Bombed flat by Western “peacekeepers”, then invaded by Western mass entertainment, the Vietnamese came within an ace of seeing their musical culture wiped out. Indeed, at one point they actively connived in that: Hue’s court musicians - standard-bearers for a tradition going back four centuries - were massacred in droves when that city was taken by the North Vietnamese, in the middle of what they still call the American War. But those musicians’ successors - many of them young musicologists devotedly reviving their heritage - are once more riding high, playing at festivals, and serenading tourists in sampans on the Perfume River.
Vietnam: Musiques de Hue (Inedit W260073) does this graceful tradition full justice, and reflects the power of those key instruments in the Vietnamese armoury, the dan bau and moon-guitar. No mystery about the latter, which looks just like a moon with two silk strings, but the dan bau is something else: a monochord with a gourd resonator, and a vertical sliver of buffalo horn which bends the notes and gives an uncanny imitation of the human voice - thus making it ideal for Vietnam’s music, which is predominantly vocal. On these tracks, voices and instruments interlace with irresistible charm.
Vietnam’s tradition is extraordinarily rich, yet its instruments could not be more low-tech. The trung - 15 bamboo tubes in the form of a hammock - was originally a mere bird-scarer; the “coin clappers” are simply two flat pieces of wood which are scraped by a third, while a bunch of old coins, tied to one end, produces a merry jingle.
And who would expect magic from something as basic as the phach? This is just two sticks - one cylindrical and solid, the other pointed and slit lengthwise - with which a female singer beats a flat wooden board on the floor as her accompaniment. But listen to the way this is used on Vietnam: Ca Tru (Inedit W260070), and you’ll be amazed. This ballad-form from Hanoi must be one of the most refined and expressive in the world. This is a family group - father, son, daughter, aunt - with a hotline back into the past. the songs the women sing, while delicately hammering the floor, are lullabys, love-songs and medieval poems.
