VietNamNet Bridge – When an expert from the Vietnam Culture and Art Institute spoke out about how Quan Ho love duets were being performed he ended up being threatened with punishment.

Officials of the Vietnam Culture and Art Institute and Bac Ninh province and some quan ho senior artists recently asked the culture ministry to punish researcher Bui Trong Hien for “offending the quan ho community”.

Why?

In an interview with a local newspaper, Hien commented: “At present, there are people who know how to sing quan ho folk songs but they are not true quan ho artists. The remaining quan ho artists are considered as ‘natural resources” to be exploited by the quan ho society”.Hien also said that the unique characters of quan ho like hat canh, ket cha and ngu bon have disappeared. Quan ho is being commercialised and deformed.

Hien’s comments was severely opposed by the officials of his institute, the Vietnam Culture and Art Institute.
Some quan ho artisans from Bac Ninh province sent a petition to the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism saying that Hien “terribly offended the people of quan ho villages” and his comments made “the quan ho community ashamed and disappointed”.
The Vietnam Culture and Art Institute’s officials and officials of the Bac Ninh provincial Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism also sent a dispatch to the Ministry, requesting discipline for researcher Bui Trong Hien and forcing Hien to apologise to Bac Ninh quan ho artisans in the media.

Hien told Dat Viet newspaper: “I don’t understand why they manage to accuse me of offending the quan ho community. What I commented is the results of my research for several years”.

He said that while surveying and choosing songs to record and shoot for the file of Bac Ninh folk songs to submit to the UNESCO for recognising as “world intangible cultural heritage”, he observed the situation of quan ho in Bac Ninh at the insistence of local officials.
Hien confirmed that his comments are based on his surveys and interviews with senior quan ho artists like Nguyen Thi Khuou, Nguyen Thi Nguyen and Ngo Thi Nhi.

“Late scholars Hong Thao and Tran Linh Quy told me the real nature of quan ho. Looking back to the history, one can see that quan ho has been turned from a hobby into a commercial art. Modern quan ho is now accompanied by pop-styled music so it is not wrong to say that it is deformed,” Hien explained.

The change and commercialisation of quan ho is not a new matter. This problem has been reported by many newspapers. Many leading professors and doctors of folk culture agreed with Hien.

Prof. Dr. Ngo Duc Thinh, a member of the National Cultural Heritage Council, agrees that quan ho is deformed and is fading away.
“We told UNESCO about hat canh, ket cha and ngu bon but these things have lost,” Thinh said.
Prof. PhD. To Ngoc Thanh several times warned of this situation. In a workshop about cultural heritages, he said: “What is called quan ho village doesn’t exist nowadays. Quan ho is now performed on the stage, with amplification where quan ho singers ask for money like beggars in the old time”.

The famous scholars said that this situation is as a result of the policy to “modernize” quan ho.

Prof. Tran Van Khe said: “UNESCO’s experts honor quan ho because they saw the unique characteristics of quan ho in our file, such as ngu bon, ket ban, etc. I’m worryied that if they come to Vietnam to listen to the modern quan ho, they will not see these special features”.

Prof. To Ngoc Thanh said that researcher Hien has the right to express his opinion as a researcher of folk music.

“If anyone thinks that Hien’s opinion is wrong, they should debate it with Hien. If it is needed, an arbitration council can be set up to judge,” Prof. Thanh said.

VietNamNet/Dat Viet