At 78 years of age, Mr. Ae Jek is master of six kinds of Central Highlands musical instruments. As for his wife, who is one year younger than him, she knows and can sing beautifully hundreds of Central Highlands folk songs.

The old man said music had a very special meaning to him and his wife, since it was music that first drew them together. "I went to work in the forest and heard her singing and my feet just wanted to walk closer to her.

“And when she heard my music, her soul also hovered around me, forgetting the tasks that were still waiting for her at home. That was why we had to get married, live and eat together,” said Ae Jek.

So since their marriage, he and his wife have kept on singing and playing Central Highlands music. “Throughout our home town in Krong Ana district, no one knows more songs than her, and none knows how to play more instruments than me,” he added, showing and introducing to reporters many different types of his region’s traditional musical instruments which he can play.

“Not only do I know how to use them, but I also know how to make them. In the whole district, only I still know these things now,” said Mr. Jek with pride. Though he often mentioned his home town in Krong Ana in Dak Lak province, for the past three years, he and his wife have been living in Buon Don district and working for the Don Village Eco-tourism Zone.

The head of the zone invited them to live there and share their music with tourists, many of whom are foreigners. "Here we are able to sing and play for audiences, have fun all day long as well as earn some pocket money. So I love living in this place a lot,” said the old man.

One of Mr. Jek’s regrets, however, is that the young don’t like to sing and play traditional music anymore. Asked why he and his wife didn’t teach others, he said, “They don’t like it. Our four children and twenty grandchildren said no when I asked them if they wanted me to teach them.”

And when asked whether he knew some way to make young people want to learn how to sing and play like him and his wife, the master of Central Highlands music thought for a moment and then answered, “This problem is beyond me.”