Every week, the Thanh Mien commune cultural house resonates with the familiar beats of drums and wooden clappers. Women who spend their year working the fields and veterans who have lived through war gather to perform Cheo melodies. Without large stages or bright lights, their love for this traditional art is quietly nurtured through the years.
Cheo in the eastern villages is also being sustained through fresh approaches on professional stages. Those efforts have helped bring Cheo closer to contemporary audiences so that its traditional values are not only preserved but also propagated and adapted to modern life. The Politburo’s Resolution No. 80 on cultural development calls for building culture on the foundation of inheriting and promoting the nation’s fine traditional values. That spirit is being realized simply in village communal houses and rural cultural centres, where Cheo drums still sound each evening, keeping the heritage alive in the community./.