Musician captures quintessence of Highlands

Entering the stilt house of artist Y Moan in Dha Prong village, in the Central Highlands province of Dac Lac, is like stepping into the past.
Y Moan is known nationally as a skilled singer and musician from the Tay Nguyen (Central Highlands). He has a beautiful and powerful voice, but few people know that he is also a big collector of Central Highlands antiques.
His house is filled to the brim with the ancient culture of the Central Highlands. There is a large collection of bows, arrows, bamboo baskets, gongs, drums, jars and kpan chairs (boat-shaped and about 10-20m in length), buffalo-skin ropes used for hunting elephants and buffalo-skin drums.
Visitors are welcomed to the house by the rhythms of ethnic musical instruments with Y Moan singing melodies to accompany them.
The antiques are proudly introduced by their enthusiastic owner between songs.
Staring at his set of bronze gongs originating from Laos made of copper and gold, he said with pride: "In the old days, this set would have cost two elephants or 50 cows. People had to spend months driving the cattle to Savannakheth in Laos to exchange them for the gongs."
He once bought a half-broken drum made from a tree-trunk with a diameter of 1.5m and explained that drum was the embodiment of the glorious history recorded in folk tales of the Central Highlands in which drums are described as having a sound loud enough to cross mountains.
"Anywhere I see ancient drums, I try to buy them", said the 54-year-old singer. "Sometimes, owners did not want to sell some items or overcharged, so I had to go there several times to bargain and persuade them to sell," Y Moan says.
"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 before were considered more sacred than gongs. If strange visitors to ethnic people’s houses beat the drums in the past, they might have been punished."
Today, villages in the Central Highlands have very few drums. They 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 as part of their production with the process sometimes taking a few years.
First a couple of buffaloes must be selected: the male buffalo has to be mature, while the female has to have given birth three times. Then a hardwood tree must be found in the forest with a trunk that two or three adults could link arms around. At least one pig has to be offered to the god of the forest before cutting down the tree; four weeks is then needed to turn a section of the tree into the frame of a drum. The two buffaloes then must be killed in the forest and their skins soaked in mud in the forest for one month before using them to cover both ends of the drum.
On the day the drum is carried home, the owner has 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 owners gave it to him, because they loved his singing voice. He then started bringing home a few items after every performance tour.
"Displaying antiques at home makes me happy," he says. "I want to introduce to my guests and friends to our forefathers’ lives in the past."
"When I was young, many older villagers took me around the tribe on elephants and told me stories about gongs and drums. All of them made a strong impression on me, so I nourished a dream of collecting and preserving antiques to keep the Tay Nguyen’s soul for the young generation," he said.