First meeting with the teachers

Yesterdays visit at the Musicology department was a bit strange. Hai Van couldn't come so she sent mr Le Pho instead, Le Pho has many qualities but English is not one of them. Nobody seemed to know why we were there and when I tried to explain that I wanted to listen to funeral music and other styles of music that uses the Ken they took me to a computer and showed me their website. I've used it several times before so I was not really impressed, I got the feeling that they thought that we were total beginners on Vietnamese music and therefore would be happy just seeing the webpage. As far as I knew they should have been told what we wanted to do, but no. After several phonecalls to Hai Van and loads of misunderstandings I finaly managed to shedule a meeting with the author of an article about funeral music, mr. Dang Hoanh Loan. I hope that by talking to him, through Hai Van, I will be able to learn a bit more about the music he describes in his article.
This morning we went to the Nha Hat Cheo, the cheo theatre, to meet with our new teachers. As I suspected I was going to play with Nguyen Ngoc Khanh, he was my teacher during my first visit to Hanoi. It was very nice seeing him again and even though we don't speak the same language I hope it will work out. At first he said that it was better for me to play folksongs as I wouldn't be able to play Tuong with anybody in Sweden. When I explained that my interest was more from a researcher perspective than musician and that I also was interested in funeral music he looked very surprised. That a western could be interested in learning about funeral music made him very suprised but pleased as he himself played had played that music a lot. Khanh is apparently know by everybody as the best player of the Sona and he seems very aware of that. He made it clear (as far as i understood it) that he expected me to treat him as the best and that I must show respect for his old masters by bringing an offering to his house before we started with the lessons. It turned out that he had an altar for his four old tuong masters and that he should tell them that he had a new student so that they could help me to learn. Hai Van explained this to me. Khanh have had another western student on the Sona, he told me, an oboist in the new york philharmonic orchestra. It might have been a while ago as he had some troubles remembering her name but he hought it was Anna. We didn't play so much this first time but he changed the bell of my Sona so that it would intonate better. He explained a bit about vibrato and copied two tunes that I could start with. The tunes were both to be played when the king where walking about in a play. I also asked him to write down the names of the different parts of the instrument as this might be good to know. This afternoon we will go to Bac Ninh and watch a Tuong and a Cheo play. Hopefully this will give inspiration for next weeks lesson!