Music and color, spirituality and entertainment, all meant to sustain local and global traditions, marked Vietnam’s Hue Festival which was held recently.

Caterina Desiato, cultural attaché at the Italian Embassy in Hanoi and freelance journalist, who was one of the enthralled visitors to the festival, reports on the event which wrapped up last Sunday:

The festival this year, as in previous years, comprised an ‘in’ program made up of traditional ceremonies and the main international performances, and an ‘off’ program with free events around Hue town and its surroundings.

Festival Hue 2006

The schedule was in three parts, each three days long, characterized by both specific festivities and events repeated every three days.

The traditional ceremonies remained the main attractions with thousands of people turning up to get a feel of their spiritual atmosphere.

These celebrations keep the huge body of Hue royal art, knowledge, and spirituality alive, reproducing them in a new, contemporary format suitable for showcasing to foreign visitors.

The Royal Palace by Night, for instance, comprised games and delightful entertainment including art and poetry to gastronomy, typical of the royal nights. Tourists could feel, smell, and taste these pleasant aspects of the royal cultural heritage.

The Truyen Lo Ceremony and Le Te Giao were shown in a shortened format retaining some 70 percent of the original ceremonies, historian Professor Vinh Cao said, adding that the organizers [all historians] had tried to recreate the ceremony accurately.

However, it was quite hard for a foreign visitor to understand what was happening. Thankfully, Tran Duc Anh Son, director of the Hue Royal Museum of Fine Arts, was on hand to clarify. Some of the happenings could have been obscure even to the Vietnamese audience.

The off program included street music, installation art, handicrafts and local product fairs, poetry events, sports competitions and games in the town’s main streets and parks.

It attracted people from all cultural and social backgrounds and everyday the crowds enjoyed for free at least one of the performances previously shown for an entrance fee.

Among the most appreciated performances were the Mezcal Jazz Unit, which integrated western jazz and Vietnamese music, and a dance by Vietnamese artist Ea Sola, whose choreography evoked memories of war and the need for peace.

Artists from Tay Nguyen (central highland provinces including Dak Lak, Gia Lai and Kon Tum) of the Ede and Banar ethnic groups were also invited to perform.

Their gongs and leather drums, which have been recognized as a cultural heritage by UNESCO, were a sight for urban Vietnamese and foreign visitors.

Foreigners blow new life into traditional symbols

An artwork, "Two dragons playing with the lotus", floating on the Huong (or Perfume) River was the result of a