German professor Gisa Jaehnichen is confident Vietnam’s “don ca tai tu” - a folk music genre distinctive to the South - is not dying as the country is seeking its recognition as a world heritage from UNESCO.
Jaehnichen who once did a long term researches on the genre is welcoming Vietnam file a national dossier on Don Ca Tai Tu to be submitted to UNESCO as an intangible cultural heritage in March this year.
Tuoitrenews had an interview with her during her trip to Vietnam to attend a three-day conference on the topic concluding Tuesday in Ho Chi Minh City.
How did you get to know Don Ca Tai Tu in Vietnam?
I was in Vietnam studying the language in the early 80’s and I learned everything I could about the culture, including Vietnamese music, of which Don Ca Tai Tu is a part.
What about Don Ca Tai Tu that interests you?
I think all kinds of music have their own interesting characteristics. So is Don Ca Tai Tu.
People say that it’s amateur music but I think it’s very professional.
Amateurism doesn’t mean that you are lacking professional qualities. I would translate it as music of the talented. People need to have a big talent to play but they don’t need to make their income out of their music.
What important to me is that, you can create your own versions. You don’t have a fixed composition that you have to follow. You can input your emotions into the music, according to certain rules.
If you understand the rules you can play very attractively and each performance can be different.
Don Ca Tai Tu is unique to southern Vietnam. There’s also Don Ca Tai Tu Hue, but it’s completely different from the South, which has a more a mixed social background: you have traders, you have craftsmen, you have intelligentsia, you have rich people, you have more poor people, you have farmers altogether playing.
It does not matter where you are from and what your background is.
In Don ca Tai Tu, the music is written first and the lyrics come after and get fitted in. That’s how it’s differentiated from other music genres in Vietnam.
Compared to the other Vietnamese traditional music that you researched on, what is the biggest difference in methodology when you approached Don Ca Tai Tu?
It’s not so much different.
If there is a new instrument that can create different sounds better than the old one, I do not hesitate to try out.
For example with the guitar phim lom (guitar with modified frets) or the Vietnamese violin that has another tuning, I can play pieces of music - for two instruments on one instrument. So that’s a creative fact and the approach to Don Ca Tai Tu is not much different from others.
The methodology is always the same but the outcome is different.
How is Don Ca Tai Tu different from Cai Luong?
I have to say that Cai Luong is completely different from Don Ca Tai Tu. Don Ca Tai Tu is only the source of music but its spirit is not as in Cai Luong.
Cai Luong has another social function: it’s to entertain a big number of people on a big stage. But for Don Ca Tai Tu, you never play on a big stage and you shouldn’t do that because it’s for a small group of people sitting around, played without amplifier, just on the waterside or in the garden.
Cai Luong is on the stage to amuse people or to raise social problems in texts and dialogs and Don Ca Tai Tu is only like a tool to be used in Cai Luong. Of course, a few nice pieces from Cai Luong composed in the past went back to Don Ca Tai Tu. And then Don Ca Tai Tu musicians created longer pieces out of it.
Despite interesting exchanges between both, it does not mean that they have the same social functions. So you can hardly compare the two.
We still have people who love Don Ca Tai Tu but this generation may disappear soon. What do you think about that?
People often think: “If I deal with old things I’m backward and if I’m backward I’m not earning what I should earn to get a better living.” The consumerism, which is also reaching Vietnam very fast, leads to the assumption that old things are bad.
But it needs only a certain time, then people will come back to their inside. The traditions are needed to be sustainable as a society. You cannot just eliminate the old things and think you become a modern person. To be a modern person you need the traditions to create new things. If you think you can grow without traditions, then you are already old.
We’re trying to put Don Ca Tai Tu in the representative list which the UNESCO recognizes as well-preserved heritage. Don Ca Tai Tu is not endangered because many people are interested in it and it still has a life, which is the effort of many people in the last 2- 3 decades.
Don Ca Tai Tu is not dying out, I’m sure.
* Professor, Doctor Gisa Jaehnichen is now working in the faculty of Human Ecology, Music Department, Universiti Putra Malaysia. She wrote her dissertation on modern South Vietnamese compositions and her second lecturer’s thesis on instrumental music in Ca Tru (ancient genre of chamber music) and in Don Ca Tai Tu.
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