Abstract
The exile of some millions of Vietnamese refugees after
the fall of Saigon in 1975 gave birth to a new type of music outside
of Vietnam. Traditional music has been in regression because of the
lack of interest among youngsters. Pop music, on the other hand, is
flourishing, especially in the United States, where there is a big
concentration of Vietnamese emigrants. Contemporary music in the
Western idiom is in its early stages. In Vietnam, pop music has come
back since around 1990, with perestroika. Traditional music has also
gained in popularity due to the efforts made by the Institute of
Musicology (Viện Âm nhạc) in Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam, and thanks
to a number of festivals organized in main cities.
Twenty-eight years have gone by since the fall of
Saigon. Twenty-five years during which many political, economical, and
artistic events have changed the face of the history of humanity in
general and that of Vietnamese history in particular. In terms of
music, it has only been outside of Vietnam, notably among members of
the exile community, that an exceptional development in quantity can
be observed. Thousands of new music and video cassettes of pop music,
as well as revivals of theater pieces, have been issued by twenty or
so producers in America. These producers, who are centered in
California (more precisely, in the area of Orange County nicknamed
“Little Saigon”) and in Europe (especially in Paris) have flooded the
market with cassettes reserved for Vietnamese refugees.
In the framework of this article, the author will offer
with some brief information on the musical activities in the
Vietnamese community since April 30, 1975, the date of the fall of
Saigon and the beginning of the major departure into exile of several
hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese, as well as some comments on
musical life in Vietnam since perestroika.
Four themes will be discussed:
1. The survival of traditional music (Nhạc cổ
truyền)
2. The development of new music (Tân nhạc)
3. The beginning of a contemporary western-style music
(Nhạc cận
đại
Tây
Phương)
4. Musical life in Vietnam since perestroika.
1. The Survival of Traditional Music (nhac co truyen)
Traditional music has long been treated as a poor
parent in relation to westernized music. Before April 1975, at the
National Conservatory of music in Saigon, classes of traditional
instruments and arts did not attract many students . Professors of
traditional music had an inferiority complex in relation to professors
of western music.
The Vietnamese refugees who now live abroad have been
generally too busy setting up their new lives to have the time to
appreciate the sound of the zither dàn tranh or to attend performances
of the revived theater form of hat cai lưong. Children who arrived
abroad when they were ten years of age are now 35 years old. They are
really quite indifferent towards Vietnamese culture. They hardly speak
their native language and prefer listening to Michael Jackson,
Madonna, Prince, Céline Dion and others, because for them it is the
music of their present world.
Performances of modernized theater hát cải lương,
concerts of traditional music are less and less numerous because of
lack of spectators. Parents do not encourage children to attend
Vietnamese concerts or theater performances , which are boring for
youngsters who understand Vietnamese less and less, and tickets are
expensive.
Based in Paris, only Trần
Quang Hải
and Bạch Yến have
presented Vietnamese traditional music in France and throughout the
world since 1966 at public concerts, school concerts, lectures and
lecture recitals at universities and museums, and at international
festivals of traditional music.
(1) They have given more than 2,700
concerts and have participated in 130 international music festivals in
60 countries. You can find their activities on three websites :
www.tranquanghai.net,
www.tranquanghai.org, and
tranquanghai.phapviet.com .
Among refugee Vietnamese artists, there are notably
three performers or ensembles: Phương
Oanh and her Phượng Ca group
(“The Phoenix Song”), Hội Nghệ
Sĩ
Tỵ
Nạn (Association of Refugee
Artists of Paris) and Quỳnh Hạnh, musician and ethnomusicologist.
Phương
Oanh, ex-teacher of zither at Hoa Sim school in
Saigon, arrived in France in 1976. She founded her Phượng
Ca ensemble with the intention of simultaneously creating a
traditional Vietnamese music school in Europe. She has been able
gather together about forty girls and young people who play the
16-stringed zither quite well. Her work has had a favorable echo among
the young Vietnamese because the goal of Phương
Oanh is to combine Vietnamese traditional music with
western harmony to create a kind of westernized music.
