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Accompanied by Mr. K Vang, a knowledgeable K’ho guide, earlier this year I traveled to Lạc Dương, a small town north of Da Lat City, Vietnam that is home to the K’ho Lach indigenous community. Here, I met the community’s chieftain, Krajan Plin, who has dedicated his life to researching and documenting information about Cồng Chiêng. “Chiêng is a special form of ‘wealth’ that is incomparably precious to our people,” he says.

While there is a misconception that ‘Cồng’ and ‘Chiêng’ refer to two different types of gongs, “Cồng chiêng” is simply the Vietnamese transliteration for the word “Goong Cing” in the Lach language, which literally translates as “bronze instrument.” This said, there are two types of Chiêng—one is flat, while the other has a small rounded dome at the center—which the K’ho Lach people play by striking them with their fists, rather than with sticks as in other cultures. While most are forged from bronze, they can also be made with cast iron and lead alloy. Sometimes, you can even find gold or silver in the dome part of several precious Chiêng, which are considered a symbol of financial power. “In the past, people depicted their wealth by the number of Chiêng they had in their homes,” Mr. Plin adds. “The more Chiêng, the wealthier the person.”

Though indigenous communities such as the K’ho Lach value tradition and heritage, many aspects of their life have moved with the times: during my visit to Lạc Dương, I encountered many more tall brick houses, modern cars, and motorcycles than expected. However, I luckily discovered a traditional weathered wooden stilt house inhabited by Cil Mom Blui and her family. A mountain guide by profession, Blui possesses remarkable talents in playing the Chiêng. She also sings, and is a master of the art of traditional K’ho liquor distillation, ‘rượu cần’. “When I was young, a few elders asked me and some other children to stay and learn how to play the Chiêng for a village funeral,” she says as we gather around her crackling fireplace.

While Blui found playing the Chiêng challenging at first—”I ended up with a swollen palm after every session!” she says, chuckling—after a while she learned how to control it. It’s become a constant companion to Blui throughout her life: she’s entered competitions with it, used it to join a church choir, and played it when she wanted to express feelings of happiness or loneliness that she didn’t want to tell anyone else about. She still plays Chiêng to this day: it hangs above the fireplace and comes down regularly when she has friends over to dance and sing into the early hours of the morning. “In our daily lives, it’s not always easy to have six people joining in,” says Blui. “Usually, friends play two or three chiêng together. It still creates a beautiful piece. The Chiêng resounds, bringing joy and togetherness among us all.”