The sustainable futures project, January trip

On my last trip to Hanoi, ten days around the (western) new year 2009-2010, I did interviews for the Sustainable futures project that i mentioned in the previous post. It was a rather improvised trip where I did some interviews with teachers at the national Academy of Music and people at the Thang Long Ca tru club. Together with Pham Thi Hue I also went to Ninh Binh, a provins a few hours south east of Hanoi, and interviewed Xam singer Ha Thi Cau. Xam is a kind of singing accompanied by the dan nhi, or dan bau, and percussion, it was in the past played by groups of beggars in the Hanoi area. Cau is probably the most famous Xam singer still alive in Vietnam. Having listened a lot to the CD the Vien Am Nhac has produced with her singing and playing I was very keen on meeting her. She is in her 80s but she claimed that she was unsure of exactly how old she was when we talked to her. She lives with her daughter ad son-in-law and she was rather tired when we met her. Hue did the interviewed and translated occasionally my additional questions. Her daughter was very concerned that we should feel welcome and made us dinner, unfortunately I was not feeling great so she seemed a bit worried that I mostly ate peanuts and rice (as did Cau, combined with rice wine). After dinner Cau agreed on playing a tune for us. She used her husbands (dead since many years) old dan nhi and spent a lot of time trying to get the sound right before she started. We recorded Thap an, a tune I know she has recorded before, It sounded good even though her voice was tired. When a tractor on the street started to make too much noise she stopped and put the nhi away. By the she had been singing thap an for 7 minutes and was a bit tired. When we was going to leave and get back to Hanoi, Cau's daughter brought us a live hen as a gift. We managed to get the hen back to Hanoi wrapped in a plastic bag and when I left for Sweden it was running around in front of Hue's house as her dad didn't want it and her daughter didn't want Hue to kill it and cook it.