The Association of Refugee Artists of Paris was created
in that city in 1986 by Hữu Phước, a celebrated renovated theater
actor who died in 1998. It has gathered together a number of renowned
artists such as Kiều Lê Mai, Hà Mỹ
Liên, Phương Thanh, Minh
Đức,
Kim Chi, Minh Thanh,
and Hoàng Long. Hữu
Phước
attempted to bring new life to the theatrical arts of South Vietnam
and has received support from the Vietnamese community in France.
Quỳnh Hạnh arrived in France in the late 1980s. In
France she was a musician of the 16-stringed zither
đàn
tranh and the monochord
đàn
độc
huyền.
She studied musicology at the University of Paris (Sorbonne) and
currently she is preparing a Ph.D. thesis in musicology on the
Vietnamese monochord. She has taught Vietnamese music and has given
concerts in France and Europe.
In the United States, other artists have been
making efforts to preserve Vietnamese traditional music. The flutist
Nguyễn
Đình
Nghĩa and his children arrived in the United States in 1984 and
have lived since then in Virginia. They have given concerts at some
American universities. Nguyễn
Đình
Nghĩa,
known for his original interpretation of the musical piece “Phụng Vũ” (Dance of the Phoenix),
pursues his own research in recreating the suspended xylophone trưng
and the lithophone
đàn
đá
from stones found in the United States.
Bích Thuận, a famous renovated theater actress, arrived
in France in 1983 but since 1985 has spent her time between the United
States and France. She has not had success in gathering around her
talented artists in exile to form a theater troupe like that in Saigon
before the fall of South Vietnam in 1975. She participates from time
to time in artistic shows and gives some lessons of sung poetry to
Vietnamese music lovers.
Việt Hùng (deceased in 2001), with the actor Minh Chí
co-founder of the theater troupe Hoa Sen, arrived in the United States
in 1975 and has organized performances of modernized theater hát cải
lưong. Hùng Cường, one of the most famous actors of renovated theater
in Saigon, went to the United States in 1982, where he changed fields
to pop music. After brief success, he dubbed Chinese movies into
Vietnamese and toured around the world to perform for Vietnamese
communities. He died in 1998. Dũng Thanh Lâm, a famous actor in
Saigon, settled in America after a brief period of success in Paris.
Since then he has earned his living with theater. Since early 2000, he
has produced several CDs and videos of well-known plays of modernized
theater in California and has received growing support from the
Vietnamese public.
La Thoại Tân, much appreciated in Saigon for his acting
talent, has played the role of master of ceremonies for different
shows in America. He is a refined instrumentalist of traditional
Vietnamese music . He also lends his voice to dub some Chinese movies
in California. Kim Tuyền, a renowned modernized theater actress,
finally stopped performing on stage. She now sings at Vietnamese
cabarets and has come to be known as a pop singer for the past ten
years.
Other artists from Vietnam such as Hà Mỹ
Hạnh, Thiên
Trang, Bích Liểu have lead quiet artistic lives.
Lữ
Liên, father of famous artists like Bích Chiêu,
Khánh Hà, Tuấn Ngọc and the pop group The Up Tight, arrived in the
United States in May of 1975. He participated in shows in America and
in Europe. Now he is retired from artistic life and has begun a new
life as a songwriter. The actor Xuân Phát is no longer artistically
active.
Hương Lan, actor Hữu Phước’s daughter, is at the
present time one of the most popular actresses among Vietnamese
artists outside of Vietnam. She is the best actress of the modernized
theater because her voice is the harmonious mixture of the two famous
voices of theater,
Út Bạch Lan and Thanh Nga. Since her arrival in
France in 1978, her plans for the theater have not worked out. She
then moved to pop music and she has become known as the best pop
singer of Vietnamese modern music. She has sung in cabarets and at
shows organized for Vietnamese communities in Europe. In 1985 she left
France for the United States and became the most demanded artist among
the Vietnamese community. She has returned to Vietnam several times
since the past five years and performed with Vietnamese artists in
Vietnam for video productions .
