Dong festivals occur throughout each year, providing opportunities for young men and women to meet one another, and for friends and relatives to be reunited. Various activities are held such as singing contests, dances, music, plays, ox and bird fights and sometimes religious ceremonies.
Participating in festive activities are traditional steps for young people towards courtship and marriage. According to custom, several weeks before an important festival, village elders and their young men to several nearby villages to invite the unmarried girls to attend.
On the eve of the festival, the young men come to the village of the invited women with flutes and drums, and bring them back to gather in their village's drum tower. After a rich feast, the young men and women sit in parallel rows facing one another under the eyes of their elders and get to know one another by spontaneously singing to each other. Until dawn, traditional songs mingle with the playing of flutes and stringed instruments.
The next morning, dressed in their finest women and embroidered clothing, and adorned with handmade silver bangles, the women meet together in their own village drum tower to wait. From the other village, the young men deliberately walk back and forth three times playing flutes and drums before the women are “coaxed” into accompanying them to their village for more festivities. |
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