Musician takes traditional songs to the world

Revamped: Artist Van Anh performs on the stage at the Roof TopBar.Based on her knowledge and experience, she's had a fresh take on Vietnamese traditional music. — VNS Photos Tran Quang Trung

Vo Van Anh greatly impressed visitors of The Rooftop Bar on July 12-13. Music lovers heard the sounds of a traditional Viet Nam in her music, but also something new. The Ha Noi-born musician won first prize in a national competition for dan tranh (16-string zither) in 1995. After nearly 11 years of music making, she has blown a new wind into traditional music.

Anh's story of integrating the past and present through music begins with her marriage to a Vietnamese-American she met on a trip to the US while participating in a Thang Long Water Puppet Theatre performance. She then moved to California with her husband in 2000. One of Anh's concerns while living abroad was how to introduce her Vietnamese traditional music to foreigners; there were still many Vietnamese people who themselves did not understand the meanings of traditional songs.

"To make westerners love Vietnamese traditional music, I had to bring something familiar to them." She turned her thoughts into action by learning English so as to introduce herself to foreigners. At the same time, she created a new style of music.

Her tours to more than 20 countries in the world helped Anh realise her strengths and the limitations of her instrument, the dan tranh, in harmonising with other instruments. "Dan tranh is a strong instrument, which can express a lot of Vietnamese people's feelings. But it is often overwhelmed by electronic instruments when playing rock or jazz," she said.

Using her knowledge and experience, she changed parts of the instrument, such as its size and strings. While a normal instrument is 95cm long, her new instrument ranges 1m to 1.4m. Anh calculated the per cent of bronze, iron and other metals in every string, which exist in eight different sizes, in order to know their repercussions. She also set up a microphone system so that it could keep its acoustic style but not be out of tune when playing rock. With the help of artisan Phung Tan Tuyen, Anh created a satisfactory instrument.

In 2002, her music in the documentary film, Daughter from Da Nang, contributed to its winning the Grand Jury prize at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival, prior to its 2003 Oscar nomination for the Best Documentary Feature.

Anh became more widely known after she and her partner, Mark Izu received Emmy Awards for Music Composition in 2009 for their music in Duc Nguyen's documentary film, Bolinao 52. Anh's second album, released in 2010, She is not She, is a collaborative project with composer Do Bao. Differentiating from her 2001 album, Twelve Months, Four Seasons, the latest album has a new life to it thanks to her improvements on her dan tranh.

Plucking good: Musician Van Anh plays her 16-string zither.

"Those who do not know how to play dan tranh can not understand Vietnamese culture through it. Thin and soft wood on its surface, and hard wood on its sides expresses the concepts of yin-yang. Two holes shaped like coins hooked on each other are used to let the sound out. According to ancestors, playing music brings not only joy but also wealth. Looking at images carved on its sides, they could be the heroines Ba Trung, or Ba Trieu, or Rat's Wedding in Dong Ho, or the four seasons of Viet Nam. Many people consider it a decoration but actually, it tells a legendary story," she said.

"I think that to make the young generation interested in traditional music, we need to renew it. It can be said that the concept of tradition includes succession and development. Look at cooking as an example. Cooking Vietnamese food requires nuoc mam (fish sauce) but the way of mixing sauce is changed to suit every person's taste," she said. The most important thing for artists who play traditional music overseas is keeping the Vietnamese spirit alive.

"Only when traditional music reflects the breathe of a new society while keeping its origin does the instrument live in people's hearts. Instrument players should compose new pieces of music. Regardless of how much an audience loves traditional music, they will still get bored listening to the same piece year after year," she said.

Beside performing to raise money for charitable funds, Anh teaches the dan tranh at Au Co Cultural Centre in California. Her students, the youngest of whom is six and the oldest 82, come from different countries. More than a half are Vietnamese but the remaining are from America, India and Spain.

"As long as they love music and want to learn about Vietnamese culture, I am willing to teach them the country's music and culture," Anh said.

This year, she was the first Vietnamese person to receive a grant for folk and traditional arts from the Alliance for California Traditional Arts.

In January 2012, she will be one of the five artists to perform a concert at Canergie Hall in New York City. Then in May, she will share the same stage in California with the Knonos Quartet, one of the most celebrated and influential groups in the world.

There are three things Anh wants to do in life: compose music that is alive, perform to popularise Vietnamese music and culture, and teach to pass her knowledge and experience to others. At the age of 36, she has accomplished all three.

What would she do to attract people who have not known or loved dan tranh? "I will not say anything, just play dan tranh with all my heart to show that its pure beauty. I love and have confidence in my music." — VNS