Phong Nguyễn, ethnomusicologist and Vietnamese music
specialist, received a doctor’s title in musicology after his studies
in Paris. He went then to the United States and started as a music
researcher and teacher at Kent University (Ohio). He has written
articles on Vietnamese music in the Garland Dictionary of Music (1998)
and in New Grove’s Dictionary of Music (2001), and he has published
books and CDs on Vietnamese music. He created a World Center of
Traditional Music together with Terry Miller, a specialist of
Southeast Asian music and professor of music at Kent University.
Two “stars” of modernized theater, Phượng Mai and Thành
Được, began by living in Germany as refugees.
Phượng Mai, “queen of
Chinese style theater
Hồ
Quảng,” had difficulty earning a living, as
she looked for performances. She experienced a certain success while
singing in cabarets. She then emigrated to the United States to
restart her career in Vietnamese show business. In 1995 she went back
to Vietnam and collaborated with artists of the country to make video
productions on Chinese-style theater, of which she was considered the
best actress. After moving move to Germany in 1984, Thành
Được made
musical tours in Europe, Australia and the United States. In spite of
his reputation as an excellent theater actor, he could not obtain the
same results among the Vietnamese abroad . After ten years in France,
he left Europe for the United States, where he opened a restaurant in
San Jose, California, to earn his living, thus definitely leaving the
world of theater.
27 years from now, Vietnamese modernized theater will
probably have fallen into oblivion. Traditional music could probably
survive longer but to a lower level, because young Vietnamese have
turned toward western pop music or the new Vietnamese westernized
music.
2. The Development of New Music (Tân nhạc)
The departure of many artists from Vietnam in May of
1975 marked the beginning of the development of exile music. This
music, characterized by pop songs, can be divided into several themes:
1. Nostalgia for the country, nostalgia for Saigon
(1975–1977) with songs evoking lost memories, such as “Vĩnh Biệt
Saigon” (Farewell Saigon) by Nam Lộc (1976) and “Saigon niềm nhớ
không
tên” (Saigon, Nostalgia without Name) by Nguyễn
Đình
Toàn (1977).
2. Resistance and struggle for the reconquest of the
country (1978–1981) in songs composed by Phạm Duy (“Hát trên
đường
tạm
dung” / Songs on the Road of Exile, 1978), songs of struggle by Nguyệt
Ánh
(“Em nhớ
màu cờ”
/ I Remember the Colors of the Flag, 1981); “Dưới
cờ
phục
quốc”
/ Under the Flag of the Reconquest of the Country, 1981), and songs by
Việt
Dzũng
(“Lưu
Vong Quốc”
/ Melodies of the Exile, 1980; “Kinh tỵ
nạn”
/ Prayers of Refugees, 1981), etc.
3. Description of prisoners’ lives in Vietnam, found in
a compilation of 20 songs by Phạm Duy based on poems written by
Nguyễn
Chí
Thiên (“Ngục Ca” / Songs of Jail, 1981) and melodies by the
poet-musician Hà Thúc Sinh (“Tiếng Hát tủi nhục” / The Song of Shame,
1982), etc.
4. Rebirth of prewar songs (1982–1985), with thousands
of cassettes recording voices of male singers (Elvis Phương, Duy
Quang, Chế
Linh) and female singers (Khánh Ly, Lệ
Thu, Thanh Thúy,
Thanh Tuyền, Hương Lan, Julie Quang) well known to the Vietnamese;
these revive memories of the golden age of Saigon.
5. Birth of the Hưng Ca movement (since 1985) gathered
around ten young composers, including Hà Thúc Sinh,
Nguyễn Hữu Nghĩa,
Nguyệt
Ánh, Việt Dzũng, Phan Ni Tấn, and Khúc Lan. They have composed
new songs on different themes: struggle, resistance, and love, and
this movement works to collect and preserve some new songs.
6. Development of “new wave” music and of Chinese
serials music (since 1986), with about one hundred cassettes on these
kinds of music (“top hit” western songs and music of Hong Kong and
Taiwan movies with Vietnamese lyrics).
