Culture & Life

Conservation of Ca tru (ceremonial singing) heritage: Many positive signals

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  The publication of the Work “Research and revitalization of hát cửa đình (hát thờ) or singing at the village’s communal house (singing at rituals)” under the “Conservation of Ca trù heritage according to the new approaches; practicing perfectly singing and drumming in accordance with the traditional way” project of Researcher Bui Trong Hien and..

 

The publication of the Work “Research and revitalization of hát cửa đình (hát thờ) or singing at the village’s communal house (singing at rituals)” under the “Conservation of Ca trù heritage according to the new approaches; practicing perfectly singing and drumming in accordance with the traditional way” project of Researcher Bui Trong Hien and his colleagues, organized in Hanoi, has shown many positive signals for the protection and preservation of the heritage

Many ways to make Ca trù resuscitated

According to Researcher Bui Trong Hien, so far, the vocalists in Ca trù guilds have been trained by word-of-mouth teaching and mentoring. Over the years of “being abandoned”, imparting Ca trù has shown certain limitations. Today, the vocalists can be taught by artists; but then, they develop their own singing career, leading the gradual oblivion of prosody perception.

Based on such fact, together with the affinity with Ca trù and idea of summarizing the ways of playing musical instruments and clappers, singing and drumming by many talented Ca trù artists in the past, the rules has been proposed and the applications in practice has “sprouted” and been rapidly implemented.

In 2014, Researcher Bui Trong Hien has been self-studied the prosody of “ả đào” in coordination with Artist Nguyen Phu De – the last professional vocalist of 20th century. After the long time of hard working, “hát cửa đình” melody of ca trù has officially revived after 60 years of disappearance.

Since that first success, Mr. Bui Trong Hien has continued his engagement in collecting and restoring many extremely rare materials on ca trù, such as the recordings of famous ả đào vocalists in Kham Thien in the years 1920-1930, female singers (ca nương) Nguyen Thi Cuc, Dinh Thi Ban, Dinh Thi Nghia and male player of musical instruments (kép đàn) Dinh Khac Ban…, who, in the past, was the talents born in a famous ả đào family in the guild in Vinh Phuc.

The discovery of the Ca trù standards has made much progress in protection, preservation and development of this artistic heritage. [/caption]

In early 2017, the project officially started with selecting Phu Thi Ca trù Guild to practise the new theory system including learning prosody. In addition to the restored materials, researcher Bui Trong Hien và Phu Thi Guild, based on the existing Ca trù songs learned from artist Nguyen Phu De, released their Hát cửa đình album in which some representative songs characterized by classic systematicality are included. In the album, many melodies in the old recording tapes, such as giáo nhạc (hát giai, giáo hương), phú Kiều, hát lót, hãm cửa đình…, has been restored after decades of “freezing”.

According to Researcher Bui Trong Hien, he had to race against time, because now, among all artists who hold the precious values of the heritage, only Artist Nguyen Phu De is perspicacious enough. The obtained results have made the researchers satisfied. The researchers succeeded in summarizing the ca trù materials of a whole century to form the basic theory, based on that, to comprehend the music type.

Progress in ca trù conservation

“Bui Trong Hien has patiently studied, explored and introduced the Ca trù rules, initially contributing to the modeling in order to impart faster and more accurately”, praised Prof. Dr. To Ngoc Thanh, President of Association of Vietnamese Folklorists, having interests of national musical heritages at heart.

“Accordingly, the preservation of the ca trù heritage will not only focus on each song as before, but also base on the scientific rules”. According to Professor To Ngoc Thanh, what the researchers Bui Trong Hien and his colleagues has been doing is the new discovery in social science research.

When listening to the performance of the artists of Phu Thi Ca trù Guild based on the new approach, music researcher Dang Hoanh Loan also agreed that research Bui Trong Hien has been very successful in summarizing the ways of playing musical instruments and clappers, singing and drumming by many talented Ca trù artists in the past in order to propose the rules and applications in practice.

Researcher Dang Hoang Loan asserted that finding the new method of learning and imparting ca trù does not detract from the richness and creativity of this musical heritage. According to him, after comprehensively learning and mastering the artists’ skills of playing musical instruments and clappers and singing in accordance with the traditional standards, the freedom and generosity of ca trù will create the distinct style for each vocalist.

Many music researchers expect that the achievements in restoring the standards of Ca trù cửa đình will make much progress in protection, preservation and development of the Ca trù heritage in contemporary life.