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Before the Sound of War:

Exploring the Musical Traditions of Vietnam









Andrew Pham




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When I was young, my parents used to watch video cassette tapes of a popular
Vietnamese-American variety show called Paris by Night, which showcased numerous
comedic skits and musical performances. The shows were primarily conducted in Vietnamese,
but the performances often bore distinctly Western influences. One particular act stands out in
my memory, in which a singer and four or five backup dancers parodied FlashdanceWhat a
Feeling. The Vietnamese rendition featured the performers dancing in tacky sparkling outfits
while using chairs as their dance props.
Like most Vietnamese imitations of popular American songs, the performance was sung
in both English and Vietnamese. Such performances, as I remember them, were usually awkward
and embarrassing to watch, but I also remember musical acts on the show that seemed more
authentically Vietnamese in style. In these performances, the language and melody would seem
to fit together much more naturally, and the outfits usually consisted of traditional formalwear
called o di. Upon reflecting on these memories, I realize that I have only a vague conception
of what characterizes Vietnamese music, and in order to achieve a fuller understanding of the
technical and philosophical aspects that constitute the Vietnamese musical aesthetics, I
researched traditional Vietnamese music, including both vocal and instrumental folk tunes.
While researching, I struggled to narrow in on one topic, finding myself overwhelmed by
the vast field of information. My motivation for selecting this particular topic derived from two
main factors. I believe that because I grew up hearing the Vietnamese language spoken and sung,
my tastes and tendencies in music as a listener and musician have been influenced by
characteristics such as the languages tonal inflections. I want to learn if and how these
Vietnamese sounds have shaped my musical sensitivity and personality. Secondly, as a composer,
I like the idea of incorporating traditional melodies into compositions and want to imitate
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composers such as Bla Bartk in that regard. In order to do so, I must familiarize myself with
the instrumentation and sound world that is unique to Vietnamese music.
During my research, I came upon a chapter about transnational Vietnamese music in East
Main Street: Asian American Popular Culture, which introduced me to the phenomenon of the
1975 refugee movement and its effect on the output of Vietnamese music in both the United
States and in Vietnam. Its discussion of music as an expression of resistance fascinated me,
especially because Paris by Night had been deemed as a reactionary cultural product ("Paris
by Night," Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia) by the Vietnamese government. This discovery
raised several questions. I have always known of Paris by Night as a show, but I never
questioned its political and social implications. My interest in studying the traditional methods
and customs of Vietnamese music had me split, however, and I knew that my paper could only
effectively cover either the traditional aspects or the popular musical developments that have
arisen as a result of more recent historical events.
One of the main issues that influenced the direction of my research was being able to find
audio examples and sources that would complement each other. Fortunately, I encountered the
CD The Music of Vietnam, which opened up my mind to a broad array of instrumental tracks
that sounded new and fresh to me. This discovery reinforced my desire to focus on traditional
music since I knew very little about it and would not have to worry about tracking the historical
origins of miscellaneous mp3 recordings of Vietnamese songs given to me by my parents.
Moreover, my curiosity heightened when I read the first line of the CD description on the back of
the case: Vietnam has the dubious distinction of being one of the most misunderstood countries
in the world (The Music of Vietnam Volume 1.1). This short description introduced the idea
that, in the West, Vietnam bears the impression of war and very little else, which I have found to
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be shockingly true after making numerous subject searches in the J MU library database. The
majority of the titles have connotations of war, and when I limited the search to exclude the
subject, very few results were left. At this point, I found a strong purpose in studying the
traditional music of Vietnam. I grew up hearing the sounds of resistance that East Main Street
discussesvocal pieces that express sadness and memories of the homelandbut thought it
would be refreshing to examine the culture of Vietnam before it inherited the name and face of
war. Also, it would be particularly interesting to study traditional instruments that, according to
The Music of Vietnam, even the most ardent music lover would not typically associate with
Vietnam.
In order to understand Vietnams musical and instrumental traditions, it is important to
become acquainted with its cultural and physical geography. As the most culturally diverse
country in mainland South-east Asia, Vietnam includes 54 ethnic groups. The largest group is the
Viet or Kinh who lived in the lowlands, and other ethnic minorities resided in the highlands of
the country, finding influences from Chinese, Laotian, Mon-Khmer, and Malayo-Polynesian
cultures. The countrys diversity ultimately impedes the process of trying to identify a uniquely
Vietnamese quality in music because even the music of the majority group, the Viet, reveals
regional influences. The physical geography seems to play a significant role as well. Because the
Viet lived around mountains and rivers, mountains and rivers were the subjects of many
narratives and songs (Tran and Nguyen, Background). For example, one piece on the Music of
Vietnam translates to Crossing the River (Qua Song), featuring a Vietnamese hammered
dulcimer (n tam thp lc) performing a very percussive and rhythmic piece of music that uses
little repetition. Other songs complemented rituals and festivals. The music of other ethnic
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minorities stemmed from traditional customs and beliefs of the region and thus varied from
culture to culture.
