The majority Kinh or Việt population and many of Việt Nam's 53 ethnic minorities preserve a rich heritage of traditional performance, including many genres of great antiquity. Some traditional genres originally evolved as a means of celebrating significant social events such as puberty, marriage, birth and death, others developed as a means of maintaining harmony with the world of the spirits and the ancestors, while many emerged simply as a type of entertainment or a deeply individualistic form of personal expression.