Rough Guide to Vietnam - Jan Dodd [381]
The dan dastone lithophone is the world’s oldest instrument, consisting of six or more rocks struck with heavy wooden mallets. Several sets have been found originating from the one slate quarry in the central highlands where the stones sing like nowhere else. The oldest dan da is now in Paris, but an identical set exists in Ho Chi Minh City, where it still produces pure ringing tones.
Various kinds of drums (trong) are used, played with acrobatic use of the sticks in the air and on the sides. Some originated in China, while others were introduced from India via the Cham people, such as the double-headed “rice drum” (trong com), which was developed from the Indian mridangam; the name derives from thin patches of cooked rice paste stuck on each membrane.
Representing clay, four thimble-size teacups are held in the fingers and often played as percussion instruments for Hué chamber music. Representing metal, the sinh tien, coin clappers, are another invention unique to Vietnam, combining in one unit a rasping scraper, wooden clapper and a sistrum rattle made from old coins. Bronze gongs are occasionally found in minority music, but Vietnam is the only country in Southeast Asia where tuned gamelan-type gong-chimes are not used.
Air, wood and bamboo furnish a whole range of wind instruments, such as the many side- and end-blown flutes used for folk songs and to accompany poetry recitals; or the ken, a double-reed oboe common across Asia and played, appropriately, in funeral processions and other outdoor ceremonies. Five thin bones often dangle from the ken player’s mouthpiece to suggest the delicate fingers of a young woman, while disguising the hideous grin necessary to play the instrument. The song lang is a slit drum, played by the foot, used to count the measures in Tai Tu skilled chamber music, while the k’long put, consisting of racks of bamboo pipes, is the only percussion instrument you don’t actually touch but clap in front of. Another instrument from the same folk tradition is the t’rung, a type of xylophone made of ladders of tuned bamboo.
Music and theatre |
New folk
Turn on the TV during the Tet Lunar New Year festivities and you can’t miss the public face of Vietnamese traditional music: ethnic-costumed dancers, musicians and singers smilingly portraying the happy life of the worker. Fancy arrangements of well-known tunes from all over the country, including some token minorities’ music, are spiced up with fancy hats and bamboo pianos. This choreographed entertainment known as Modernized Folk Music (Nhac Dan Toc Cai Bien) has only been “traditional” since 1956, when the Hanoi Conservatory of Music was founded and the teaching of folk music was deliberately “improved”.
For the first time, music was learned from written Western notation (leading to the neglect of improvisational skills while opening the way for huge orchestras), and conductors were employed. Tunings of the traditional eight modes were tempered to accommodate Western-style harmonies, while bizarre new instruments were invented to play bass and to fill out chords in the enlarged bands. Schools, with the mandate of preserving traditional music through “inheritance development”, took over from the families and professional apprenticeships which had formerly been passed on via the oral tradition.
Not surprisingly, a new creature was born out of all this. Trained conservatoire graduates have spread throughout the