The Vietnamese language is an inherently musical language with its tonal inflections
the language consists of six different tones or accents that can be applied to a syllable to change
the meaning of the word. As a result, Vietnamese people were inclined to sing spontaneously on
various occasions, and the different accents determined how one should shape the melody,
particularly in folk music. In general, Vietnamese musical tradition goes hand in hand with its
literary tradition since poems and dramas were often set to music, and the musical style reveals
influence from Chinese and Indian cultures. For example, like classical Indian music,
Vietnamese music contains much improvisation and ornamentation of melodies. Performances
are often preceded by rhythmically free preludes in which musicians explore the possibilities of
the modes of a piece, similar to the improvisatory alap of Indian music. Folk songs consisted of
work songs, love songs, satirical songs, and smoking songs, and they reflected the emotions and
sentiments of the working class as well as the vivaciousness, quickness, candor, ironic wit and
common sense of the Vietnamese people (Vietnamese Realities 97). During the ten centuries of
Chinese domination, folk songs heightened peoples spirits and hopes in preserving Vietnamese
traditions and customs.
Vietnam has an interesting historical evolution of music. In 1924 in North Vietnam,
archaeologists discovered bronze drums and coins with engravings of two men playing an
instrument made of several flutes tied together (khene). The music was very folkloric and used
drums, khenes, castanets, and cymbals in ritualistic dances. From the second to the tenth century,
Vietnamese music fell under the domination and influence of the Chinese and adopted the five
tone scale of Chinese music. From the eleventh to the fourteenth century, Vietnamese music
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received more Southern influences as the people made contact with the Champa, and two more
notes were added to the five tone scale. From the fifteenth through the eighteenth century, songs
accompanied by castanets, guessing game songs and boat songs became popular. Following
these developments, Vietnamese music became modernized from the influence of Occidental
traditions (Vietnamese Realities 97-98).
In addition to the chronology of Vietnams musical history, it is important to note that
classical Vietnamese music can be classified into northern tunes (Dieu Khach) and southern
tunes (Dieu Nam). Northern tunes were thought to have derived from the victory over Mongol
invaders in 1285, when an accompanying theatre troupe and an entire orchestra were captured
and incorporated into the Imperial Court. In 1470, two members of the National Academy were
assigned to study Chinese music in order to adapt its methods to Vietnamese music. They formed
three committees that each took on a different task. One took on symphonic music, another
music education, and the third the popularization of the musical arts. As for the southern tunes,
origins come from contact with the Champa and Fou Nam kingdoms (Vietnamese Realities 98).
Whereas northern tunes tend to be optimistic and lively, southern tunes express nostalgia and
melancholy. An example of a southern tune is the twelfth track from the Music of Vietnam
1.1. According to the CD pamphlet of this album, the piece, Ly Giao Duyen, is a southern
folksong that employs a musical mode or scale that creates the mood of a lullaby or a lament.
The Vietnamese further modified the scale and instruments taken from the Chinese. The
complete scale resembles the Western major scale with the addition of a ninth on top, and the
third and seventh scale degrees are tuned a quarter tone lower. The Vietnamese solfege is as
follows: ho, xu, y, sang, xe, cong, phan, luu, u. From the Chinese instruments, the Vietnamese
made alterations to suit the Vietnamese temperament, resulting in the five perfects, or the
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instruments that every cultivated person should play. These instruments include a violin (n
nh), a zither (n tranh), a kind of long necked guitar (n nguyt), a lute (n t b), and a
three silk-strung pear-shaped guitar (n tam). Another significant instrument is the monochord
(n bu), a trapezoidal wooden resounding case with a brass string (Vietnamese Realities 98-
99).
While the core of Vietnamese music is vocal, instrumental ensembles exist in chamber
music and theatre ensembles. Three kinds of instrumental ensembles exist: a large ensemble (i
nhc), which uses drums, gongs, and wind instruments such as oboes and conches; an ensemble
of bronze and stone chimes (nhc huyn); and a small ensemble (tiu nhc or nh nhc), which
uses string instruments like lutes, fiddles, and flutes. A large ensemble typically uses twenty
large drums, eight oboes, four large gongs, four medium gongs, four conches, and four water-
buffalo horns. The small ensemble uses two transverse flutes, one two-string fiddle, a moon-
shaped lute, a pear-shaped lute, a three-string lute, a small drum (sinh tin), and a set of three
small gongs (Tran and Nguyen, Instrumental Ensembles).
Traditional Vietnamese music had a spiritual and social role. Confucian ethics dictates
that music should contribute to social harmony and bring peace to ones heart. Music is to play a
role in a disciplined society to preserve social order, good manners, and respect for tradition.
