Singing the Past: Vietnamese Ca Tru, Memory, and Mode

Ba Nho holds the dan day lute close to his face. . . . With dignity, he plays the opening phrase. . . .

Never before had Co To heard the sound of the dan day full of such misery and grief. The sound was so sullen and suppressed, as if it could not be set free into the atmosphere. . . . The sound was a deep feeling that could not be expressed. . . . The sound was a gust of wind unable to blow through the cracks of a thin bamboo screen. . . . The sound was a quivering leaf falling off a branch. . . .

The rhythms of Co To's bamboo clappers (phach) were fast like a bird calling out for help in the midst of a storm. . . . Not a single strike of the beaters was dull. The sound was sharp like the stroke of a knife. Beating the phach in that way gave glory to the bamboo and gave it a soul. . . . The lute and voice intertwined and soared

(Nguyen Tuan 1946, 61–2).

The above quote, which is taken from the 1946 novella Chua Dan by Nguyen Tuan, describes a ca tru performance.² At the climax of the novella, the author describes Co To—the ca tru singer who also plays the bamboo clappers—listening to the suppressed, mournful sound of her late husband's dan day lute being played by Ba Nho. Co To had promised her husband that the lute would never be played after his death and she implores Ba Nho not to play it. After repeated visits to Co To's home, Ba Nho insists on playing the lute and persuades her to sing again. Ba Nho's aim is to bring together Co To and his master, Lanh Ut, who plays the "praise drum" (trong chau) during the performance. Lanh Ut, like Co To, is bereaved; Lanh Ut's wife was killed in a train accident, and since his wife's death he has withdrawn from life and neglected his responsibilities as the head of Me Thao hamlet. Ba Nho arranges the ca tru session as a form of salvation for both Lanh Ut and Co To, to help them heal the pain of bereavement that has shattered their lives and to offer them the hope of new love, but in fact love has already developed between Co To and Ba Nho. The tragedy, as both Co To and Ba Nho are fully aware, is that the consequences of playing the lute will be fatal: as Ba Nho plays the lute his fingers begin to bleed and soon he is awash with blood and dies. The climax of the novel ends in Ba Nho's self sacrifice for those he loves, and a pagoda, Chua Dan, is built to honor his memory.

Chua Dan: Love and Death, Colonialism and Revolution

In Chua Dan, Nguyen Tuan demonstrates his profound knowledge and understanding of ca tru through his use of language, which is imbued with specialized musical terminology and references to famous songs and poems. The intensity of ca tru performance is heightened for dramatic effect, but nonetheless Nguyen powerfully evokes both the sound of ca tru and its performance context in the first half of the twentieth century. The "traditional" performance context described in the novella is referred to as a "singing session" (buoi hat)—a leisurely, undefined period of time set aside for talking, drinking rice wine, and making music—as opposed to a formal "performance" (trinh dien) presented to a passive audience. The singing session provides a forum for intimate interaction between the musicians themselves and other guests participating in the session, and for appreciation of each others' artistry. It is a site in which intense personal feelings are brought to the fore through participation.

Aesthetic contemplation of the words of the poem, of the singer's delivery of the poem and of the phrases of the lute, is at the heart of the performance practice. It is also encoded in the music: one of the drummer's roles is to "praise" the skill of the singer/percussionist and lutenist during the performance, by beating one or...