Award-winning Vietnamese-American musician V\u00e2n-\u00c1nh V\u00f5 visited Seattle this past weekend, a trip organized by the Seattle Art Museum\u2019s Gardner Center for Asian Art and Ideas and co-sponsored by the Southeast Asia Center.\u00a0 On Friday, V\u00f5 visited UW Ethnomusicologist Christina Sunardi\u2019s Music Cultures of the World class in the morning and held a performance later that afternoon for SEAC faculty and students.<\/p>\n
V\u00f5 credits her father, also a musician, for inspiring her early interest: she began studying the \u0111\u00e0n tranh (16-string zither) at the age of four, going on to graduate with distinction from the Vietnam Academy of Music where she later taught.\u00a0 In 1995, she won the championship title in the Vietnam National \u0110\u00e0n Tranh Competition and was selected as one of the musician-delegates sent to the United States after diplomatic relations between the countries were re-established that same year.\u00a0 During her appearance as part of the Gardner Center\u2019s Saturday Morning Lecture Series, she said that at the time she first traveled to the US, the only western music she had heard was Abba.\u00a0 After moving here in 2001, her familiarity with\u2014and appreciation for\u2014western artists expanded rapidly, as did her opportunity to create her own compositions.\u00a0 V\u00f5 was classically trained, having learned different musical genres from six masters of the forms.\u00a0 Vietnam\u2019s musical tradition is very deeply rooted: one of the instruments she plays, the \u0111\u00e0n b\u00e2\u00f9, was invented in the 9th<\/sup> century.<\/p>\n She described her masters\u2019 expertise as functioning like a time machine: so faithful to the original that a listener today is transported to the time and society that produced the work.\u00a0 She wants her music to connect just as powerfully, but to reflect our own time and what is happening in society today.\u00a0 The masters from whom she learned have been supportive of her innovative approach: combining traditional compositions with contemporary elements like a backing hip hop track in one case and ambient street sounds from Hanoi in another.<\/p>\n One of the instruments she brought with her to Seattle, the \u0111\u00e0n b\u00e2\u00f9 mentioned above, seems to combine both the traditional and modern in its design.\u00a0 With only one string, it has a surprising range of sound thanks to one flexible end that works, as V\u00f5 notes, \u201clike a Vietnamese whammy bar.\u201d\u00a0 It can sound at times like a human voice or a theremin, a fact attributable in part to the instrument\u2019s uninterrupted fluidity of register and vibrato (listen to V\u00f5 play Gershwin\u2019s \u201cSummertime\u201d<\/a>).<\/p>\n In one piece that she performed both Friday and Saturday, \u201cSorrow,\u201d V\u00f5 elicited the sound of the human voice not from the \u0111\u00e0n b\u00e2\u00f9 but the \u0111\u00e0n tranh.\u00a0 Unlike her other pieces in which the contemporary blends seamlessly with the traditional, \u201cSorrow\u201d produced a dissonance that was cognitive, not aural.\u00a0 V\u00f5 explained that the composition was inspired by the traumatic ordeals experienced by Vietnamese refugees who fled by sea, commonly known as the \u201cboat people.\u201d\u00a0 She stated that of the estimated two million refugees who had left by 1980 (in the aftermath of the end of the US war and ensuing regional wars), 100,000 died at sea from starvation, exposure, and at the hands of pirates.\u00a0 She interviewed one survivor who had been kidnapped from her stranded vessel and held in a state of sexual slavery.<\/p>\n In the first movement of \u201cSorrow,\u201d V\u00f5 elicits the pain and violence inherent in this survivor\u2019s testimony from the strings of the \u0111\u00e0n tranh, transforming the sound into despair and requiring her audience to experience the emotion.\u00a0 The dissonance is introduced in the next movement when V\u00f5 shifts to the \u0111\u00e0n b\u00e2\u00f9 and begins playing her own version of Purple Haze while inviting the audience to clap in time with the beat.\u00a0 Hearing Jimi Hendrix played in this way at first seems like a dash of comic relief, having just witnessed such anguish.\u00a0 However, V\u00f5\u2019s insistent tempo culminated in a final transition to the \u0111\u00e0n t’r\u01b0ng (bamboo xylophone) which she struck with precise ferocity while issuing a wail that sounded as if it were from the depths of her soul.\u00a0 When asked on Saturday about the inclusion of Purple Haze in the overall piece, she explained that she felt the antiwar spirit of the song deeply and wanted to convey the far-reaching tragedy of war.<\/p>\n She referenced a plea that then-Vice President Walter Mondale made in 1979 for western countries to lower barriers to resettlement for Vietnamese refugees<\/a>, resulting in increased commitments and humanitarian aid.\u00a0\u00a0 She also expressed gratitude to Seattle for being one of the first US cities to welcome them.\u00a0 Although V\u00f5\u2019s music can transport us back for centuries, we don\u2019t have to travel far to apprehend the contrast between this country\u2019s policies then and now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Award-winning Vietnamese-American musician V\u00e2n-\u00c1nh V\u00f5 visited Seattle this past weekend, a trip organized by the Seattle Art Museum\u2019s Gardner Center for Asian Art and Ideas and co-sponsored by the Southeast Asia Center.\u00a0 On Friday, V\u00f5 visited UW Ethnomusicologist Christina Sunardi\u2019s Music Cultures of the World class in the morning and held a performance later that<\/p>\n