Examinations

Yesterday I was invited by Pham Thi Hue to see her pi ba and dan day student Nguyen Thu Thuy's exam performance. It was an interesting performance. I saw four last year students perform all girls. However, the exams had been going on all week so most of the teachers looked rather tired. With the exception of Thuy the girls did more or less exclusively play "neotraditional music" (see earlier post). Every student has to play one Cheo, one Hue, and one Cai luong tune as well but it was quiet obvious that most did not spend that much time on learning these rather difficult styles. Instead they seemed to have focused on the fanzy, cuba-russian-chinese-ompaa-ompaa tunes that the academy is famous for. I feel strangely ambiguous towards this music. A part of me want to join some of my Vietnamese musician friends and just hate it, and another part thinks, "Hey, this is rather fun!". I was rather relived that a three-year old boy got up from his chair during one of the most crazy ompaa-ompaa pieces and just went for it! He danced his heart out in the aisle between the chairs stuffed with bored students, half a sleep teachers and serious looking examiners! That's the way to do it! But back to Thuy's performance. I was really impressed by her pi ba playing and it was obvious that she had spent considerable time practising Cheo, Hue and Cai luong. Especially the Hue, and the Cai luong tune (I think it was Vong Co she played) was beautiful! Knowing Hue's bias for Tai tu/Cai luong music, maybe her student's skill in that genre should not come as a surprise! On these three traditional tunes she used an older style pi ba; more drawn-out and with fewer frets than the Chinese inspired model more commonly used at the Academy. I also got the feeling that it had a lower tuning than the modern one. Anyway, after the three obligatory pieces she continued to play a piece of neotraditional music using the bigger "academy model" pi ba. This was still good even though as I implied earlier I would have preferred it if I was three years old (or drunk) and wanted to do a bit of crazy dancing. This was followed by a rather "contemporary" sounding piece together with a string quartet. I can't claim that it was the most inspiring piece I have heard, but still a nice break from out-of-tune bamboo flutes, electric bass and drum kit. The last piece was very interesting. As far as I could understand it was a rather organised improvisation, performed together with other members of the Thang long ca tru club, using sounds and licks from ca tru and other Vietnamese music but without conforming to that at all. If it reminded me of something it would be my some of my "free" improvisation classes when I studied at the academy of music in Malmö. In all it was a good 4 hours spent and it was interesting to get another glimpse of the Hanoi Academy's priorities for their last year students as well as hearing Thuy’s beautiful playing!

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.