Hasta La Ideas

The Thanglong Water Puppet Theatre in Hanoi shows a traditional type of Vietnamese water puppetry that dates back to the 11th century. It started as a way to rid rice plantations of evil spirits (hence the “water stage”), and soon grew into entertainment for ancient villages, and is unique to Northern Vietnam (though it’s now shown in Saigon as well). It is a puppet show with traditional, moral stories told from a peasant point of view, with all the dialogue in Vietnamese, beautiful live traditional Vietnamese music and expertly done puppetry. The puppets all have movable limbs (connected through a rope system) and are attached to 3-4 m bamboo poles, which are controlled by very skillful puppeteers that actually hide behind a bamboo curtain behind the “water stage”. Since they are standing in the water during the whole performance (reaching up to their chests), they wear waterproof fishermen trousers.

The whole performance is accompanied by a group of traditional Vietnamese musicians and some singers that also sing parts of the text of the characters in the play. The most striking and unique musical instrument used is the Dan Bau. It has only one string but can deliver wonderful, captivating sounds playing any notes you like in a tonal range up to 3 octaves. It consists of five components: A sound box trapezium shape (around 110cm long), a spout made of bamboo or buffalo horn (which acts as a super whammy bar), a gourd (traditionally used to assist the sound box to amplify the sound but nowadays mainly used as decoration, since modern Dan Baus have built-in magnetic pick-ups, similar to electric guitars), one string (a metal string from .30mm to .40mm) and a tuning peg (or geared tuning machine similar to a Western guitar or bass).

The player plucks the string with the right hand while removing the lower side of the same hand from one of the 7 harmonic note locations on the string, and simultaneously controls the pitch of the sound with the left hand by moving the sprout (acting similar to a super whammy bar), putting less or more tension on the string. The left hand also produces the various ornament to the sound (vibratos, glissandos, etc.). The result is a harmonic sound – full, rich of overtones and ornaments and very unique, even though sometimes it reminded me of a Hawaiian guitar.

If you would like to get an idea of what it sounds like, please click here for a sound file or here to pre-listen to some Dan Bau music by Pham Duc Thanh. You can also watch some Dan Bau players in action in these videos, featuring again Pham Duc Tanh, or this one showing a more traditional, simple version as oppose to this video which features an electric Dan Bau (unfortunately in combination with some very cheesy electric guitars).

(more…)