Not the first 26 string dan tranh!

[Vi An]

N. Lam Mekong River : traditional music of Vietnam : [Dan tranh music] Ngoc Lam & Que Lam], [California] : Ngoc Que Productions p1992. Folk songs -- Vietnam.
MUSIC reserves CD-4 921

From my sources at Saigon Strings my dear friend Paul mentioned that Ngoc Lam developed a 26 stringed dan tranh.

I'm very curious now to aquire this CD!

My regards:

Vi An.

[davidmdahl]

Hello Vi An,

Gosh, I grab just about every trad. VN CD I can find, especially dan tranh, and this one is new to me. I presume that it is long out-of-print, but will keep an eye out for it. The inter-library loan system might be worth a try. It looks like the CD might be at Kent State.

I wonder where Ngoc Lam lives now.

Best wishes,

David

[kyokuhon]

Hi, David and Vi An,
I wonder if I could take this line to ask you about Vietnamese music. I have several CDs and love it; I've bought a dan nguyet, dan sen, and dan ty ba, probably ill-advisedly, since I don't think they are very good instruments, but I was in love. The trouble is that I'm fairly isolated, in terms of Asian music, out here in Western Mass. There are quite a few Vietnamese people around, but none that I can find who play traditional music. Are there any printed materials you could get for me (I've tried getting stuff from VN via internet, but so far it hasn't worked out) or just advice about learning more? Any help would be much appreciated.
Thanks,
Chris.

[davidmdahl]

Hello Chris,

That is great! I don't know all that many people to chat about VN music, so I am very pleased to meet another.

If you could tell me more specifically what you are looking for, I will try to help. If you want sheet music, there are some options, but they are not much use without a recording since VN modes do not match Western scales. There is not very much in English on VN music, but I can direct you to a few resources.

One source of books on VN music, although they are in VN, is the Vietnamese Institute for Musicology. Through VIM I have ordered books, instrument methods, and CDs.

vn-style.com/vim/english/introduction/

Another website is partly in English and Vietnamese. The Tieng Hat Que Huong Ensemble is led by the virtual grandmother of VN traditional music co^ Pham Thuy Hoan, who has taught many of the VN musicians I have met. One of their CDs is easily available and highly recommended "From Saigon to Hanoi". The following site has audio and video clips from their CDs and VCDs, as well as downloadable sheet music.

www.tienghatquehuong.com

The Institute for Vietnamese Music is led by several very respected and experienced scholars and musicians. They list several books in English on their website and I highly recommend them. Two in particular that I liked are "Contemporary Issues in Vietnamese Music" and "Neotraditional Music in Vietnam". The leadership of IVM published a journal in the 1990's by the name of "nhac viet - The Journal of Vietnamese Music". Some issues are probably still available from IVM, but you might also try through a good library.

www.vietnamesemusic.us

Finally, you could try the relatively obvious, and dig up the past and recent articles on Vietnamese music in the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. I believe that the old article was written by Tran Van Khe and the most recent article was written by Dr. Phong Nguyen, who is one of the leaders of IVM described above.

Please let me know if you have any questions, and I will try to help. I am curious to know which CDs you have. I have over 100 VN CDs, so I can probaby make some suggestions if I know what you like.

Best wishes,

David Dahl
Portland, Oregon

[davidbadagnani]

Hi everyone,

I'm a new member of this board. I play Chinese, Thai, and Vietnamese music and study kèn (oboe) with Phong Nguyen (director of the Institute of Vietnamese Music) in the Cleveland, Ohio area. I was invited to join recently by LDHan, an editor on the guzheng article at Wikipedia. It's good to meet you all!

Interesting about Ngoc Lam's instrument. Although it's not certain the consensus is that Ngoc Lam's dan tranh is actually a store-bought extended Chinese made guzheng played as a dan tranh (although she claims it was "created" by her). If we knew where she was we could ask her ourselves but nobody knows what she's doing these days. She was doing some interesting cross-cultural stuff with Henry Kaiser back in the '90s.

[davidbadagnani]

I've got a copy of the Ngoc Lam/Que Lam CD in front of me. There's no address or record label listed anywhere. It might have been a limited edition CD.

The Switchboard.com website shows 12 people named Ngoc Lam in California and 2 Que Lams.

In the liner notes to the CD it states that Ngoc Lam is from Cai Be, near Saigon, that she studied dan tranh with Nam Vinh, came to the U.S. in 1979 and settled in Berkeley, California in 1982, where she taught dan tranh, developed the 26-string dan tranh, and studied zheng with Liu Weishan.

The notes also say that Que Lam (daughter of Ngoc Lam) studied dan tranh with her mother, and zheng with Liu Weishan, and that she has a degree in mathematics education from Stanford and that she teaches high school math in San Francisco.

[davidmdahl]

Welcome davidbadagnani! And an extra welcome to you for your interest in Vietnamese music. I have communicated with Phong by email enough to know I would love to meet him in person. Is he back from VN? I know he has been in Hanoi (?) for a while to setup a musicology department. I received word of his meetings with Thay Nguyen Vinh Bao in Saigon. I would have loved to be a fly on the wall for those events.

Recently I saw a photo of an older metal-strung guzheng, and it was indistinguishable from a dan tranh. It seems likely that there has been a lot of sharing of ideas between tranh and guzheng. My tranh from Thay Vinh Bao has a box on the right side very much like that typical of a guzheng, although in other respects the construction is not nearly as heavy as a guzheng. Photos are on my stub of a website at:
home.comcast.net/~davidmdahl/

Best wishes,

David

[davidbadagnani]

Thanks, David! Dr. Nguyen remembers you and has been looking at this board since I showed it to him yesterday; he is impressed with your knowledge and seriousness about Vietnamese music (and that of everyone else here). He will be in the U.S. through early May and would be happy to meet you anytime.