Ta Lang and Gian Bi

The drum comes first, then feet on red earth. Some places in Da Nang begin with a building or a famous photograph. Tà Lang and Giàn Bí begin with a dance called Tâng tung da dá, which the Cơ Tu people have kept through more seasons in the fields than anyone could count.

The two villages lie in the Hải Vân and A Vương area, in the west of Da Nang. The forest is still thick there, and the streams still run clear. This is the land of the Cơ Tu, one of the oldest native communities of the southern Trường Sơn range.

Tâng tung da dá is what people mention most when they speak of Tà Lang and Giàn Bí. The name means, roughly, a dance offered to the sky and a dance of joy for the earth. It is not a show put on for outsiders. It is a living memory of the community. People dance it at festivals, at weddings, and on the days when the harvest is in and the whole village can gather.

Men and women dance in circles of their own, arms stretched wide like the wings of a bird, feet dipping to the beat of drums and gongs. The sound of the gongs rings against the mountain walls. The forest seems to go quiet to listen.

The heart of a Cơ Tu village is the gươl, the village's shared house. Its roof rises high, and its posts and beams are carved in the traditional way with figures of people and forest animals. The village talks over its great matters here. The gongs and the sacred objects are kept here too.

The road into Tà Lang and Giàn Bí winds beside streams that run down from the mountaintops. In the dry season the water is so clear that every stone on the bed shows. In the rainy season it pours harder and carries the smell of forest earth and wet leaves, a smell the city does not have.

Here the mountain is not only a backdrop, and the stream is not only a road. The trees are not only scenery. For the Cơ Tu, each of these has a name and an owner, and each has its own stories. The stories are tied to a particular clan, a particular season, a particular time when the whole village came home together from the forest.

In the ring of dancers, a gong sounds out across the Trường Sơn forest. Some memories need no museum to stay alive.