Ca tru teacher Nguyen Phu De (L) poses with his student, Bach Van. Van and one of De’s other students, Pham Thi Hue city, are involved in a feud over the names of their respective ca tru preservation groups.

The Thang Long Ca tru Club in Hanoi is asking the Thang Long Ca tru Cultural Center to change its name to prevent confusion, but a master of the ancient style of singing says both sides are creating an unnecessary fuss.

“Both the center and the club just want to prove their importance to ca tru, and they’ve taken a simple matter and turned it into a big fuss.”

Thang Long Ca tru Cultural Center opened on April 3, aiming to preserve ca tru, or hat a dao (maiden singing), by training new artists.

The center is also advertised as a tourist attraction in order to promote the almost 1,000- year-old music.

However, the Thang Long Ca tru Club has been working in Hanoi for the past three years with the same goal of preserving and promoting the art.

Singer Pham Thi Hue, who runs the club and is one of De’s students, recently asked the Copyright Office under the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism to order Thang Long Ca tru Cultural Center to change their name.

“People can mistake this name for the other, so the fame and the rights of the club will be affected,” she said.

In Vietnam’s application to UNESCO to recognize ca tru as an international intangible cultural heritage, the club is listed among the preservation groups, Hue said.

Ca tru, dated back from the Ly Dynasty (1009-1225), was first performed in sacred ceremonies and rituals. It was eventually adopted as popular entertainment in the 20th century.

Bach Van, deputy director of art for the Thang Long Ca tru Cultural Center, guaranteed that the center name will not affect the operations of the Thang Long Ca tru Club.

The singer, also one of De’s students, added that the name “Thang Long,” the old name of Hanoi, does not belong to anyone in particular.

Van said she had received anonymous letters rudely asking her to change the center’s name but Hue denied any links to those letters.

De feels that modern ca tru artists should be focusing on other, more pressing issues. He laments the lax standards now applied to ca tru artists. “Anyone these days can open a club or a center because there’s no one to test their ability.”

Most of the so-called teachers today have learnt “too little to teach other,” De said.

He said in the past, a ca tru singer had to study for six years then pass a test given by recognized masters of the art before teaching others.

Reported by Y Nguyen