Moi Festival

Moi Festival of Muong Phu Yen people The Muong people in Phu Yen have folk songs and traditional festivals, including the Moi Festival held in early spring, hoping to create an exciting atmosphere to enter a successful new production season and a bumper harvest. The Muong ethnic people mainly live in the area along the Da River in Bac Yen, Phu Yen, Moc Chau, and Van Ho districts. Phu Yen district has nearly 50 thousand Muong ethnic people living concentrated in Muong communes, riverside communes and some communes in Muong Tac fields. The Pig Festival has existed for a long time, but it is not held regularly so it is gradually fading away. In 2004 and 2017, Phu Yen district coordinated with the Provincial Culture and Cinema Center to organize the restoration of the Pig Festival in Huy Tan and Muong Thai communes, to gradually restore the nation's fine traditional culture, contributing to attracting tourists to Phu Yen. The Moi Festival includes: Ceremony and festival, held together. From early morning, Master Moi and his adopted children prepared the offering tray. At the Ceremony, Master Moi uses the traditional chants and songs of the Muong people to invite Moi's ancestors from heaven to earth; Then invite the paternal ancestors, maternal ancestors, land gods, river gods, mountain gods, along with the ancestors to enjoy the ceremony, incense and flowers, to bless the children and grandchildren, to be healthy, to have a prosperous business, and to have a prosperous village. After finishing worshiping To Moi, the adopted children brought offerings to offer thanks to Master Moi. After that, Mr. Mo continued to pray for his adopted children to be healthy, the family happy, and prosperous. At the end, Master Moi will report to the Moi ancestors that the villagers have finished enjoying the festival, and ask permission to use the betel dance to send the Moi ancestors back to heaven. During the festival, dances are shown, including: Xoe dance, scarf dance, betel dance, sword dance, cotton planting dance and weaving... These dances both show traditional practices and show agricultural rituals. The participants hold down bamboo pipes and tap each other, blowing the flute to create a bustling background music for the dances. While dancing, Teacher Moi walked around the adopted children and villagers; She used a scarf to tie around everyone's neck to invite them to dance with the maids and servants. The Muong dance of the Muong people is both flexible, rhythmic, strong and passionate. Besides the dances, games are played, such as: tug of war, volleyball, spinning, hopscotch, marbles, mandarin squares, rope skipping, bird's nest... Folk games take place excitedly and happily, attracting all ages to participate. Mr. Dinh Duc Dien, Vice Chairman of the People's Committee of Muong Thai commune, informed: In order to maintain and preserve the unique culture of the Moi Festival, Muong Thai commune has directed the management boards of the villages to regularly organize art teams to practice traditional dances of the Muong ethnic group. Combined with that, teaching and passing on to the younger generation, in order to preserve traditional dances. At the same time, consult the elders in the commune on the arrangement, organization and ceremonies performed when worshiping Moi. Currently, the number of elderly people in the commune who are still familiar with the Pig Festival is not many, so we will urgently collect their opinions, and on that basis, outline in the most detail the steps in the annual Pig Worshiping Ceremony. Although the Moi festival of the Muong ethnic group is not large in scale, it carries humanistic and community significance in cultural life. Restoring the Festival, people will be able to meet their needs for enjoying spiritual culture and healthy spiritual culture, contributing to preserving and promoting good cultural values, aiming to build and develop cultural tourism products that create pervasive power.