(VOVworld)- Visitors to the 2014 Hue Festival enjoyed a colourful festival with exciting music and a mix of cultures. The Hue festival this year featured 68 art troupes from around the world.

The 9 days of the festival are the most exciting days of the year in Hue. Art performances and cultural activities this year were held throughout the city, in the Imperial Citadel, on outdoor stages in numerous streets, and nearly rural areas. Vietnamese artists and 68 foreign art troupes including Bati Holic from Kyoto, Japan, Gugak from the Republic of Korea and Guadalajara from Mexico delighted the audience with beautiful traditional dances and folk songs of many nationalities. Cristian Andress is a dancer of the Los Angeles Art Troupe: "We have to thank the Vietnamese government in the festival to come and you know, performing here our culture and traditional dances. So you guys can see exactly what we do. Vietnamese people are very joyful. They showed us a lot of love so we tried to do the best, so they can see us. You’ve got a lot of people and dancers from South America: I’m from Chile, the guys you see over there are from Colombia. You’ve got more knowledge from others".

The Cheo art troupe from Phu Tho province brought to the festival the charming folk tunes of Xoan singing, which has been recognized by UNESCO as an intangible cultural heritage of humanity. Ngo Minh Toan is Director of the Troupe: “The festival was a rare chance for us to exchange with other unique cultures in the world as well as Hue culture. We have learned and discussed a lot with other artists. Each art troupe, each country has its own unique culture. We learned from other artists ways to preserve and promote the intangible cultural values of our Xoan singing”.

While folk music performances introduced audiences to the typical culture of each country and ethnic group, contemporary music performances raised the excitement level of the festival. Greta Kelly is a member of the Australian band Deep Blue: "For our tour to Vietnam, we worked on some Asian repertoires. We developed an arrangement of butterfly lovers and we also learnt a Vietnamese traditional song “Ly ngua o”. What I have done to learn a song was when I found a very old record from 1970 and then I slowed it down so I could hear all of the ornamentations. What I loved about Vietnamese traditional music is the ornamentation. I had to use the music program to slow it down and I’ve just sung the melody before I played it. So it’s really in my head before I tried to play it in my fingers".

In 2000, the Hue festival attracted about 30 art troupes from Vietnam and France. This year, there were more than 60. Romanian Ambassador to Vietnam Valeriu Arteni said the increase demonstrates Hue’s attractiveness and the success of Vietnam’s diversification and multi-lateralization policies: “The number of art troupes from foreign countries at the festival set a record. Artists from five continents participated in the festival. Many of them came from Latin America, and Europe proving the fine development of cultural relations between Vietnam and other countries. Vietnam is well-known for its unique and beautiful culture”.