7. Diffusion of songs composed in Vietnam among
Vietnamese communities overseas (since 1997). This new Vietnamese pop
music has been developed in Vietnam, and many of its artists have
become well known abroad. The overseas Vietnamese are interested in
the newly composed songs and the young artists of Vietnam because they
like to listen to another musical source and to discover new artistic
faces. Vietnamese refugees are allowed to go back to Vietnam on
vacation, where they discover new songs and new artists. This contact
permits the export of music to foreign countries where the Vietnamese
diaspora now lives.
Among exiled Vietnamese composers, Phạm Duy remains the
best-known composer. His songs written before 1975 represent 90% of
new cassettes and CDs produced abroad. All singers have had at least
one song written by Phạm Duy in their repertoire. His newer songs,
written since 1978 on the situation of exile and on life deprived of
freedom in Vietnam, have received a good response. Since 1985 he has
composed less but rather has written Vietnamese lyrics for western pop
songs. In the year 2000, he was allowed to return to Vietnam for one
month to see his native country for the first time after 25 years of
exile.
Hoàng Thi Thơ
(deceased recently) composes less and
directs a television program recently intended to Vietnamese in
California.
Lam Phương, a famous South Vietnamese composer, arrived
in the United States in 1975, moved to Paris in 1980, then returned to
the United States in 1995. He has composed new songs regularly on
Saigon with such themes as nostalgia (1975–80) and love (since 1981).
A few composers like Từ
Công Phụng, Vũ
Thành An, Linh
Phương, Châu
Đình An, Lê Dinh have continued to write new songs. Other
renowned Vietnamese musicians like Văn Phụng (deceased in 1999) Tô
Huyền Vân, Ngọc
Bích (deceased in 2001) , Anh Việt, Huỳnh Anh, Song
Ngọc,
Trần Văn Trạch (deceased in 1994), Xuân Lôi, Xuân Tiến, Trịnh
Hưng, Phạm Mạnh Cưong, Nghiêm Phú
Phi, and Lê Trọng
Nguyễn have ended
their careers as composers, for all intents and purposes.
On the other hand, a new generation of young composers
has been born abroad. In the United States, Nguyêt Anh (known only
since 1980), Việt Dzũng, Châu
Đình
An, Phan Kiên, Hùynh Công
Ánh, and
Khúc Lan all belong to the Hưng Ca movement. They have written songs
on themes of struggle and resistance: Duy Quang on problems of exile;
Lê Uyên Phương (died in 2000) on boat people; Hà Thúc
Sinh on
penitentiary conditions in Vietnam; and
Đức Huy on love. Trịnh Nam Sơn
has written many songs in Vietnamese and in English. Other young
composers include: Nguyễn Hữu Nghĩa, Phan Ni Tấn, Trọng Nghĩa in
Canada, Hàn Lê Nhân, Phan Văn Hưng (now in Australia), Lê Khắc Thanh
Hoài, Ngô Minh Khánh, Bảo Trâm (now in Canada), Trang Thanh Trúc (in
France), Nguyễn Quyết Thắng (in the Netherlands), Hoàng Ngọc Tuấn,
Phạm Quang Ngọc, Cung
Đàn
Nguyễn Sỹ
Nam (Australia), and Võ
Tá
Hân
(Singapore). Together, they have all written thousands of new songs on
present problems, on their aspirations, on the resistance.
Poet-writers such as Hà Thúc Sinh (United States) and Duyên Anh
(France, died in 1998) began to compose songs using their own poems.
Many musicians have continued to work thanks to
official receptions, tours, and recordings on cassettes (until 1988),
then on CDs (since 1990) and laser discs (for karaoke since 1995) and
DVDs (since 1999). Of special mention are: Lê Văn Thiện, Trung Nghĩa,
Hô Xuân Mai, Nghiêm Phú
Phi (arrived in the United States in 1984),
Đan Thọ, Ngọc Chánh, Lê Văn Khoa, Tùng Giang, Thu Hồ
(died in 2000),
Phạm Vinh, Vô Thường in the United States, Võ
Đức
Tuyết
(died in 1992), Xuân Vĩnh,
Trần
Vĩnh, Ngô
Minh Khánh,
Văn
Tấn
Sĩ,
and Văn
Tấn
Phát
in France.
