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An ancient form of Vietnamese music is making a comeback. Ca Tru is spare and emotional. It’s played with percussion and one long-necked lute. Ca Tru was once the music of royal courts. Later, it became the music of prostitutes and courtesans. When the Communist Party first came to power, it banned the music. But in recent years, the government’s eased up on its moralistic stance. In fact, it successfully lobbied UNESCO to recognize Ca Tru as an “intangible cultural heritage.” The World’s Mary Kay Magistad checked it out on a recent trip to Hanoi. Download MP3
Ca Tru singer Bich Van
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MARCO WERMAN: An ancient form of Vietnamese music is making a comeback. Ca Tru is bare and emotional. It’s played with percussion and one long necked lute. Ca Tru was once the music of royal courts. Later it became the music of prostitutes and courtesans. When the Communist Party first came to power it banned the music. But in recent years the government has eased up on its moralistic stance. In fact, it successfully lobbied UNESCO to recognize Ca Tru as an intangible cultural heritage. The World’s Mary Kay Magistad checked it out on a recent trip to Hanoi.
MARY KAY MAGISTAD: Every Ca Tru song starts with a beat. Three beats actually, by the drummer. Then the lute comes in and the singer, always female, who keeps her on staccato beat with two sticks against a piece of wood or bamboo. Ca Tru songs are often full of pathos and longing about life and love, kind of like ancient Vietnamese blues. They’re based on poems by ancient Vietnamese and Chinese poets.
Viet Nam passed in and out of Chinese control after Ca Tru’s birth 1,000 years ago. While the Vietnamese never have liked being controlled by anyone, they did borrow from renowned Chinese poets like Du Fu. As Ca Tru evolved, it went from being a music used for ritual in temples and in the courts, to one used to entertain scholars and aristocrats in inns. They’d get tally cards and would give them to their favorite female singer. The more cards a singer got, the more she got paid. Ca means song and Tru means tally card, hence the name.
Under French colonial rule Ca Tru evolved again says Bich Van, the singer here and the leader of a Ca Tru club in Hanoi. She says when the Communists took over they denounced Ca Tru as being the music of prostitutes and courtesans and bourgeois elites. They banned it until economic reform started in the mid 1980’s. That’s when Bich Van started to learn Ca Tru singing. She explains to a small audience in a Taoist temple the difference between open-mouthed opera singing and Ca Tru. She says you have to keep your mouth tight and controlled. Some of the sounds almost get swallowed. Bich Van says it hasn’t been easy trying to draw new audiences to Ca Tru. It is an acquired taste. But she says hit has been part of Viet Nam’s cultural heritage for 1,000 years and it would be a shame for it to die out.
The Vietnamese government now agrees. It lobbied UNESCO to give Ca Tru the status of intangible cultural heritage, something that deserves to be protected. One of the people leading the campaign was Nguyen Chi Benh, Director of the Ministry of Culture’s Institute of Culture and Art Studies. He says there are very few singers of Ca Tru these days and most of the ones who are left are old. Many Vietnamese didn’t grow up with the music and don’t connect with it especially since some of the singing is in Chinese. He says the government has tried to promote Ca Tru through television performance and events around the country. Nguyen Chi Benh hopes the UNESCO recognition sparks a little cultural pride and maybe even international interest in the art form.
Certainly at Bich Van’s Ca Tru club meeting the few people who turn out on a drizzly Sunday morning are appreciative. During a break they stand up and praise the singers for their moving performances. It’s particularly moving that Bich Van, the daughter of a writer and a Ca Tru singer, both occupations considered bourgeois and counter-revolutionary at the height of Viet Nam’s Communist fervor is now getting help from that government to revive an ancient art form it once reviled. For The World, I’m Mary Kay Magistad, Hanoi.
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