57 f T
their nation. They imitate the manner of living from the con- queror. When they walk in the street, they prefer to carry the vio- lin, the Spanish guitar, not the Vietnamese violin because,” and here he uses a metaphor that also crops up in his essays, “to go along the street with a clumsy woman, one can have a certain respect, but it is boring. That is the mentality. So that the Viet- namese traditional music is in danger of dying out. I try to pro- mote, to make encouragation.”
wo or three hours quickly pass as I talk and listen. When it comes time to wrap things up I give him a CD as a gift. It was intended to be an album of English traditional music, but I picked up the wrong disc as I left and instead present him with a compilation I have
made of my favourite Vietnamese discoveries. This he gratefully acknowledges, skipping through the tracks on his PC and identi- fying the varied musical styles. That is until he reaches my token
pop inclusion, an upbeat number by singers Cẩm Ly and Quốc Ðại, to which he wrinkles up his face. “This is a degradation of our tradition!” he tells me with some authority. He responds to
my gift by burning me a copy of an album he made at some stage in his past with many of the other leading players of the tradi- tion, all of whom have since passed away. “This kind of CD is very rare now,” he notes (and any scholars of Vietnamese music are welcome to get in touch via fRoots if they want to know more).
I say my goodbyes to Vinh Bao and his daughter, leave his house and walk back down the road as a heavy, soothing down- pour soaks me through, offsetting the uncomfortable heat. Think- ing back over the morning it was, I consider, an inspiring encounter. It’s difficult to know exactly how significant a figure Nguyen Vinh Bao is at home without greater insight into the Viet- namese music scene. A Mekong Delta resident I meet later in my trip refers to him as “the master”. It’s quite possible that if Viet- namese music was better known and appreciated globally, he might have been granted the kind of reverence shown to the mae- stros of Indian music like Ravi Shankar or Ali Akbar Khan. Whatev- er the case, it certainly felt like an honour to meet him.
An album by the Nguyen Vinh Bao Ensemble on the French Ocora label is widely available on CD or download, with the title listed as either being eponymous or as Viêt-nam | Vietnam. Anoth- er CD and instructional DVDs in English as well as Vietnamese are available by mail order from the USA through Vinh Bao’s website
http://vinhbao.theonly1.net
F
Photo: Christopher Conder
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