Artists of Thang Long Ca tru Troupe in a ca tru performance

The village of Chanh Thon in Ha Tay - Ha Noi is the center of the revival of a sacred musical style that has entertained kings and paupers.

This month marks the opening cultural center in Hanoi dedicated to the ancient form of Vietnamese chamber music ca tru, or hat a dao (maiden singing), which originated during the Ly Dynasty (1010-1225).

The music had originally been performed in sacred ceremonies and rituals in northern Vietnam, but fell into disrepute in the 20th century when it was adopted as popular entertainment by commoners. Before that, it had been adopted as the preferred entertainment of dignitaries and wealthy scholars.

The Thang Long Cultural Center for ca tru, will contain a 100-seat theater for live performances and a museum to showcase ca tru artifacts and history in both Vietnamese and English.

“This is the first and the only theater that organizes professional ca tru performances in Vietnam,” center manager Lan Huong said.

For hundreds of years ca tru was the main form of entertainment for kings and bureaucrats. And since those folkloric songs were commonly performed by young and beautiful female vocalists, ca tru began to be wrongly associated with a geisha-like form of entertainment.

Cradle of ca tru

Only 40 km from downtown Hanoi in Phu Xuyen District, lies the village of Chanh Thon, the cradle of ca tru that has bred many famous performers.

To commemorate their ancestors, local artisans organize a memorial ceremony followed by ca tru competitions on the fourteenth day of the first lunar month.

The incredible level of articulation and modulation required for ca tru is what makes the style so important. In Chanh Thon the three oldest ca tru veterans are in their 80s.

Interestingly, the three artists make up a complete chieu ca tru, a ca tru group with a female singer and percussion player and a lute player who sits on a mat. Two female vocalists, Nguyen Thi Vuon and Nguyen Thi Khuou, take turns singing while playing their phach - a pair of small wooden sticks beaten on a bamboo platform which serves as percussion. They are accompanied by instrumentalist Vu Van Khoai who plays a dan day - a long-necked, three-string lute exclusively used for ca tru.

It requires immense concentration to sing ca tru while playing the phach. A single mistake could spoil the whole song.

According to folk artisan Nguyen Thi Khuou, Chanh Thon has had ca tru traveling troupes for centuries. The singers often received invitations from other villages for important events.

A story has it that in the 1920s, Emperor Khai Dinh invited two Ca tru singers, Nguyen Thi Uoc and Vu Thi Vien, to perform in Hue city. The singers brought home many precious gifts from the king, including three pairs of ebony wood chopsticks and a horizontal lacquered board engraved with three characters Ca Huu Ky (Friend of Song) to honor them.

Several villagers since then opened ca tru inns (where this music was most often performed) in Hanoi, Bac Ninh and Ha Tay. Khuou often went to these inns to sit for hours to learn the music when she was still a young girl.

The misfortune of the noble song

Ca tru was once the pinnacle of all traditional arts and was performed in important celebrations and ceremonies. During war time, ca tru began to fall into decline.

“The village once had a lot of ca tru groups, even the kids could sing and play the instruments. People in the audience were mainly wealthy people so we could earn a lot of money. You could even buy a small piece of land if you worked really hard for a month. After 1945, singing became a ‘luxury item’ because people were suffering. In addition, ca tru began to get a bad reputation, so people in the village were afraid to openly admit they were ca tru singers,” Khuou says.

According to Khuou, there was a long time when people didn’t appreciate the value of ca tru - the traditional art that was initially performed for kings and queens. Then it was used to greet foreign diplomats and was popularized by bureaucrats who invited ca tru troupes to perform in their private houses.

However, by the early twentieth century, ca tru had become popular among ordinary people and was performed in ca tru inns. People started to call ca tru singers a dao (maiden) or co dao (lady). In those times there were two types of dao (maiden): the dao hat (singing maiden) and the dao ngu (sleeping maiden).

“If you are a dao hat, you can’t sleep with your clients, that is a strict rule of ca tru. Nevertheless, people were still confused thinking that a ca tru singer would also offer paid sex like a dao ngu,” says Khuou.

Revival

At the end of 2007, the Association of Vietnamese Folk Arts in cooperation with the Center for Vietnamese Education Exchange set up a club to teach and revive ca tru in the village. Within only one month, the class was fully-registered with a lot of young enthusiasts.

Artists Vuon, Khoai and Khuou are still in charge of those classes; sometimes they even have four generations sitting in the chairs.

The art form attracted so many fans that they had to move to the 200-year old meeting hall of the village because the ca tru ancestral worship house wasn’t big enough. There used to be four classes a week but since the kids got busier with their school work the village now only offers two.

“I am so happy because there are more and more teenage girls who are learning ca tru vocal and instrument skills,” Khuou says.

In the same effort to preserve ca tru and bring this ancient art to the world, the Thang Long Cultural Center for ca tru is to open on March 31 in Hanoi.

The new ca tru center is located inside the Museum of Vietnamese Revolution at 25 Tong Dan Street, Hoan Kiem District, Hanoi.

According to deputy art director Bach Van, the program was designed in consultation with renowned ca tru folk artists and will have several ca tru stars perform daily at 3:00 p.m., 4:30 p.m. and 6:00 p.m.

In 2005, ca tru was submitted to UNESCO for recognition as a Masterpiece of Oral and Intangible Cultural Heritage.

Source: Thanh Nien