Legend has it that a poor young man named Lo went missing from his village. After some time his friends went to look for him and finally found him, dead by a stream with a Khen Be in his hand. In his memory, his friends made copies of his Khen Be. Since that time, young Thai men have carried theses…
The Dan Ty Ba is a four-string instrument which is frequently present in a traditional orchestra. Its sound box is shaped like a pear cut in half lengthwise. Its soundboard is made of unvarnished light wood, and its back is made of hard wood with a slightly convex surface. The neck is short and tightly fixed to the sound-box. Originally the…
The Dan Tranh is also known as Dan Thap Luc or sixteen-stringed zither. Its shape resembles a bamboo tube that has been sliced vertically in half. The Dan Tranh has mostly been seen performed by female musicians in Vietnamese traditional dress (Ao Dai).
This three-stringed lute is used by several ethnic groups in Vietnam. The Viet call it Dan Tam, whereas the Ha Nhi call it Ta in. This instrument exists in three sizes: large, medium, and small. The small is the most popular. The sound box is oval-shaped, and the soundboard is pierced with sound holes. A bridge is fixed on the…
Sao truc, the bamboo flute, which is made from a stem of fine bamboo pierced with finger holes, has long been attached to Vietnamese culture. A vertically-held bamboo flute is made from the very bottom of a bamboo tree. Bamboo is hollow except for the nodes which are spaced at intervals along the pipe. These nodes are knocked out to form…
T'rung is one of the popular musical instruments closely associated with the spiritual life of the Bahnar, TSedan, Giarai, Ede and other ethnic minority groups in the Central Highlands of Vietnam. This traditional folk-musical instrument is made of short bamboo tubes differing in size, with a notch at one end and a beveled edge at the other. The long big…
The trong com (rice drum) gets its name from the practice of placing a pinch of hot steamed rice in the middle of the drum skin to "tune" the instrument. The trong com onsists of a hollow cylinder or hemisphere with a membrane stretched tightly over one or both ends, played by beating with sticks. The player, when standing, has the…
The K'Ni is a stringed musical instrument, sawing bow branch and is popular among many ethnic minority groups living in northern highlands (central Vietnam) such as Bahnar, Gia Rai, E De, Se Dang, Pako, and Hre... The most notable particularity of K'Ni is that it has no resonator. The whole K'Ni is a round or straight branch of bamboo section…
Dan Day is a special instrument of Vietnamese origin. This three-stringed lute is used incorporate the peculiarities of the two-stringed lute (dan Nguyet), the four-stringed pear-shaped lute (dan Ty Ba), and the three-stringed lute (dan Tam). In the past, the dan day was an accompanying instrument used only for one genre of songs, which later divided in two variants known…
The Klong put is the Xe Dang language name of a musical instrument of the wind family, air driving-in branch. It is played by ethnic groups in Tay Nguyen (Central Highlands) such as the Xe Dang, Bahnar, Gia Rai, Hre, etc. A traditional Klong put consists of many large empty hornless bamboo sections. The length of each section ranges from…
The Cong Chieng is a kind of musical instrument casted from mixed copper and belongs to the idiophonic family. In Vietnamese language, the word "Cong" points to a musical instrument with a bossed part in center (bossed gong) and "Chieng" without it (flat gong).
Ca tru music sounds strange to the uninitiated. Clicks and clacks accompany the centuries old ballads. It is not the kind of music that inspires toe tapping or humming. Originally, ca tru was also called hat a dao or hat noi (literally song of the women singers). Attractive young singers entertained men in a relaxed environment, sometimes serving drinks and…
The folk-song Quan Ho, a very rich and beautiful musical storehouse of our people, has a very long lasting history. During all its existence, successive creations have unceasingly changed the type of the folk-song Quan Ho. Today, there are "Quan Ho dai", "New Quan Ho", "the renovated Quan Ho". This shows that there may be some kinds of Quan Ho…
Xam singing, a Vietnamese form of art aged centuries, has always been preserved as the nation’s delicate piece of culture to be admired by numerous tourists. A show performed by old artists Let’s turn back time to the old days to the legend attached to this special kind of…
The gong zither is a stringed musical instrument of flipping branch. It is popular among some ethnicities in the North of the Central Highlands such as Bana, Gia Rai, Xe Dang, Ro Ngao, Je Trieng. The special instrument often accompanies its player to the field, to festivals held at the communal long-house, or to a meeting place where the player reveals his feelings…
The Pen-pipe is a musical instrument of the wind family with the free vibrated reed, popular among almost all of Vietnam's ethnicity in different forms. This musical instrument is called Khen by The Kinh (Viet) group, while the Mong ethnic minority call it the Kenh, and the Ede in the Central Highlands use a similar instrument called Dinh Nam, etc. The Pen-pipe…
Cheo is a form of popular theatre in Vietnam that has its roots in ancient village festivals. It consists of folk songs with pantomime, instrumental music and dances, combined with instructive or interpretive sketches dealing with stories from legends, poetry, history or even daily life. Also brought into play are acrobatic scenes and magic. Cheo tells tales of chiefs, heroes…
Chau van (or frequently called trau van) is a religious form of art which combines singing and dancing and used for extolling the merits of beneficent deities or national heroes. Its music and poetry are mingled with a variety of rhythms, pauses, tempos, stresses and pitches. Listening to Chau Van singing, you may confuse between the two following types: Hat tho (worship…
"Hat Then" or Then singing characterizes the spiritual and social life of Tay and Nung ethnic people. "Hat then" performances are important ceremonial events, which unite the entire community.Long Poems consist of several chapters with different content lengths. A show usually involves two or three groups of singers, plus musicians. The epics last for hours and are devided into short and long chapters,…
Xoan singing, which is in a list of 23 cultural heritages that needs urgent protection and preservation under the 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage, is a folk cultural product of Phu Tho province. The last point of time that Xoan accompany still sang in communal houses of the villages in spring was in 1945. Fortunately, we still had an opportunity to…