(2)
Pop groups known in Saigon, such as CBC, Dreamers
(children of the composer Phạm Duy), Up Tight (children of the
musician Lữ
Liên), Crazy Dogs (children of the actor Việt Hùng),
Family Love in the United States, and Blue Jet in France continued to
play abroad until 1990. New pop groups have been formed by young
musicians to answer the needs of cabarets and dances held for
Vietnamese in the United States, France, Canada, and Australia.
Among singers known in Vietnam, Khánh Ly remains a
Vietnamese figure of pop songs among the Vietnamese community abroad
in spite of less publications in CDs, cassettes, and videos since
1995.She has appeared on all stages in countries where live the exiled
Vietnamese. Lệ
Thu, Thanh Thúy, Thanh Tuyền, Hương Lan, Julie Quang
(the last is now called simply Julie), Khánh Hà are among renowned
singers until 1988.
Ái Vân, Họa Mi are popular among Vietnamese
communities and the young talents such as Như
Quỳnh, Thanh Hà, Dalena,
Linda Trang
Đài,
Mạnh
Đình
are at the present time the most popular singers.
Many cabarets and nightclubs bear names recalling old
Saigon such as “Ritz,” “Saigon Cabaret,” “Tự
Do,” “Queen Bee,” and the
“Majestic” in the United States, or “Đêm Màu Hồng” and “Las Vegas” in
France. All these dancing places attract exiled Vietnamese who look
for one moment of distraction to forget difficulties of life through
steps of dance. Orchestras, therefore, only play some old and known
songs. Few new compositions are included in the repertoire of cabaret
singers. Dances like slow, tango, cha-cha-cha, pasodoble, rock, bolero
ARE the most favorite ones.
Several productions houses (Asia, Người
Đẹp Bình
Dương,
Làng
Văn,
Diễm
Xưa,
Hải
Âu,
Giáng
Ngọc,
Tú
Quỳnh,
Mai Ngọc
Khanh, Thế
Giới
Nghệ
Sĩ,
etc…)have appeared in the United States and publish a great number of
cassettes and CDs. In Paris there exist three big houses of
productions (Thúy
Nga Productions are the more known and most productive). The video
movies on Vietnamese songs have obtained some success since 1990.
Big shows have progressed since 1986, thanks to shows
organized to collect money to help “boat people” and to help
Vietnamese in distress in Vietnam, etc.
Since 1990, a tremendous development of CD productions
on Vietnamese popsongs from composers living in Vietnam with new
Vietnamese popstars like Thanh Lam, Phương Thanh, Lâm Trường, Quang
Linh, etc… has invaded the Vietnamese discographic market overseas .
3. Beginnings of Western Contemporary Classical Music
(Nhạc cận
đại
Tây
Phương)
In addition to the few Vietnamese composers of
contemporary music living already for a long time in France such as
Nguyễn Văn Tường (died in 1996),
Nguyễn Thiện
Đạo , Tôn Thất Tiết (
composer of music for 3 films “Odeur de la papaye verte”, “Cyclo”, “A
la verticale de l’été” directed by Trần Anh Hùng), Trương Tăng (died
in 1989), Trần Quang Hải, and Cung Tiến in the United States, some
young Vietnamese composers have also emerged. In Australia, the
guitarist Hoàng Ngọc Tuấn, gold medal winner of the 1978 music
festival in Vietnam and author of more than 500 new songs, left
Vietnam in 1982 by the sea and received a research grant to prepare
his Ph.D. dissertation on Vietnamese folk songs. He wrote some modern
arrangements for traditional songs in a new style. Nguyễn Mạnh Cường
won a composition prize at the Asia Pacific Festival and Composers
Conference in December, 1984, in New Zealand on the basis of his
composition “Phụng Vũ” (The Dance of Phoenix). Since 1985, he has
continued to compose electronic music in Sydney (Australia). Lê Tuấn
Hùng obtained his Ph.D. degree in Ethnomusicology at Monash University
in Melbourne and has composed new music mixing Vietnamese musical
instruments and Western contemporary compositions. He has published 4
CD since 1992. Phan Quang Phục earned a doctorate of music at the
University of Michigan and has taught composition at Indiana
University (Illinois, USA). He is considered to be one of the six most
talented young composers in the United States and won the Prize of
Rome in 1998.
