The end!

Today Olof handed our paper over to our instructor so now we're finaly finished! Eventually I think it will be possible to read it through the University of Lund's webpage, I will post the link when it is up. As a preview, here is the abstract:

Abstract
This paper is the result of several years of playing Vietnamese music. Its main part consists of two articles by Olof Göthlin and Esbjörn Wettermark. To make the articles more accessible for readers not accustomed to Vietnamese traditional music the paper begins with an overview on Vietnamese traditional music. It is based on the English language literature available. The literature is presented in the beginning of the paper. We describe some of the most common terms in Vietnamese music, like the concept of a framework melody and modality. The main part of the overview consists of short introductions to the genres, Dan ca, Ca tru, Ca Hue, Nhac Tai tu, court music, Tuong, Cheo, Cai luong, Hat chau van and neotraditional music.

Olof writes about the use of, and view on, notation among teachers at the Vietnam National Academy of Music. In the introduction and background chapters Olofs own experiences in learning Vietnamese music are presented along with information on Vietnamese music and western notation found in literature. For example issues on tonality, the elaboration of the framework “long ban” and the use of the pentatonic structure in Vietnamese music. The literature is also presented in the background chapter. The aim for this article is to explain the view on notation in Vietnam as many instructions in Olofs learning process has been contradictive to the notations he has been presented with. The research made consists of qualitative interviews with four teachers/performers active in the Hanoi area. The results show that there are similar views on notation among the four teachers/performers. In teaching and performance they all view the notation as a framework or a reminder of the main melody. The interviews cover different aspects of notation and the teachers’ views on music, students and learning are presented. In the discussion Olof argues that the history of learning Vietnamese music, the choice of western notation to describe it and teaching efforts made to convey the knowledge are all contributing reasons to the problems he has experienced. Apparently the voice and the text is important when learning the features of Vietnamese traditional music.

Esbjörn’s article is about repertoire at the Vietnam National Academy of Music, in the Malmö Academy of Music’s Vietnamese ensemble [Ojzaioj] and in traditional Vietnamese music outside the Academy-environment. His ambition is to show how the repertoire of [Ojzaioj] reflects the repertoire at the Academy in Hanoi and what this might tell us. The article starts with a presentation of the repertoire in traditional music outside the Academy-environment, at the Vietnam National Academy of Music and in the ensemble [Ojzaioj] at the Malmö Academy of Music. He bases the presentation on literature, a study program from the Vietnam National Academy of Music and interviews with the teachers who have trained the members of [Ojzaioj]. After comparing the repertoire he concludes that the way of looking at repertoire at the Academy in Hanoi differs from traditional music outside the Academy-environment. The focus is much broader in the Academy where students are expected to learn many different styles of traditional music as well as modern repertoire. At the Academy they also teach neotraditional music, a genre that is not played that much by non-Academy trained musicians. New-composed tunes and neotraditional music constitutes almost half of the study program at the Academy. [Ojzaioj] has not been taught any new-composed or neotraditional music during the years. In the interviews the teachers said that their ambition was that the members of [Ojzaioj] should learn the basics of Vietnamese music and the music they teach at the Vietnam National Academy of Music. Esbjörn says that the lack of the biggest part of the Academy curriculum in the repertoire of [Ojzaioj] probably is because the teachers do not consider that music traditional in the same way as the older styles. He argues that this is a political statement of a sort in the ongoing debate on traditional music in Vietnam.

Both articles have been possible thanks to the ongoing Sida (Swedish international development agency) project between the academies in Malmö and Hanoi.