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About The Music Of Vietnam 3 CD Boxed Set
Amazon.com Volumes 1.1 and 1.2 concentrate on an ensemble of 15 musicians who are among the most respected in Vietnam. They are professors at the conservatories and well-known artists and performers. They present modern "folk" music on traditional and adapted instruments; lutes, one string fiddles, flutes, and percussion dominate the tracks presented, with solo pieces and soloists backed by larger ensembles. Most are theatrical works, carefully arranged and presented, rather than raw field recordings. The western influences are subtle but obvious throughout. One of the standout sounds of Volume 1.1 is the dan bau and an electric cousin. It's a single string attached to a soundboard and a flexible neck. The neck is pulled to create the notes and a glissandi ornamentation, giving the distinct feeling of a slide guitar playing some ancient precursor to the blues. Volume 2 is a major undertaking--one of the few high quality recordings made of the Imperial ceremonial music of the ancient city of Hue. It is a distinctive mix of folk instruments and courtly formality--a highly disciplined and richly ornamented music originally conceived for moments of importance and ceremony. The focus is on the voices and the stories they tell. David Parsons went to Hanoi and Hue to record the music for this set, and he created excellent ambiance as well as choosing wonderful artists and musical selections. Each of the three CDs is also available separately. --Louis Gibson Review Indigenous music from Vietnam is atypical among Southeast Asian countries in that there's little relation to gamelan. According to the liner notes to this three-CD set, the music of China left the deepest mark on Vietnamese styles, which emphasize stringed instruments such as lutes and dulcimers and which make the music surprisingly accessible. Produced by New Zealand musician David Parsons with his wife, Kay, for this Tucson label Celestial Harmonies, this set has two CDs featuring a shifting ensemble of 15 classical musicians recorded in Hanoi. Several unusual instruments are employed, including the dan bau, a one-string guitar with a bamboo stem that bends notes like a whammy bar, and the k'ni, a rifle-shaped fiddle with a mouth attachment that can create a voice-box effect similar to that used by rock guitarists such as Peter Frampton and Joe Walsh in the '70s. The music is so expertly performed and so beautifully sequenced--the focus shifting from ensemble to solo pieces, from stringed instruments to flutes--that attention never wanders. On several pieces, when the full ensemble kicks in over a clippety-clop rhythm, it's hard not to visualize the music as themes from imaginary Vietnamese Westerns.The other volume, Imperial Court Music Recorded in Hue, is more rigidly structured, formal and closer to what many would expect Vietnamese traditional music to sound like. The most exciting pieces feature a clarinet playing long lines over pounding percussion, a combination common to the music of many Southeast Asian nations. -- Los Angeles Time, September 2, 1995