Among interpreters of western classical music, the
guitarist Trịnh Bách is the only one who has reached an international
level of performance. Having arrived in New York in 1975 at the age of
13, he is now considered one of the best guitarists in the world.
Several excellent young Vietnamese musicians have pursued their
studies at conservatories of music in Sydney, Paris and the United
States.In 2001, Văn Hùng Cường, a Vietnamese pianist, won the world
piano competition organized by the American Music Scholarship
Association in New York (USA).
4. Musical Life in Vietnam Since Perestroika
Since perestroika policies began there, many foreign
tourists have been visiting Vietnam, instigating a new dimension to
the musical life of that country. Many hotels and restaurants for
tourists hire musicians of traditional music to entertain their new
customers. Spectacles of traditional music offer to tourists some
aspects of the musical culture of the country. Instead of presenting
the authentic music, though, musicians play westernized folk music to
please European tastes. Because of the economical necessity,
traditional artists have done this for money and have neglected
aspects of art and tradition.
Many groups of artists like Tre Xanh, Phụ
Đổng have
been sent abroad to participate in festivals or to present concerts to
the exiled Vietnamese. Inside of the country, though, the emphasis is
on pop music, as young singers turn toward the west. They dress like
European pop singers on stage, imitate them and sing fashionable
foreign songs (Western, Korean, Japanese, Taiwanese). Since 1995, many
singers namely Thanh Lam, Mỹ
Linh, Hồng Nhung, Hồng Hạnh,
Ánh Tuyết,
Thanh Phương, Cẩm Vân, Lâm Trường,
Đan Trường,
Quang
Linh, etc… have
become famous inside and outside of the country. They can earn up to
20,000 US dollars per month with shows and recordings .
The rebirth of modernized theater (Hát Cải Lương) since
1990 in Ho Chi Minh City and the southern part of Vietnam
has enabled
young artists like Ngọc Huyền, Tài Linh, Vũ
Linh, Kim Tử
Long, Ngọc
Giàu, Bạch Tuyết, Lệ
Thủy, Minh Phụng to earn more money and have a
better life. A new kind of comic theater (Tâu Hài) appeared at the
beginning of the 90’s and has become popular with productions of video
cassettes and DVD. Some actors like Bảo Quốc, Minh Nhí, Thành Lộc, Lê
Vũ
Cầu, Hữu Châu, etc..; and actresses like Hồng Nga, Hồng Vân, Ngọc
Giàu are well known in Vietnam and also among the Vietnamese abroad .
In spite of this disappointing aspect, some excellent
festivals of traditional music take place, namely the Lullaby
Festival, modernized Theater Festival, Theater Song contest, the
Traditional Theater Festival, etc.
Composers for film music have been more and more after
the unification of the country since 1976. Other composers like Trọng
Bằng,
Đàm
Linh, Hoàng
Vân,
Đặng
Hữu
Phúc,
Trọng
Đài
have contributed to film music in Vietnam. Contemporary music with
concertos, symphonies has been developed in Vietnam with some famous
composers like
Đổ
Hồng
Quan, Nguyễn
Thị
Nhung, Hoàng
Dương,
Hoàng
Cường,
Nguyễn
Phúc
Linh, Vũ
Nhật
Tân
.
Compositions for orchestra with traditional musical
instruments (16 stringed zither, monochord, moon shaped lute, 2
stringed fiddle, bamboo transverse flute) and Western orchestra occupy
an important place in musical creations in Vietnam nowadays .
In Hanoi over the past 30 years, the Institute of
Musicology has carried out thousands of field work projects on the
tribal music of 53 minorities. In addition to the collection stored in
archives from 1956 to 1995, 34 field work projects have been carried
out since 1996 throughout the country, from the mountainous regions in
the north to the highlands in the central region and some provinces in
the south. Stored in the Sound Archives of the Institute of Musicology
are 8,850 pieces of instrumental music and nearly 18,000 folksongs
performed by more or less 2,000 performers. Since 1995, with revisions
in working methods, open and dynamic mechanisms based on the current
situation have abolished the passive role of scientific research. The
Institute of Musicology now has qualified collaborators in the entire
country to carry out projects from the grassroots to the ministry
level and up to the national level.
