Nhạc cụ dân tộc .. dàn nhạc nhà hát chèo TW 5.2014-Kim mã Opera.
Ajoutée le 28 mai 2014
Nhạc cụ dân tộc .. dàn nhạc nhà hát chèo TW 5.2014-Kim mã Opera.
Archives pour la catégorie Musical instrument
CARA GIAIMO : Mysterious Stone Instruments Keep Being Discovered in Vietnam
The country has embraced dàn đá’, but no one is quite sure of its exact history.
An ancient đàn đá at the Vietnamese Institute of Musicology in Hanoi. Mike Adcock
In April of 2015, farmer Pham Dinh Huyen of Quang Binh, Vietnam set to work on his new fishpond. He had barely started digging when his shovel hit a rock. He pried it out and put it aside, but then he hit another, and another. Eventually, he had 20—large, oblong slabs of various sizes, some of them pointed at the ends.
So he did what you do when, in Vietnam, you find a bunch of weird rocks all together—he hit each one with the flat of his shovel, and listened. And lo and behold, they rang out clearly, in varying tones. He called his local museum, and they confirmed his suspicions—Huyen’s future fishpond was a musical graveyard. He had dug up one of Vietnam’s many ancient lithophones.
Rocks, to most of us, seem cold, inert, and boring. Across time and all over the globe, though, people have taken them and made them sing. The lithophone—a set of ringing stones carved and arranged to allow for musical performance—can be found everywhere from Scandinavia to Indonesia, says Mike Adcock, a musician and lithophone enthusiast who has spent years compiling a book on the subject. In Argentina, they’re carved out of quartz; in Namibia, pounded into large boulders. Some researchers even think Stonehenge is a giant lithophone.
In Vietnam, they’re called đàn đá’. Most are chunks of volcanic rock or of schist, a kind of layered slate, that have been carved into a more sonorous shape. Experts think they date back anywhere from 3000 to 10,000 years—younger than the pan pipe, but older than anything with strings. As more and more pop up all over Vietnam, archaeologists attempt to solve the many mysteries that dog them, and musicians figure out how to add their unique tones to an already-rich folk tradition.
The first đàn đá discovery occured in 1949, when a group of construction workers in the Central Highlands dug up eleven stone slabs. The stones were vertically oriented and huddled together, and word of the strange find soon spread to a nearby town, Ndut Lien Krak, where ethnologist Georges Condominas was living and working. As Adcock describes in a recent paper, Condominas was drinking rice beer with some friends when they got to talking about the stones, and, intrigued, he asked to go see them. He obtained permission to bring them with him back to France, where he sent them to the Musée de l’Homme.
Archaeologists, historians, and anthropologists puzzled over the stones, until someone decided to put them in order from largest to smallest, and lay them over a pair of supports, like a xylophone. “It immediately became apparent…that this was undoubtedly a musical instrument,” New Scientist wrote in 1957. “It was possible to play tunes on them ranging from a simplified version of Claire de Lune to Pop Goes the Weasel.” The markings on them were identified as remnants of the tuning process.
This initial đàn đá is, like so many colonial-era artifacts, still in Paris. But since its identification, more and more have turned up. Experts seek them out on archaeological digs, but laypeople also find them while planting yams and, like Huyen, building fishponds. A musician named Pham Van Phuong, who actively seeks them, has found five separate sets in one stream, and other amateurs go out đàn đá-hunting in their spare time, the way New Englanders look for arrowheads.”It’s like people lugging around metal detectors,” Adcock says. “Everyone wants to go out and find something really genuine and discover it.”
This discovery is, in some ways, the easy part. Much harder is looking back in time and trying to figure out who used the stones, and exactly what for. Some minority groups in Vietnam have long kept ringing stones to scare animals and birds away from crops—but these are structured as wind chimes or hanging gongs, different from the lithophones, which are often found laid out and accompanied by mallets. Other clues come from comparing the tones available in đàn đá to those of better-known ancient musical traditions, like Javanese gamelan music. It’s possible that ancient emigrates to Vietnam held these scales and songs in their heads, and sought to recreate them with the materials of their new environment.
