✩⡱ one last music culture: vietnamese cải lương!

For the semester's last week, we were assigned to teach each other about something we haven't learned yet - naturally, I thought of Vietnamese "cải lương"!

The musical genre "cải lương" is something I've grown up hearing and watching in different settings, whether it be watching it at a family friend's house on the TV, or hearing an auntie sing it.

I know of this genre because of my heritage, so much of the information I am drawing from comes from both personal knowledge and various Vietnamese-tourist sources.

"Cải lương" is both a musical art and genre from Vietnam, roughly translated to "renovated theater". Its name's origin comes from it being a combination of three things: "tuồng", which is southern Vietnamese folk music and Chinese-based classical theater form, Asian popular theatre, and French comedy - this shows how big of an impact European (French) colonialism affected Vietnam and its culture.

Old, established, Vietnamese classical theatre (hát tuồng) was transformed with French colonialism. Cải lương somewhat resembled European comic opera, with its blend of dialogue and song (like a play). With cải lương performed in European-style playhouses in South Vietnam's village squares, the productions made much use of scenery, stage properties, and theatrical costumes.

While dating back to the 20th century and cải lương being performed in South Vietnam's village squares, it became a middle-class form of theater in the 1930s. Although cải lương is popular over all of Vietnam, it's most popular in the southern heartland.

Listening to folk music sang by locals resonates with many lower class people in Vietnam, as its like looking at, and hearing, their own lives through everyday words and simple melodies. It is the feeling of familiarity and nostalgia that makes cải lương folk music so popular among the working class of Vietnamese, especially with much of the working class being more elderly. 

The content of cải lương plays are often derived from old stories such as Behead Trinh An, wife of Ngu Van Thieu was darted, Thoai Khanh-Chau Tuan, etc.

It originates from the area of the Mekong Delta (a river), where it is still a largely popular traditional art performance.

Although cải lương is popular, and became popular in the 1930s, it had a major setback in popularity around the 1980s. This was due to televisions and TV programs becoming popular, causing people to go out less to attend performances. Instead, people wanted to stay at home instead. In the 60s of the 20th century, actors mixed singing with dancing, flying, martial arts to try to make the performances more lively.

Despite this, there have been efforts to revive cải lương's popularity like before - its popular now, but not as popular as before.

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There are two types of cải lương - "cải lương tuồng cổ", the ancient form, and "cải lương xã hội", which is more modern. With the more modern version, cải lương xã hội, having performances dealing with romantic, domestic relationships centering on the cultural and social norms of the country, its stories usually include more of modern Vietnamese society.

Cải lương tuồng cổ is characterized by performers dressed in old-fashioned costumes, with story plots being about legendary and historic tales of the feudal system.

Pictured above is how a typical cải lương play would look - there are traditional costumes that depict warrior-like people, along with mountainous backgrounds. Everything looks old-fashioned and almost mythical, as typical plays center around legends and historical fables.

Cải lương is generally like a western operetta, where there are about 20 main songs. However, each may be retuned with different emotional tempos, making several versions, or variations, of the songs.

The principal supporting songs in cải lương is the "vọng cổ", which literally means “nostalgia for the past”. It's a special type of singing, accompanied with background music of either the “Đàn tranh” (16-chord zither) or the guitar. Oftentimes, the audience watching will gasp, or react, to hearing the vọng cổ's first few bars, as they recognize it.

This is vọng cổ - as you can tell, it has a lot of strings/chordophones, as well as several different tones. When the vọng cổ is played, it's used to introduce or open a play. Think of it as almost like an introductory/opening song.

A cải lương orchestra mainly consists of guitars with concave frets. From these guitars with concave frets, the music is enriched with a variety of different tunes and notes. Without an orchestra, cải lương cannot be a performance. It not only is there to support the actors and actress's voices, but the orchestra helps to support the emotional and psychological feelings the songs aim towards. Once the melodies are played, they help create more dramatic effect to the script and show, making a show successful.

In cải lương plays, actresses and actors tend to use a combination of regular spoken dialogues and vọng cổ to express their thoughts and emotions. From this, the lyrics and tunes used in cải lương plays can be very emotional, with a majority of songs being lamentable lyrics and tones.

From this, we can say that cải lương plays are divided into two parts: dialogue and singing.

Although acting dialogue and singing are separated into two different parts of cải lương plays, the singing in cải lương plays are almost like speaking. The singing is not exaggerated with a prominent tune, rather it sounds more like a droning-type of speaking-song.

One interesting fact is how many western songs would appear in Vietnam, causing several artists to take its melodies and write Vietnamese lyrics for it, turning it into cải lương songs such as Pouet Pouet, Marinella, Tango mysterieux, etc.

Cải lương continues to withstand as a unique and intriguing art performance of people in Saigon City (now known as Ho Chi Minh City - however, many people still call it its old name, Saigon), and other southern provinces of Vietnam. Cải lương contributes a large portion to enriching the spiritual life of Vietnamese people, while also being the treasure of Vietnam folk songs.

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Sources:

https://www.vietnam.com/en/culture/art/theater/cai-luong-a-traditional-vietnamese-musical-performance-art.html

https://tourinhanoi.com/guide/cai-luong-singing/

https://www.mekong-delta-tours.com/travel-guide/cai-luong-the-traditional-music-of-the-mekong-delta.html

https://www.britannica.com/art/cai-luong

https://vietnamdiscovery.com/culture-arts/cai-luong/