TL;DR: The Central Highlands Gong Culture space spans Quảng Ngãi (before July 2025 it was Kon Tum), Gia Lai, Đắk Lắk, Lâm Đồng and Đắk Lắk, where more than a dozen indigenous ethnic groups use gongs as a means of communicating with deities. UNESCO recognized this heritage as a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity on November 25, 2005. For each ethnic group, the sound of the gong accompanies people from birth until they return to their ancestors, and is closely tied to the cycle of slash-and-burn farming. Central Highlands gongs are played in ensembles, with each person holding one gong and each gong producing one note, so a gong piece is only complete when the whole ensemble coordinates. The heritage faces risks of decline, staging for tourism, and a shortage of artisans who can tune gongs.
Where does the Cultural Space of the Central Highlands Gongs extend?
The Cultural Space of the Central Highlands Gongs is not the name of a single festival or a single musical instrument. It is an entire cultural ecosystem that includes the bronze gongs themselves, the gong pieces, the gong players, the festivals that use gongs, and the spaces where those festivals take place, from the long houses and communal houses (nhà rông) to the water wharves and the swidden fields. This heritage stretches across four provinces, Quảng Ngãi (before July 2025 including Kon Tum), Gia Lai, Đắk Lắk and Lâm Đồng (before July 2025 including Đắk Nông), and is tied to the life of around seventeen ethnic groups belonging to the two language families of Austroasiatic and Austronesian, among whom the most representative bearers are the Ê Đê, Gia Rai, Ba Na, Xơ Đăng, M'Nông, Cơ Ho and Rơ Măm peoples.
On 25 November 2005, UNESCO recognised the Cultural Space of the Central Highlands Gongs as a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity, second only to Huế royal court nhã nhạc in Vietnam's list of intangible heritage. By 2008, when UNESCO changed its recognition system, this heritage was transferred to the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.
Summary table of the milestones linking the Central Highlands gongs to community life, according to the article.
| Context of appearance | Ritual or event | Meaning for the community |
|---|---|---|
| The human life cycle | Ear-blowing ceremony | Recognises the child as an official member of the community |
| The human life cycle | Wedding, bracelet-giving ceremony | Reminds the young couple to uphold the traditions of their ancestors |
| The human life cycle | Grave abandonment ceremony, also called the pơ thi ceremony among the Gia Rai | Sends the soul of the deceased off to the world of the ancestors |
| Community life | Ceremony to celebrate a new communal house (nhà rông) | Tied to life in the communal house |
| Community life | Ceremony to worship the water wharf | Tied to the space of the water wharf |
| The swidden farming cycle | New rice ceremony, celebrating the new harvest | Thanks the rice god Yang Sri for granting a full harvest |
| The swidden farming cycle | Buffalo sacrifice, also called the buffalo eating ceremony | Thanks the spirits after a good harvest or a victory |
Are the gongs purely a musical instrument?
No. For the peoples of the Central Highlands, the gongs are at once a musical instrument, a sacred object, and a voice through which people communicate with the spirits. What makes the gongs different from an ordinary musical instrument lies in the spiritual beliefs of the Central Highlands peoples. According to their belief that all things have a soul, behind every gong there dwells a deity (Yang), and the older the gong, the more sacred the deity residing in it. Every family owns at least one set of gongs; the number and quality of the gongs reflect wealth, prestige and standing in the village, and they are also regarded as a talisman for the whole household. The sound of the gongs is considered a language through which people communicate with the spirits and the supernatural world, carrying the wishes of the community up to the higher powers.
As instruments, a distinction must be made between the cồng and the chiêng. The cồng is the one with a knob in the centre of its face, while the chiêng is the one with a flat face and no knob. The book Les symboles, les emblèmes et les accessoires du culte chez les Annamites by Gustave Dumoutier (1891) describes the chiêng as a golden bronze disc beaten into shape, with a hemispherical protrusion in the centre of its face to be struck with a cloth-wrapped wooden stick, and a thick rim on the outer edge, called the thanh chiêng, while the face of the disc is called the mặt chiêng and the protrusion in the centre is called the núm. Also according to Dumoutier, making gongs was once the specialised trade of a quarter in Hà Nội, whose products were exported to China, Laos and as far as Siam, and Hà Nội gongs were famous throughout the Far East.
The Central Highlands gongs are played as an ensemble, with each person holding one gong, and each gong taking on only one note within the whole. A gong piece therefore only takes shape when the whole ensemble coordinates smoothly together; no one plays the entire piece alone. The value of a set of gongs in the past was often reckoned in buffaloes and cows, sometimes in elephants, so owning a fine set of gongs was a sign of wealth and prestige in the village.
For this very reason, the gongs are present in almost every important ritual of a person's life and of the community, from the long-house system and the role of the village elder to life in the communal house, as well as marriage, funerals, the grave abandonment ceremony and the customary fines of village law.