But it’s difficult to know for sure. “One of the things about instruments is there’s very little evidence,” says Adcock. “You can see rock paintings, and there’s no doubt that’s a picture of a bison.” But for most of human history, music was lost to time as soon as it was made: “We’ve got nothing to go on except circumstantial evidence, and markings on a stone.”
This hasn’t stopped people from embracing this new old tradition. Folk musicians have incorporated the đàn đá into tunes and styles that didn’t originally include it, playing fast and melodious, rather than ringing and repetitive. “They’re creating a revival, rather than recreating one,” says Adcock. Newly built, portable dàn đá can be found in instrument shops across the country. One enthusiast in Ho Chi Minh City has built a giant twelve-stone lithophone, tuned just like a piano. He keeps it in his office, at a luxury toilet engineering firm, and plays it for guests.
Not everyone is convinced that the đàn đá’s deserves this place in the pantheon. The specimen at the Musée de l’Homme came with its own skeptic, Fritz A. Kuttner, a musicologist who maintained for decades that it wasn’t an instrument at all. “Any long and fairly thin stones will emit some kind of sound,” he wrote in 1953. “To qualify as lithophones… shaped stones have to show some evidence, not just of shaping, but of acoustical and mathematical knowledge and skills.” Because the stones are not tuned to any known tone system, Kuttner argues, they shouldn’t make the cut. Other modern Western scholars, like anthropologist Roger Blench, have told Adcock that the đàn đá’s utilitarian role as a crop protection device disqualifies it from ancient instrument status. Adcock rebuffs this, saying these critics are hamstrung by reliance on conservative, Western-centric definitions of music.
Granted, Adcock says, some of the discoveries are hard to swallow. People have claimed to find hundreds of stones at once, which Adcock says is unlikely. Phan Tri Dung, the luxury toilet engineer from Ho Chi Minh City, claims his instrument is a re-creation rather than an invention, and that it’s proof that ancient Vietnamese music was built around the Western scale, against the conclusions of most of the country’s musicologists. Although his instrument is amazing, Adcock says, his conclusions are probably not accurate. A certain number of the many finds likely fall under this category.
Others, though, are rock solid. Experts in Vietnam have authenticated at least 200 different stones over the past few decades, and some now reside in museums and shops. Others have been sold to collectors and historians, who, by comparing different instruments and keeping careful track of their pedigrees, can draw new conclusions about their origin and evolution.
Adcock himself has not learned how to authenticate individual instruments. But he is most convinced by the argument from human nature, both compelling and difficult to prove—that everyone who has access to a noisemaker eventually wants to experiment with it. “I think we can assume that people who are making sound, that they would have been making whatever equivalent to music there was at that time,” he says. “Why wouldn’t they have? It’s fun.” He should know—since beginning to study lithophones, he has started a band, carving his own instruments out of roof slate. Someday, someone will dig one of them up and wonder what he was thinking.
