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onetheless, he has lots of disciples. “I have many stu- dents. The teaching of Vietnamese music is oral, from teacher to student. Now I have a number of students that come here to learn directly from me. And I have students at Michigan University in the United States.
We study on the internet.”
I remark that he is extremely active given his age. Most people 20 years younger would not wish to continue teaching, let alone possess such remarkable computer skills. He agrees. “I am 95 years old and I work hard. Every day I work hard.” Vinh Bao was born way back in 1918. It is mind-boggling to think what he has lived through and seen in a country with as tumultuous a history as Vietnam. Unlike many of his peers who emigrated to find a better existence, he has lived almost his whole life in the country. The only exception is the three years he spent in Illinois between 1970 and 1973, teaching Vietnamese music and instrument-making at the university.
“You know, my English is self-taught from a book,” he proud- ly tells me. “I began in 1938, when I was young, 20 years old.” His written essays in English have a technical assurance that makes me envious. The essays, as he puts it, uncover the music from the “rel- ative obscurity of the Vietnamese language” that has hampered global appreciation. His spoken English isn’t quite as strong, it has to be said, and we struggle to understand each other completely whenever we move off from his well-rehearsed pet subjects.
I gather that his childhood was spent near Sa Ðéc in the south
of Vietnam. His father was a “cultural man” who “wrote Chinese characters, composed poems” and also played music. His instru- ments of choice were the ¯dàn nguy.êt (moon-shaped lute), the ¯dan
tranh (zither) and the ¯dàn nh.i (Vietnamese violin). “And you know,” Vin Bao continues, “I had three brothers and three sisters and I am the second youngest of the seven children. Everybody now die except me.”
Vinh Bao can make and play all of the traditional Vietnamese instruments, but his speciality is the ¯dàn tranh, a long, thick zither that is placed horizontally on the player’s lap or a stand. For much of our time together I just sit, listen and marvel as he plays for me. His lasting legacy to Vietnamese music will be his changes to this instrument. “The common ¯dàn tranh has 16 strings, and my inno- vation has 17, 19, 21 strings. After my innovation in 1950, the com- mon ¯dàn tranh with 16 strings disappear. And everybody imitate to make 17, 19, 21 strings.” I ask if he was accused of changing the traditional music, and he is vehement in his response. “No, no, no, no! [I was] enriching the traditional music.” And how is the ¯dàn tranh normally played? “We play in an ensemble, in a group, or solo. Sometimes we play in duet with the moon-shaped lute.”
The conversation soon moves into the technicalities of Viet- namese music. It’s complex stuff which I don’t want to misrepre- sent, but sticking to what I clearly understood, Vietnamese music usually uses a pentatonic scale and has no notion of absolute pitch. Each musician tunes his or her instrument as desired. “This,” Vinh Bao says, playing a note, “I arbitrary call sol, but isn’t sol. It is not sol at all. Sol is the fundamental note of the scale. You refer- ence the note to give the pitch of the next string. The pitch of the fundamental note will vary from musician to musician.”
The sing-song quality of the Vietnamese language exists as a result of the six different tones used. This means that a visitor trying to speak the language can easily say completely the wrong word just by using the wrong tone of voice. This partially explains the practice of bending the strings in Vietnamese music to pull notes in different directions, often to accompany the inflections of the words in a song. “The musician bends almost every note,” I am told. “The five notes are not enough to allow for the traditional musician to make a great piece of music. The ornamentation [note-bending] brings the grace to the melody, the beauty of the melody.”
Vinh Bao has also developed his own way of notating Viet- namese music, based on the Western method with additional sym- bols. “I recognise that Western notation is specific and clear, but the Western notation cannot transcribe the soul of the Viet- namese music. I can translate my own notation system into West- ern chords, but my children at Illinois University, American stu- dents, they prefer to learn directly with my notation.”
That Vinh Bao has time to teach students in the States rather than being swamped by local hopefuls is indicative of the lack of interest in traditional music at home. “You know, the majority of younger generation, they are attracted by the Western music and they neglect their own culture here, which should be the pride of
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