How are the gongs tied to the human life cycle?
An Ê Đê or Gia Rai child has barely been born when they hear the sound of the gongs at the ear-blowing ceremony, the rite that recognises them as an official member of the community, carrying both the duties and the rights of everyone else. When they grow up and enter marriage, the sound of the gongs at the bracelet-giving ceremony rings out as a reminder that the young couple must uphold the traditions their ancestors left behind. The gongs also accompany the ceremony to celebrate a new communal house (nhà rông), the ceremony to worship the water wharf, the ceremony to close the rice store, and especially the grave abandonment ceremony (also called the pơ thi ceremony among the Gia Rai), the rite that sends the soul of the deceased away from its ties to the living to return fully to the world of the ancestors. During the grave abandonment ceremony, the sound of the gongs can ring out for many days and nights, blending with the xoang dance around the tomb house.
What do the gongs and the rhythm of the swidden season mean?
Besides the human life cycle, the gongs are also closely tied to the swidden farming cycle, which is the traditional livelihood of the Central Highlands peoples. The new rice ceremony (celebrating the new harvest) after each harvest is the occasion for the whole village to thank the rice god (Yang Sri) for granting a full harvest, and the gongs are an indispensable instrument in this ritual. In the past, some communities also held the buffalo sacrifice (also called the buffalo eating ceremony) to thank the spirits after a good harvest or a victory, with the urgent sound of gongs and drums as the backdrop for the sacrificial rite. Today the buffalo sacrifice is practised more sparingly because of animal welfare considerations, but the role of the gongs in spiritual and community life is still preserved.
What challenges does preserving the gongs in modern life face?
After being honoured by UNESCO, the Central Highlands gongs became a cultural and tourism highlight, contributing to the socio-economic development of the highland region. But this living heritage also faces the risk of fading away: many ancient sets of gongs have been sold outside the community, the younger generation is little inclined to learn to play the gongs, and the old gong pieces are gradually being lost as the elderly artisans pass away. As a result, many localities in Kon Tum, Gia Lai and Đắk Lắk have opened classes teaching the gongs to young people, bringing the gongs into community festival life and into schools, with the aim of keeping the sound of the gongs not only ringing on performance stages but continuing to be the living spiritual voice of the Central Highlands villages.
One deep-rooted reason why transmission is difficult is the body of artisans. Most artisans are already elderly and frail, and they have low incomes and difficult circumstances, so teaching the younger generation runs into many obstacles. Meanwhile the young have few opportunities to access traditional skills and are not very inclined toward them either. Cultural interchange, urbanisation and modern forms of entertainment further narrow the space for community cultural life, changing the environment in which the heritage is practised.
Another challenge is the risk of staging. When the gongs are brought onto the stage to serve tourism on a widespread scale, detached from their original ritual and spiritual context, the gong pieces lose their original ritual function. The traditional way of teaching is direct transmission from the old to the young, through daily life and through festival occasions, so when performance is separated from life, both the way of learning and the way of practising the craft are broken. Balancing the preservation of original values with sustainable tourism development is a hard problem, requiring the joint effort of authorities, researchers and, most importantly, the communities of the Central Highlands peoples themselves.
One particularly fragile point is the skill of tuning the gongs. Tuning is a separate task, unlike playing: the tuner must have a keen ear to reset the pitch of each gong in the ensemble, so that each one keeps its own note and the whole ensemble fits together. Because it demands an ear for pitch and experience, this is the stage most easily lost as the older generation of artisans passes away.
According to VOV4, Đắk Lắk province alone (before July 2025, that is, before the merger with Phú Yên) has 2,089 sets of gongs, 3,855 performing artisans and 393 gong tuners. The province built a plan to preserve and promote gong culture for the period 2022 to 2025 with a budget of more than 20 billion đồng, aiming for the goal that by 2025 every ethnic minority village in the area would have a gong team, and every district-level unit at that time would open classes teaching gong playing and gong tuning. That plan has now expired.
The specific measures carried out in Đắk Lắk include granting gongs and traditional costumes to villages, restoring the rituals and festivals tied to gong performance, conferring titles and honouring folk artisans, building model traditional cultural villages tied to community tourism development, and organising classes teaching the gongs, epic singing and storytelling, folk songs, folk dance and the making of ethnic musical instruments right inside the ethnic boarding schools. Tying preservation to community tourism is seen as a way to create livelihoods for artisans, and from there to raise the community's own awareness of safeguarding.
Besides the teaching classes in villages and in schools, exchange activities between ethnic groups are also being promoted. Regional gong culture festivals, such as the Central Highlands Gong Festival, are occasions for artisans of different peoples to meet, exchange and learn from one another, while also promoting the heritage to domestic and foreign visitors, helping to strengthen pride in the community's cultural identity.