Nghệ sỹ già miền Tây duy trì ca cổ Cải lương – Vietnam Culture (2)
Nghệ sỹ già miền Tây duy trì ca cổ Cải lương – Vietnam Culture (2)
1:07 / 19:29
Nghệ sỹ già miền Tây duy trì ca cổ Cải lương – Vietnam Culture (2)
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Nghệ sĩ Chín Quý sáng chế nhiều đàn cổ nhạc độc đáo (1)
Nghệ sĩ Chín Quý sáng chế nhiều đàn cổ nhạc độc đáo (1)
Ajoutée le 25 avr. 2013
Đến phường Hiệp Thành, thị xã Ngã Bảy, hỏi nghệ nhân đờn ca tài tử Chín Quý (ông Lê Thanh Quý), ai cũng biết. Không chỉ đàn giỏi, ông còn có biệt tài sáng chế các loại nhạc cụ có một không hai. Theo sự chỉ dẫn của người dân nơi đây, chúng tôi đã tìm đến gặp ông. Trong căn nhà giản dị, nhưng chứa đựng tài sản, theo lời tâm sự của ông, vô cùng quý giá. Đó là cây đàn sến độc đáo do ông sáng chế. Cây đàn được kết hợp giữa đàn măng-đô-lin và trống của dàn nhạc lễ. Tuy nhiên, độc đáo hơn cả là cây ngũ huyền cầm, được ông ghép từ 5 cây đàn bầu, sắp xếp từ nhỏ tới lớn, dây từ ngắn tới dài. Cách chơi ngũ âm huyền khác với đàn bầu, có thể vừa gẩy, vừa đàn liên tục trên 5 dây. Ngoài ra, ông còn cho chúng tôi xem cây tam huyền di mà ông cũng rất ưng ý. Sau khi giới thiệu những tài sản quý giá, ông đã trổ tài trên từng loại nhạc cụ. Quả thật, thứ âm thanh phát ra từ các cây đàn này rất độc đáo mà chúng tôi lần đầu được nghe. Sau khi thả hồn cùng những phím đàn, ông nói: Những cây đàn này là tri kỷ, khi bầu bạn với chúng, muộn phiền trong tôi đều xóa tan hết.
Hơn 40 năm trong nghề, ông Chín Quý sử dụng thành thạo trên 10 loại nhạc cụ, như: đàn bầu, đàn cò, đàn sến, đàn ghita, đàn vi-ô-lông, đàn hạ uy di, đàn tranh… Không chỉ « nghệ nhân » Chín Quý, cả gia đình ông đều có năng khiếu và đam mê đờn ca tài tử. Vợ ông, bà Đỗ Thị Tiến, sở hữu giọng hát hay và truyền cảm. Những bản vọng cổ ca ngợi quê hương do ông Chín Quý sáng tác, như: « Ngã Bảy quê tôi », « Về Hậu Giang thăm căn cứ »… do bà trình bày ngọt lịm. Hai con của ông bà, chị Lê Thị Thanh Tâm và anh Lê Thanh Nhân, hưởng gien di truyền từ cha mẹ, nên đều sử dụng khá thành thạo nhiều loại nhạc cụ.
HẢI PHƯỢNG ĐÀN TRANH MỘT SÁNG TÁC CỦA PHẠM THÚY HOAN , âm hưởng miền Trung, 2011
HẢI PHƯỢNG ĐÀN TRANH MỘT SÁNG TÁC CỦA PHẠM THÚY HOAN , âm hưởng miền Trung, 2011
Filmed by KHÁNH VÂN
Vietnam traditional music and traditional instruments
Vietnam traditional music and traditional instruments
Lullaby song, folk song, spiritual song… Gongs or Cong-Chieng, lithopone, 36 string zither… Traditional music has played an important role in the lives of the Vietnamese. Currently, music still occupies a considerable position in the spiritual lives of the Vietnamese.
Have you ever listened to “Nhac tien chien”?
Thursday, 09 October 2008 10:05
“Outside on the veranda, the autumn rain is gently falling. The somber sky is quieting, suspended clouds are scattering. Amidst the muffled wind blowing past in the autumn rain, who’s crying? who’s grieving…” are the so beautiful lyrics of a popular “Nhac tien chien” song named “Autumn Rain Drops” (or “Giot Mua Thu” in Vietnamese) by Dang The Phong, that makes us feel nostalgic… Read more >>
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With melodious sounds, Dan Nhi becomes indispensable one in a traditional musical orchestra to express the subtle mood of man’s soul. Dan Nhi is a sort of… Read more >>
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Perhaps, the most important catalyst in the development of contemporary Vietnamese folkloric performance was the appearance of the call-and-response d… Read more >>
Lithophone or Dan Da
Monday, 29 September 2008 07:09
Lithophone or Dan Da is also known as a percussion instrument made of stone. The name is applied to a specific instrument made of resonant stones that p… Read more >>
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Dan Bau is a Vietnamese monochord, a traditional one-string musical instrument. The history… According to the « Dai Nam thuc luc tien bien », the … Read more >>
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More Articles…
- Lullaby singing
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