Thoughts on Miranda Aranas book: Neotraditional Music in Vietnam

I remember reading the phrase Nhac dân tôc hien dai (roughly: neotraditional music) in The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music one year ago. As I can recall it didn’t say too much about it but concluded that it was a politically endorsed genre that had connections to The Hanoi Conservatory of Music. Since the beginning of this project I’ve thought about what we are really learning and the difference between some things we have learnt from our teachers and some of the acts we have seen by Vietnamese musicians in Sweden and Vietnam. Things like: what’s the deal with the Trung and strange czardas renditions? Playing happy apparently homemade tunes on the K’ny while making fun of the different sounds you can make with a piece of bamboo? And why were some teachers on the conservatory upset when one of our Vietnamese teachers in Sweden taught us the “do re mi” system of Court music (we didn’t hear about that until a few years after)? I was very impressed by mr Tezan’s (this is not how it’s spelled only how his name sounds) K’ny playing, but the whole thing was a bit unnerving. After I’ve read Miranda Aranas book I feel a lot more prepared to handle these matters. Even though a lot seems to have changed at the conservatory since 1994 the book pinpoints some things I’ve felt been hinted to us during our stays in Hanoi and from our teachers in Sweden. It would have been interesting if we knew about this book two or three years ago. Could we have had a deeper discussion about traditions (both in and outside the conservatory) with our teachers or would it just been loads of misunderstandings and people taking sides? Even though I wish we had read the book earlier it was probably good that we didn’t. We have had loads of misunderstandings already without having to dig our fingers into apparently very sensitive matters. I have a feeling that the friendship we have with our teachers at this point (which we might not have got if we had harassed them with questions about politics in traditional music) will give us the opportunity to discuss these matters anyway.