More than 100 people were present at professor Tran Van Khe’s house in HCM City on the rainy evening of August 1 to listen to his presentation entitled “Traditional Music – Non-Exotic Development”.

Prof. Tran Van Khe (first from the left) at the presentation.

Young people often hesitate when they hear about traditional music, but in this presentation, Prof. Tran Van Khe and artists proved that traditional music is a huge heritage, which summarises our ancestors’ existence.

In the context of integration, how to develop traditional music to avoid exoticness is difficult. In his presentation, Prof. Khe demonstrated the difference in culture and feeling between Vietnamese and other peoples.

Western people have their own culture so feelings in their music stem from that culture and it is different for Vietnamese people’s culture and music.

Many genres of music have been handed down through generations to become traditional music. However, to not being forgotten, traditional music needs to develop along with the history of Vietnam, Prof. Khe said.

The professor protested the combination of traditional music and western music, which is called “innovation”.

The audience was surprised by drummer Nhut Dung’s performance with a trong bong (a traditional small-sized drum), and gave him tremendous applause.

A tourism student said: “I didn’t know that our traditional drum was so wonderful!”

Young people like this student may be surprised because they don’t have opportunities to enjoy and learn about traditional music.

The student was more surprised when he learned that drummer Nhut Dung performed Vietnamese drum and won the hearts of UNESCO and international experts.

“Remember your feelings when you listened to this drum performance… This is the strength of traditional music,” said Prof. Tran Van Khe.

Many young people surrounded dan tranh (16-chord zither) player Hai Phuong to ask her about the dan tranh class. A female student named Ngoc Thy said: “I have to study traditional music. It is embarrassing to not know about our music!”

VietNamNet/Tuoi Tre