✩⡱ music & gender!

 In this week's blog, we're discussing music and gender - so, I'll be talking about "Múa lân" in the Vietnamese culture specifically from my own personal experience!

"Múa lân" translates to "lion dance" which is a traditional dance performed in Asian countries that celebrate Lunar New Year.

For general information: Lunar New Year (Tết in Vietnamese) celebrates the arrival of spring in the Vietnamese calendar, which is based mostly from the Chinese lunisolar calendar. It is usually celebrated in February or March, where communities will come together and celebrate the new year with food, dancing, and music.

｡ﾟ•┈୨♡୧┈•ﾟ｡

Here's a pic of my sisters and I for this year's Tết!

Our traditional dresses are called "áo dài", which both men and woman wear - we just have different styles.

Moving on, the "múa lân" dance is performed by males exclusively, where they will dress in a lion costume and flap the mouths and eyes open and close, while also stepping around like a lion! The dancers will often come up to little children watching as well, where they will dance for them.

As told by both my mom and dad and tradition, múa lân would be performed by martial artists (mostly men), showcasing different forms and positions of the martial arts styles.

The music that accompanies the dance is very percussive, as you can hear from the video. There's a lot of drums and cymbals played for the lions to dance to. Males do almost everything in these dances - However, recently in some cases, like in Western cultures, females may partake in the lion dance with the drum-playing or dancing. It is not common though.

The picture above shows "Ông Địa" who stays at the top of the "procession". 

"Ông Địa" is the spirit of the earth and represents Buddha, where he stays at the top of the line to ward off evil spirits and keep the lion controlled as well. Both Ông Địa and the lion dance and walk together in order to chase off evil spirits for a lucky new year.

Ông Địa is also a funny and "round-bellied" guy (alluding to Buddha's image), which makes him a good spirit for Tết as well.

I found a great video to show how the music is performed for the dance. Like I mentioned before, the drum and cymbals are what make the music what it is. And as you can see, there are competitions, mostly run by martial art studios, for who can play the music the best.

The music for the lion dance is loud and exciting, with an intense beat. However, this used to (honestly it still does...) scare me SO much as a kid. Even now, I can still get anxious with the dance and beat overall. I remember as a kid, I used to watch múa lân at my Vietnamese church when Tết would come around, and one time one of the male lion dancers came up to me. He made me cry so hard because of how scary and intense the dancing and music was, LOL.

I love my culture so much, how music, dancing, and gender all correlate is so special in keeping our culture alive today. I hope you one day get to experience the liveliness of múa lân in person, if you ever get the chance!