Video 9. At the end of our sessions at VICAS, we made stimulated recall interviews with the trio, looking back at recordings of solo and trio recordings of Vọng Cổ, made in August and December 2018. While many important topics were covered across those interviews, in the present video we find a series of clips in which Tuấn expresses that so far, he is not pleased with his solo playing. He first identifies some of the particular challenges found in playing the historical form of Vọng Cổ nhịp 8, but moves on to more general reflections on how to deepen his solo playing.
Abstract
The book chapter discusses how low-level processes of cultural diplomacy may be studied through intercultural collaboration. Or rather, it seeks to understand the more long-term processes of intercultural collaboration that ultimately comprise transculturation and how these may inform our understanding of cultural diplomacy. Building on stimulated recall analysis of a recent intercultural project—involving a group of master performers of Vọng Cổ, and the Vietnamese/Swedish group The Six Tones—the individual voice of each participating artist contributes to a discussion of the nature of such intercultural diplomacy between different musical cultures. The project studied the emergence of a piece called Vọng Cổ in southern Vietnam, seeking to understand the impact of the hybrid context in which the piece was created and altered through time. Vọng Cổ is a central piece of music in traditional music of the south of Vietnam. It developed in the 1920’s, through encounters between Đờn Ca Tài Tử—a form of chamber music in the south of Vietnam—and western popular music, as a result of the colonisation. Vọng Cổ spread quickly in the south of Vietnam, across different social groups in the 19th Century. The 1900 Paris exposition became a radical turning point, introducing a novel element of cultural diplomacy, instigated by the French colonial rule. Through a further study of processes of transculturation, the chapter proposes that through the history of Vọng Cổ a dynamic and syncretic Vietnamese identity is produced, out of contemplations about the performance of gender and identity. Finally, the chapter presents examples of how intercultural collaboration in the present day can produce similar instances of material and embodied transculturation.
Media Files
This media repository contains video files drawn from documentation of artistic collaboration carried out in the south of Vietnam 2018-19, as part of the Musical Transformations research project. All working sessions were documented on video and audio and subject to joint analysis by all participating artists through video stimulated recall. The selected videos are reflective of that analysis, and the book chapter discusses their content, but also addresses briefly the aims of developing such a method for the ethnomusicological study of musical change, as well as of intercultural collaboration and processes of transculturation
The videos were recorded in Sài Gòn in several periods in 2018 and 2019, and in Long Xuyên on August 3 and 4, 2018. Almost every session in Sài Gòn was carried out in a recording studio, working with the same three master performers of Vọng Cổ towards the final recording sessions, aimed at the production of a double CD, carried out in October 2019 in the Viết Tân studio. In October 2018, sessions were recorded in the Huỳnh Tuấn studio, run by one of the participating musicians. In December 2018 and January 2019, recordings were made in the studio at VICAS, also in Sài Gòn.
Video 11. In an interview on the same day, Tỵ expressed how he felt that a mutual understanding has emerged in the group, comparing his experience of the first sessions to the recordings sessions which were now almost completed.
Video 3. In the same session, on October 31, Môn points to how a Vietnamese listener would hear this music differently than a westerner, and their expectations on what to listen for in a performance of Vọng Cổ may be a concern, since they may feel lost in this music. In this clip, he proposes how the group might continue to develop original approaches to Vọng Cổ, but without alienating its Vietnamese audience.
Video 5. As the conversation in video 4 suggests, creating challenges for the Other can also be a form of cultural diplomacy, and in the next clip, we find Môn reflecting on how he responded to the challenges posed by Stefan’s playing the day before.
Video 7. In December 2018, the group made its first concert appearance at the Hanoi New Music Festival. After the concert, we all returned to Sài Gòn to work at the Vietnam National Institute of Culture and Arts Studies (VICAS), a national center for musicology. On the first day, we spent time listening back to versions of the piece we had played in Hà Nội. One comment made by Môn is particularly important, since it had a central function in our further development of artistic approaches to the modal framework of Vọng Cổ. He again related to the idea of working with harmony, such as brought up in the initial sessions (see video 3).
