Saigon: Masters of Traditional Music presents âm nhạc tài tử Nam Bộ, "music of the talented": a demanding chamber music of southern Vietnam, played by amateurs in the best sense of the word. It took shape in the second half of the nineteenth century, when circles of especially gifted musicians formed in the south. Its repertoire is part of the region's cultural identity, and the label counts it among the Vietnamese traditions now at risk of being forgotten.
Four musicians from Saigon play here. Vũy Chỗ plays the tranh zither and the tỳ bà lute, Ba Tu the kìm and cò lutes and the tranh, Phạm Văn Môn the ghita phím lõm guitar and the kìm, and Đoạn Văn Dũng (Quang Dũng) moves between cò, tam, sáo flute, bầu and violin. The recording was made on 26 May 1999 and mixed at the studios of Sender Freies Berlin, a coproduction with the Haus der Kulturen der Welt. Gisa Jähnichen produced the session with Dieter Hauer and wrote the booklet text.
The central idea of the music is that each piece is made anew in every performance. The players start from a preexisting outline with few fixed points and must give it an individual form, a notion of composition and creativity that differs from European classical models. UNESCO describes the same practice: performers vary a skeletal melody and its main rhythmic patterns through improvisation and ornamentation. The eleven pieces include Cổ Bản Vắn, Bình Bán Chấn and Xuân Tình Chấn, the eleven-minute Nam Đảo, Giang Nam Cửu Khúc and Dạ Cổ Hoài Lang, which lasts over nine minutes. Two short lý songs, Lý Giao Duyên and Lý Phước Kiến, close the record.
The CD received the Quarterly German Record Critics' Award. In Wergo's series it stands apart as a music of amateurs, born in circles of gifted players and described by the label as artistically ambitious. In 2013 UNESCO inscribed the art of đờn ca tài tử music and song on its Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. It links the music to daily work and life on the land and rivers of the Mekong Delta, and to festivals, celebrations and death anniversary rituals. The repertoire rests on twenty principal and seventy-two classical songs, and the skills still pass orally from masters to students.
A CD of 66 minutes in Wergo's Music of World Cultures series, catalogue SM 1533 2, released in 2000 with a 28-page booklet.
