The repertoire part - general thoughts

On my Ipod I got forty albums with various kinds of Vietnamese music. Fifteen of them contain “traditional music” of no specific style, the rest are theme albums with Ca hue, Ca tru, Xam and so on. In those fifteen albums there are eight recordings of the tune Luu Thuy, mostly together with the tune Kim Tien. If I would add some of the albums with music from Hue and Southern Vietnam, the number of Luu Thuy renditions will be twelve. The percentage would probably be the same. My first thought when I realized this was: don’t they have any other tunes? In Swedish traditional music you might hear the same tune performed by many different groups live, but on an album most try to be a bit more original. The same doesn’t seem to be true for Vietnamese folk music groups, at least not judging from my Ipod. When you look at the other tunes on the albums you realize that even though Luu Thuy sticks out of the crowd, the crowd is quite small. The same tunes keeps reappearing on the screen! I guess that this could be seen as an indication that the Vietnamese Folk music canon is not very extensive. Of course one could have objections on this unscientific way of looking at repertoire, I mean I have not listened to all the albums produced with Vietnamese traditional music! To be honest I have even avoided buying some albums that looked to “touristy” or “pop-musicy”. But the albums on my Ipod still gave me the idea to have a look at the repertoire and folk canon that seems to be very strong both in the Academy of music in Hanoi and among recording artists in Vietnam. When I write about repertoire in our essay I will focus on the repertoire of our Vietnamese ensemble in Malmö and compare our repertoire with what I can find on the repertoire in the Academy of Hanoi. I’ve done interviews with our main teachers and have also read what I have found about the subject. One of our teachers was kind enough to give me copies of a list with tunes that he expects his students to know. As this is a quite small essay and as I’m no expert on Vietnamese music or the Academy system and the cultural politics of Vietnam, I will only try to get an overview on the subject.

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The paper

My first assignment for the paper will be to write about the different theatre forms of Vietnam. In Hanoi I bought some books that describe them a little bit, and there's also a great deal of information on the internet. Garland, Grove and various articles will be my next step. I will probably focus on Chéo, Tuong and possibly the water puppet theatre, since these are the once I have seen for myself. However there might be changes to this plan down the road.

I'll be back soon to post something concerning the content of the paper, rather than these small posts about what's going on in general.
Good night.

At home

And so we are in Sweden again.

It feels very strange to be back. It's too cold and there're too many things other than Vietnamese music that demands my attention. Tomorrow we have a concert. SIDA and the two schools (National Academy of Music, Hanoi, and Academy of Music, Malmö) will have a meeting in Malmö, and we will give a performance. We are also going to talk a little about our views on the project. What we have been through. Maybe something will surface that contributes to the paper...

...the paper now need structure, a plan for the writing process... I need to call Esbjörn.

The last week

This is the last week in Hanoi. Helena left today (due to obligations in Sweden) and her departure reminded us that it is very little time left to do all the things we have planned to do. There are a few more interviews that I need to do, and I need to get one of the interviews translated. Today me and my teacher talked about microtonality and the way it is taught in the Academy and in the Chéo theatre. He also let me know how he feel about the notation of Chéo music... at least that is what I hope. Since I don't understand a word of Vietnamese, and he doesn't understand English, it is hard for me to tell what we really talked about. Tomorrow I will hopefully get a translation from another teacher.
I'm keeping my fingers crossed...

Learning Chéo from a master

My teacher, Diêu, is a performer at the Chéo theatre. His way of teaching is very different from the way of the Academy. For instance he doesn’t use notation. He occasionally takes a quick look in my Chéo book, but he only seems to check the lyrics. Another difference is that he is very inconsistent in his playing. I always record the whole song when I learn a new piece, and then we move on to learning it phrase by phrase. The full version is always a little bit different to the phrase by phrase-version. For example how he use the ornaments, in the full version they are always more fluent and it is hard to discern what is really going on in the left hand. Some melodic movements are completely different and sometimes he performs, with such ease and subtlety, a rhythmic variation that has me completely bewildered as to where the beat is until he, with equal subtlety moves out of the variation. He can play an elaborate scale movement one time and the next time limit the phrase to a mere skeletal framework. Over time this gives me a fairly clear image of the framework, lòng bán, of each song that we play.

In the phrase by phrase-version he is more set in what he teaches me. He only changes a few of the phrases from time to time while most of them remain the same. In a teaching situation (or maybe this is a learning situation) it is very tricky to remember the whole melody because of this. I mainly use the lesson to practice different ways of performing each phrase but when it comes to putting the piece together, I prefer to do it by my self, at home. Listening to the full version over and over again. When I come back for another lesson, my newly acquired version is rapidly changed and improvised upon. In this way I, once again, am able to discern the important pitches in each phrase. Although it is time consuming and demands a whole lot of work from my part, I think it is a very good way of learning this kind of traditional Vietnamese music, Chèo.

What I try to remember is that every phrase both is and isn’t…

Some teacher difficulties

I stayed at the hotel this morning to get some practice on my own. I´ve recorded Anh playing some tunes and now I need a to listen and try, without having somebody showing me all the time. It's also very nice not having to go to the conservatory every morning as I also want to think about our essay. The Sona is working out ok, its easier this year but still I wouldn't refer to the sounds I'm making as music. The last three or four lesson my teacher have played the same frase from a Tuong piece over and over again, and I'm trying to follow. In my ear it sounds more or less the same but he is not giving up! I would really like to have an explanation of what part I'm missing! Maybe I will ask Tra My to come and help to translate what he wants me to do. Another interesting thing with the lessons at the conservatory (or academy?) is that quit often there might be two or more other people in the room (these ar small rooms!), just hanging out or playing something completely different. In the beginning it felt a bit annoying but you get used to it.
The Sao is the real headache this trip (as the last one). As I've never played any transverse flutes before (just whistles and different reeds) I'm having real troubles with the basics of getting the right sounds out of the instruments. Trying to explain to my teacher that I want help with my embouchure seems like mountainous task. I tried last year with mr. Le Pho, his answer was "it will be ok". This felt reassuring of course, but as I only had three weeks I stressed the matter to get some more focused exercises. This seemed to annoy him a little and he answerd that the tecnique was indescribable: "What shall I do put a small camera in my mouth?". This year Tra My asked Tiên Vu'o'ng (Anh's teacher when he was at the academy) about exercises and according to him Anh now loads of them so Tra My promised that she will help me to talk to Anh about it. On the whole most of the trouble I've been having ends up with communication problems, somethings are very hard to explain without words. Showing a trill or a finger variation is not that hard but trying to explain the feeling you should have in your throat to hit the hi notes is more difficult if you dont speak the same language. (the picture shows Anh and one of his friends trying out a new Sao Meo, while I´m trying to play Sona)