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The traditional music of Vietnam
written by Ingo Stoevesandt
2. A mosaic of music
The actual presence of music in Vietnam is rich and divers. The market is increasing, Pop music is on its way to dominate the Karaoke sector, and it is this Karaoke virus which we find all over Asia that also dominates the whole Vietnamese music market. In Hanoi and Saigon, Cassettes, Videotapes and CDs are purchased at lowest prices, most of them black copies from Western productions. In tourist locations like restaurants, hotels and discos we find the newest Techno productions from overseas side by side with local Popmusic starlets, which are commercialized like the big stars in USA.
If we watch Vietnamese TV we do mostly find sounds of Vietnamese instruments like the Dan Bao or Tranh reduced to a background jingle, shows with “real” traditional music are not rare but even commercialized. Whenever you face a TV set in a public place like a restaurant it is getting more and more common to watch CNN and MTV than local stations. This means that American and European Pop music is more and more taking over the average ear of the Vietnamese citizen.
In the streets we sometimes find the crashing cymbals and bumping drums of a Chinese funeral - that’s also the sound of Vietnam.
Nobody should be surprised if beggars appear with a microphone and an electric guitar to sing for some money - most of the time they are getting paid to go away because their music is too bad - and in the rumor of motorbikes and vendors we hear the multiple sound of thousands of transistor radios and smaller TV sets. My last boat trip at the beautiful coast of Nha Trang was like a big Goa party with Techno music played so loud that I could even hear it under water.
But these rumors of a growing civilization are not the only sounds Vietnam has to offer. Listen up if you step on the market, and you will hear a carpet of sound as colourful as the multiple wares in front of you. Step into a monastery, and you will enter a new world of sound, whether there’s a liturgy with singing and prayers or just simple silence. Take a walk on the countryside, watch the poeple do their work on the fields and you will listen to many singing voices thus making the hard work more easy. All these sounds together with the divers music - that is the sound of Vietnam.
written by Ingo Stoevesandt
2. A mosaic of music
The actual presence of music in Vietnam is rich and divers. The market is increasing, Pop music is on its way to dominate the Karaoke sector, and it is this Karaoke virus which we find all over Asia that also dominates the whole Vietnamese music market. In Hanoi and Saigon, Cassettes, Videotapes and CDs are purchased at lowest prices, most of them black copies from Western productions. In tourist locations like restaurants, hotels and discos we find the newest Techno productions from overseas side by side with local Popmusic starlets, which are commercialized like the big stars in USA.
If we watch Vietnamese TV we do mostly find sounds of Vietnamese instruments like the Dan Bao or Tranh reduced to a background jingle, shows with “real” traditional music are not rare but even commercialized. Whenever you face a TV set in a public place like a restaurant it is getting more and more common to watch CNN and MTV than local stations. This means that American and European Pop music is more and more taking over the average ear of the Vietnamese citizen.
In the streets we sometimes find the crashing cymbals and bumping drums of a Chinese funeral - that’s also the sound of Vietnam.
Nobody should be surprised if beggars appear with a microphone and an electric guitar to sing for some money - most of the time they are getting paid to go away because their music is too bad - and in the rumor of motorbikes and vendors we hear the multiple sound of thousands of transistor radios and smaller TV sets. My last boat trip at the beautiful coast of Nha Trang was like a big Goa party with Techno music played so loud that I could even hear it under water.
But these rumors of a growing civilization are not the only sounds Vietnam has to offer. Listen up if you step on the market, and you will hear a carpet of sound as colourful as the multiple wares in front of you. Step into a monastery, and you will enter a new world of sound, whether there’s a liturgy with singing and prayers or just simple silence. Take a walk on the countryside, watch the poeple do their work on the fields and you will listen to many singing voices thus making the hard work more easy. All these sounds together with the divers music - that is the sound of Vietnam.
But, which I will never forget, when I was travelling down a river, and in the midth of nowhere, was the lonely cry of a Dan Bao.
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