In January of 1999, this Institute of Musicology opened
a showroom of 130 Vietnamese musical instruments from 54 ethnic groups
belonging to four categories of classification: chordophones,
idiophones, aerophones, and membranophones. Each instrument in the
showroom is introduced in printed descriptions and audio and visual
recordings. Of particular note, the showroom also displays many
ancient musical instruments such as the lithophone, bronze drum, big
drum with elephant skin of the Ede ethnic group, sets of gongs, etc.
In addition to providing visual education, the displayed objects and
musical instruments are also demonstrated in a lively way.
Thousands of technology products in the form of audio
CD, video CD, and videotapes featuring performances on folk music have
been released.In addition, the Institute of Musicology has held
symposiums and seminars on diverse and practical themes such as the
Vietnamese lithophone, gongs of the central highlands of Vietnam, etc.
In 1998, the Institute of Musicology held a scientific meeting on
“Reviewing a process of training, preserving and promoting Vietnamese
traditional music.” More than 30 papers of a high scientific quality
were presented. The research department of the Institute of Musicology
is well equipped with modern apparatus that can help to restore and
preserve traditional music and folk songs on compact discs for the
longer and better conservation of sound documents. Thanks to these
demonstrations, many scientific books on music and traditional songs
have been published. This Institute of Musicology has many young
researchers like Hinh Phước Long (Cham music), Dương
Bích Hà
(traditional music from Central Vietnam), Kiều Tấn (traditional music
from South Vietnam), Võ
Thanh Tùng (Vietnamese musical instruments
with a publication of a CD Rom and an important book on that subject),
Nông Thị
Nhình (folk music of the Tày, Nùng, Dao tribes from North
Vietnam), Kpa Ylang (Bahnar music from the Highlands) Romah Del (Jarai
music from the Highlands)
In Vietnam, the research on traditional music has been
developed rapidly . Many senior reasearchers have contributed to
enrich this field with hundreds of publications (books, CD, films).
Prof. Nguyễn Hữu Ba (deceased) Lê
Thương (deceased), Lưu Hữu Phước
(deceased in 1989), Đắc Nhân, Lê
Huy, Huy Trần, Tú
Ngọc (deceased)
Đổ
Minh, Vũ
Nhật
Thăng,
Đặng
Hoành
Loan,
Thúy
Loan, Tô
Vũ,
Lữ
Nhất
Vũ,
etc… are among the best known in Vietnam .
A center of research on the preservation of court music
was created in Huê in 1996 thanks to the help of Japan and has been
under Prof. Trần Văn Khê’s supervision .
For the last 7 years (since 1995), many artists of folk
theaters and pop singers living in Vietnam have performed abroad at
international music festivals or in America, Asia, Australia, and
Europe where Vietnamese refugees have settled in . Since 1999, a great
number of Vietnamese Oversea artists like Hương Lan,
Phượng Mai, Elvis
Phương, Hoài Linh, Dalena, etc… have been back to Vietnam many times
to perform with other artists in Vietnam. This musical exchange has
contributed to facilitate the relationship between Vietnamese artists
outside/inside .
This summary gives a general view on Vietnamese musical
life abroad and a short summary of some aspects of musical activities
inside the country. Music continues to evolve, but is it towards
enrichment or poverty? The answer is not yet known.
Notes
(1)
Performances for young people have included:
Rikskonsertene in Norway, Jeunesses Musicales de France in France,
Jeunesses Musicales de Belgique in Belgium, and the Jeunesses
Musicales de Suisse in Switzerland. Altogether, Trần and Bạch have
participated in more than one hundred international music festivals in
50 countries.
(2)
Other musicians have changed professions since
leaving Vietnam, such as Trần Anh Tuấn (formerly professor of
mandolin
at the National Conservatory of Music in Saigon , now a piano tuner in
Paris), Trần Vĩnh (formerly a saxophonist, now retired and living
outside of Paris ), and Văn Phụng (earlier a composer who was employed
at an American airlines and who died in 1999).