The instrumentarium of the Lạc Việt people of the 1st century BCE, progenitors of the Kinh majority, would have had much in common with that of today's ethnic minority communities who, since time immemorial, have crafted musical instruments with great ingenuity using all kinds of natural materials including stone, wood, gourd, bamboo, animal horn and reed.

Amongst a wide variety of ethnic minority stringed instruments, plucked gourd lutes such as the goong and the ta lư of the central highlands or the tính tảu, ta in and đỉnh dơng of north west Việt Nam are used either for the accompaniment of singing or as solo instruments in their own right, whilst bowed bamboo fiddles such as the cò ke (Mường) or the cửa (Tày) are more often used for ritual purposes, sometimes as part of a small orchestra. Of particular note is the bamboo fiddle known as the k'ni (central highlands), which is distinguished by a thread running from the instrument to the player's mouth, where subtle modulations of the sound can be effected.

Wind instruments are commonly used amongst almost all ethnic groups and range from vertical and transverse bamboo flutes to single and double reed wooden trumpets and buffalo horns. Distinctive to the wider region is a large mouth organ known as the khèn, made up of seven or sometimes eight pairs of bamboo tubes, fitted into a hardwood soundbox. Numerous different designs of khèn may be identified in Việt Nam, the best-known varieties being those of the Lào, Lừ, H'mông and Ê-đê.

Bamboo ideophones are particularly popular in the central highlands. They include a unique instrument generally known by the Xơ-đăng name klông pút, which is played by clapping the hands to push air into a row of bamboo tubes with a view to producing sounds of varying pitch. Both the klông pút and its distant cousin, the large bamboo xylophone known as the đàn t'rưng, became popular in Việt musical circles from an early date and have long been integrated into the Việt instrumentarium.

The ethnic minorities employ a wide variety of percussion instruments ranging from ancient stone lithophones, bronze drums, bronze gongs and wooden drums of every conceivable shape and size to bamboo clappers, chimes, bells and even pestles and mortars. Great ritual significance is attached to the use of bronze drums by the Mường, Khơ mú, Lô Lô and Pu Péo communities of the far north and to the use of bronze gongs by the Mường of north west Việt Nam and the majority of the central highland ethnicities.