The night is filled with campfire stories, and the morning is filled with trekking around their mountain crops and freshwater ponds. As they say, “nhon sa to mir, sa to kong," meaning, “We eat the forest, we eat the mountain.”
We leave right after a late breakfast because Mr. A has to make an appearance at the wedding. This whole time, I thought he would drop me off at the cafe, but instead, we went directly to the Bahnar wedding. When we arrived, he handed me some money, introduced me to the bride and groom, and gestured for me to give the money to the bride. She was dressed like a princess and was so happy that I was there. For the next two hours, she brings a meter-tall vase of rice wine to me first before sharing it with everyone. It almost felt like the party was for me for a while. Mr. A had disappeared at this point, and I was getting drunk.
I also had a flight to catch around sunset, so as I looked around for an escape plan, Mr. A showed up out of nowhere. He seemed to be in a bit of a rush. We say thank you, we say goodbye, and I hop onto the back of the scooter once again; we went about 100 meters down the road, and he showed me a community house being built and briefly explained where they are in the process. It was like seeing the skeleton of a dinosaur. He brought me to see this because I was impressed by how tall these were and curious about the construction with natural materials.
And this is the best part coming up...
As I write this, I am reliving the travel fuzzies. We get to a traditional house, and in order to get inside, you have to climb a very tall wooden ladder. After all the rice wine, I am seeing doubles at this point. I do it without falling, and a small, very old man comes to talk to me. I didn’t understand a word he was saying, and he gestured something like “wait,” and so I did. He goes down the two-meter handcrafted wooden ladder with ease. While he is away, five other men start piling into the dimly lit house with their gongs and drums. And I am left feeling very confused. I sit, I observe, and I try not to vomit. I clearly did not look great because the very old man in the bucket hat came back with bananas for me. He was trying to sober me up.
He grabs the biggest drum, and everyone gets in a circle around some of the metal gongs placed very precisely on the floor. As they start playing, they start walking in a circle counter-clockwise. While I couldn't find Mr. A at the wedding, he was busy speaking to his friends and organizing them to practice in front of me.
They are playing a song dedicated to buffaloes, because they are very important for tilling the earth before they plant their crops, Mr. A is explaining to me that the old man with the bananas is over 100 years old. Officially the oldest person I have met. He explained that the next generation does not want to learn the gongs because there is no money in it. Just like healers are born with a gift, the man who tunes the gongs, one of the men performing in front of me, is the last person with this natural talent in this Space of Gong Culture.
My head is spinning from all the rice wine I drank out of courtesy and from getting entranced by the history, heritage, culture, and art literally being played in front of me. In my invincible rice wine-pickled brain, I thought, “I don’t know how I am going to do this, but I will figure out a way to bring my appreciation for this art form back to the next generation.”
As quickly as all that came together in front of me, I was told I was going to be late for my flight. I shook hands, said thank you with immense gratitude, and left. In less than three hours, I was back in Saigon, amongst 10 million people, hungover yet too wired to sleep, scrolling on my phone, and trying to figure out what the cluck just happened…
What. The. Cluck. Kon Tum and the Montagnards of the Central Highlands instilled in me that if Chickenfeet Travels can do one GREAT thing, how great would it be to inspire the next generation to conserve the art and Space of Gong Culture before this generation passes?
There is still time to make a difference before this is another piece of culture lost to the history books.
