Prof. Dr. Terry E. Miller is a lecturer of music at Kent University (US). He wrote two chapters about Vietnamese music in the World Music Encyclopedia. Prof. Miller and his wife, Prof., Dr. of music Sara Stone Miller, are in Vietnam.

Prof. Dr. Terry E. Miller and his wife.

You have some research works about Vietnamese music. Why do you research Vietnamese music?

That’s an old story. Over 40 years ago, in 1968, I was a student at a music school when I was forced to do my military service. One year later, I was sent to Vietnam. Luckily, I was an office soldier in the Long Binh military base.

I didn’t know anything about Vietnam and I had few chances to go out to meet people. Once I heard a melodious tune from my small radio. I guessed that was Vietnamese music.

I bought a small recorder to record all melodies from the radio. I asked my friends about Vietnamese music but they knew nothing about it.

One day, I saw a book about Vietnamese stage art. I was obsessed by the words like stage, theatre, hat boi, cai luong, etc.

I decided to go to the Saigon downtown to learn about Vietnamese music. In my last five months in Vietnam, I sought to watch cai luong, hat boi at a theatre named Quoc Thanh or Hung Dao, I don’t remember clearly.

Several times I visited the Saigon National Music School. And then I bought some Vietnamese musical instruments and brought them back to the US.

Some people have said I’m crazy for Vietnamese music! I love Vietnamese music and I don’t know why. Vietnamese traditional music is really seductive.

In 1971, I planned to return to Saigon to research Southeast Asian music, particularly Vietnamese music. But because of the war, I couldn’t carry out a doctoral project about Vietnamese music.

When did you return to Vietnamese music?

In the US, I started teaching musical ethnography in 1975. In 1977, I resumed my research of Southeast Asian music, including Vietnamese. In 1983 or 1984, I met with Prof. Dr. Nguyen Thuyet Phong at Kent University. Prof. Phong helped me understand much more about the complexity and uniqueness of Vietnamese music.

After that, I returned to Vietnam in 1991, 1994, 1995… I attended some workshops about Vietnamese traditional music.

What do you think about the current situation of Vietnamese traditional music and theatre?

Saigon has changed very much. In my memory, cai luong was very popular in the past. Hat boi also had its own position. I still remember some famous artists like Ut Tra On, Ut Bach Lan, Viet Hung and Bach Tuyet. Neither cai luong nor hat boi have large audiences at present.

HCM City has become a place for researching hat boi rather than maintaining the real hat boi art. Traditional music has been reformed a lot. It is sad that reformed music is more favoured than traditional.

Though some kinds of traditional arts like ca tru, Hue city royal court music, don ca tai tu and water puppetry have been maintained, they can’t compete with reformed music, pop, dance, etc. The forte of musical institutes in Vietnam is western music.

However, the more I research Vietnamese music, the more I realise its uniqueness. It isn’t like any kind of music in neighbouring countries, including Chinese, Laos and Cambodian.

VietNamNet/SGGP