Video 1. In the initial fieldwork of the Transformations project, we travelled in the Mekong delta in August 2018, and we interviewed several local musicians in the city of Long Xuyên. One of them was Linh, an amateur performer of Đờn Ca Tài Tử who plays both đàn kìm and the violin. We were particularly interested in his relation to the latter instrument and he told us a story that started in the time of the “American war.” Although he lived in the south, he joined the northern side and was soon engaged as the manager of a group of artists supported by the Việt Cộng, performing at the front. In 1970, as part of the supplies they received from Hà Nội, they were given a violin. Since no one in the group knew how to play it, Linh held on to this violin. He describes how it was very difficult to play the instrument at the outset, and he had to practice far out in the rice fields so that they wouldn’t be annoyed with his playing. During all the wartime travels, he would bring the violin along, and always practice far from the camp.
Cultural Diplomacy and Transculturation
through the History of the Vọng Cổ in Vietnam
Nguyễn Thanh Thủy & Stefan Östersjö (2021).
Edited by David G. Hebert and Jonathan McCollum. Published by Lexington Books in Ethnomusicology and Cultural Diplomacy.
interdisciplinary approaches to the study of the renewal of Vọng Cổ music from the south of Vietnam 2018-2021
Video 12. Returning to the question of tonalities, on the second to last day, Tỵ came up with a new idea for how to approach this problem, proposing that the trio should try to play Vọng Cổ in three different keys simultaneously. Perhaps in reference to our previous discussions of polytonality at VICAS, this proposal became a very important final turning point in the project. On the final working day in the studio, when all recordings were finished, we set up a longer conversation with all musicians to summarize our shared experiences. Here, Môn compared playing Vọng Cổ in three different keys to how his listening also had changed when playing with the musicians of The Six Tones, using a Vietnamese phrase that could be translated as listening with an “inversed ear”, providing a model for a further analysis of the artistic processes launched by the project.
Video 10. In October 2019 the group got together to make their final recordings in the Viết Tân Studio in Sài Gòn. On October 16, the second to last day of the recording sessions, we made individual interviews with all three players. Here, we invited them to reflect on their experience of the entire working process. In the interview with Tuấn, the development in his solo playing was the first topic. He first confirmed that he felt that the project had forced him to develop new aspects of his playing, and he referred to the listening practice, the high-quality recordings that were made each time, and the repeated joint listening back to them, as a central factor.
Video 4. The next morning, on November 1, we again started by listening back to the recordings made the day before. The perhaps most experimental piece recorded that day was a trio with two Vietnamese guitars (played by Môn and Stefan) and electronics. When listening back to the recording, Môn asked Stefan how he found it, “working with Vọng Cổ this way”, asking him to compare to earlier projects with traditional music that were presented on the first day. He asked more specifically, “do you have different methods, or do you have a different experience”? The video captures this negotiation, an example of the initial musical diplomacy that the project launched.
Video 8. The trio constellation mentioned above, with Tỵ, Trà My, and Henrik rehearsed on the 29th. This video captures a conversation between the two Vietnamese performers, of how they found the first take, and how they might work towards a clearer interaction, and most of all, how the structural features of Vọng Cổ and the relative freedom in shaping the improvised parts, can be negotiated.
Video 6. During the first working sessions, we found the most integrated interactions in the trio performances with Tỵ, My, and Henrik, which everyone had liked the day before. In the stimulated recall on Nov 1, Môn enthusiastically compares the two voices of the đàn gáo and the đàn bầu to two snakes, weaving patterns. Tỵ says he “likes this one. It follows the framework, but not the Vọng Cổ figurations”. This constellation was also the first to be considered a “keeper” for the CD release, and when returning to workshops at the end of the year, this trio would again be rehearsing, seeking to further refine this music.
Video 2. At the end of the second day, we made the first recordings of all musicians—the four members of The Six Tones and the three master performers selected for the recording project, Phạm Công Tỵ, Phạm Văn Môn and Huỳnh Tuấn—playing together. It was an explicit wish that Tỵ, Môn, and Tuấn should retain a structure from Vọng Cổ, and The Six Tones would seek ways to interact with their playing. We made several takes that afternoon, some with just one of them, and sometimes all at once. These recordings were mixed in the evening and on the morning of October 31 we listened back to these takes, with the agreement that any one of us could stop the playback to comment on a certain moment. This stimulated recall session was carried out with all musicians present, and with Nguyễn Thanh Thủy also acting as interpreter. The comments made by Phạm Công Tỵ and Huỳnh Tuấn capture some of the uncertainty and doubt, coupled with humour, that characterized the first working days.