Such roles of traditional music include serving theatrical performances, ballets, religious
ceremonies, and burial music (Vietnamese Realities 99). This reminds me of various other
cultures, in which certain kinds of music serve particular social roles such as the Tovil and
Qawwali music, whose trance music served important social functions such as healing
ceremonies and worship gatherings. Traditional Vietnamese music seemed to pervade numerous
areas of life from the fields and mountains to the courts and religious temples.
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Several listening examples from the Music of Vietnam reflect some of the discoveries I
have made in my research. The first track of the CD, Cung Dan Dat Nuoc (Melody of the
Country), is one of the first Vietnamese instrumental pieces I heard that really caught my
attention. The piece consists of an ensemble that features the monochord (n bu), which is
accompanied by the lute, zither, and percussion. What strikes me about the music is the rhythmic
intensity, textural variety, and freedom of the tempo. The composer of this piece, Xuan Khai, is
considered important for writing music in the traditional style between the 1960s and 1980s.
Prior to listening to this track, I assumed that traditional music was very simple and repetitive. It
might also be the case that the composer had arranged the music in such a way that integrated
traditional sounds with more modern innovative ideas, similar to the way Philip Koutev
modernized Bulgarian music while maintaining a sense of tradition.
The fifth track, Tu Dai Oan, which means Four Great Sorrows, features one of the
five perfects, the 2-string fiddle or the n nh. The timbre of the instrument is what surprised me
the most. It is unlike the Western string instruments that I am so accustomed to hearing and
instead resembles a reedy timbre characteristic of a flute. The embellishments in the melody
sound similar to the way Vietnamese singers would embellish songs. This might be because the
piece is a folksong that is associated with modern theater called ci lng, which is another
medium through which I had become introduced to Vietnamese music while growing up. Ci
lng is essentially a musical soap opera that features spoken dialogue and interludes of music.
My parents, grandparents, and other relatives sometimes watched episodes of ci lng on video
cassette tapes and often pretended to be ci lng performers, singing silly sentences to me with
typical ornamentations and cadences found in it.
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The sixth track, Doc Con Xa, is religious ritual music called Chu Vn and also
features another one of the five perfects, the moon-lute or n nguyt. The music is associated
with healers and stems from Buddhism. It is a religious form of art that combines trance singing
and dancing, and the main purpose was to hypnotize a person who was estranged from the spirits
with the rhythms and lyrics of the music, similar to the Shamanistic Tovil healing ceremony in
Sri Lanka. After learning about the ceremony that the music serves, it is clear why the music is
very fast paced and rhythmic. The lute, which is supported by metal and wood percussion,
provides a driving rhythm rather than a singable melody to help set a person into trance.
Throughout the research process, I found myself frequently frustrated by the challenges
of gathering information and placing it in a precise historical context. One of the most difficult
aspects of my research was trying to focus entirely on traditional music because the ambiguous
denotation of traditional lends itself to different interpretations by different sources. Moreover,
the omission of dates hindered my ability to establish a clear chronology of the historical
developments of the music, particularly the instrumentation of the different ensembles. Even
David Parsons, the producer of the CD The Music of Vietnam, states that the line between
purely traditional and completely modern music can get quite blurry.
Nonetheless, I found that focusing on instrumental music broadened my understanding of
Vietnams musical culture, and the research ultimately spawned questions that I might decide to
investigate in future projects. One subject includes music that arose after 1975 when several
Vietnamese fled their country for the U.S. Because my parents are part of that generation, it
would provide me with more insight into what my parents experienced and would allow me to
better understand the motivation and incentives for shows like Paris by Night. Additionally, after
watching a musical performance given by J MUs Vietnamese Student Association about
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memories of Vietnam after the Vietnam War, I realized to an even greater degree how much of
an effect the Vietnam War had on the musical expression of Vietnamese people. Because I am
more aware of my cultures musical history, I will be able to appreciate traditional Vietnamese
music when I hear it, and as a result of my research, I have incentive to investigate other aspects
of Vietnamese culture and history.
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Works Cited
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Tasha G. Oren. New York: New York UP, 2005.
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<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hat_chau_van&oldid=166773776>.
The Music of Vietnam. CD-ROM. Vol. 1.1-2. Tucson: Celestial Harmonies, 1994.
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<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Paris_by_Night&oldid=175506362>.
Schramm, Adelaida Reyes. Tradition in the Guise of Innovation: Music among a Refugee
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<http://www.jstor.org/search>.
Tran, Van Khe and Nguyen, Thuyet Phong. Vietnam. 2007. Grove Music Online. Ed. L. Macy.
7 December 2007 <http://www.grovemusic.com>.

Vietnamese Realities. Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Republic of Vietnam, 1967.