The Six Tones: Signal in Noise - Frisk, Henrik; Östersjö, Stefan; Thuy, Nguyen Thanh; My, Ngo Tra (Sweden dB Productions, 2013)
This double CD was recorded at a point when The Six Tones had begun opening up towards the many subcultures of experimental and electronic music on the scene in Hanoi. Initially,the group was focussed specifically on the encounter between the traditional Vietnamese music that Ngô Trà My (who plays àn b§u) and NguyÅn Thanh Thçy (who plays àn tranh) represented and the Western experimental and composed musics that Henrik Frisk and Stefan Östersjö were associated with. From this point of departure, the group became more and more a venue for destabilizing our identities as performers. This instability has urged a different kind of listening, a tuning in to the noise of an unknown music. The essence of our aims with the group is to create music that builds on the tension between our distinct traditions but in order to achieve a more in depth understanding of these interrelations, many years of mutual learning have been called for.Since 2006, The Six Tones have been bringing art music from Vietnam and Europe together, touring as an instrumental music group or in music theatre projects, and working with choreographers. We play traditional Vietnamese music in hybrid settings for Western stringed instruments and traditional Vietnamese instruments. We improvise in traditional and experimental Western idioms and also commission new music by composers in Asia as well as in Western countries.The Six Tones are NguyÅn Thanh Thçy and Ngô Trà My and the Swedish guitarist Stefan Östersjö (also playing many other stringed instruments). Since the project started, we have been collaborating with the composer and improviser Henrik Frisk, who has both composed works for the ensemble as well as toured with the group as a lap top improviser. The name of the group, emanating from a composition by Henrik, relates to the fact that the Vietnamese language is a tonal language using six tones or intonations.Our main ambition has been to create a foundation for a meeting between two distinct musical cultures on equal terms. This practice implies the questioning of what is centre and what is periphery: is the Western art music the norm (centre) and the traditional Vietnamese music an exotic other? Still a long time after the world had been found to rotate around the sun, the world, in the mind of a Westerner, continued to be centred round Europe. In music, we find a parallel in the conception of differences of a hierarchic nature between notated and orally transmitted music. What can our distinct musical cultures learn from each other? How can the Western art music adopt a listening role? How can our ears be tuned to hearing signal in the noise?The Vietnamese modal scales, or iÇu, can be divided into two main systems, the b¯c system and the nam system, which can be translated as North and South respectively. These terms do not simply represent music from these geographical regions, but rather they refer to emotional types not unlike those of the Western cultural construct of major and minor scales, hence nam modes are sad and b¯c modes are happy. However, the way these types are distinguished is equally dependent on the articulation and vibrato types stipulated by the mode and not always by different pitch shapes. For instance the Ai and Xuân modes have identical pitch structures but by the way the ornamentation is shaped, the modes afford clearly distinct musical materials.The opening and closing tracks are different versions of Nam Ai,a central piece in the Tai Tú traditions in the south. It expresses the longing and melancholy that is characteristic of much Vietnamese music. This specific expression is embedded in the sliding articulation and the microtonal intonation that for a Western ear may sound like a meeting between the blues and French baroque music. On the CD there are two versions of Nam Ai, one with trio and electronics and, in the closing track, an electronic remix of the same performance.The second track on the first CD is a famous piece from the northern Cheo theatre. HÁ MÓi is music that is associated with a clown-like figure, but the jocular mood introduced by this tune is very soon interrupted by cut up phrases, suggesting a more violent narrative. Just after the recording was made in Hanoi, we went to Seattle to start up a music theatre project involving the American composer Richard Karpen. In the development of IDIOMS, a piece of music theatre with actors from three continents, HÁ MÓi became one of the core materials and in the composition we explored yet new ways in which the traditional music could be decomposed.Another mode of central importance is Oán, which is very closely connected to Ai but its characteristic expression is even more profound. In Oán, the same scale becomes the point of departure for the most elaborate ornamentation that you find in Vietnamese traditional music. One of the first traditional tunes that we tried to bring into dialogue with experimental modes of expression is called Té ¡iOán (perhaps the most extensive expression of the features of theOán mode). We played it the first times in concerts in Sweden in 2007. In the first versions we decided on a simple formal structure, dividing the piece in the middle with a free improvisation in between sections of the piece played in traditional style. At this time, we were well aware of the experimental nature of this approach. In later versions we have attempted at a more complex layering and structuring of the different materials. Té ¡iOán is a piece that belongs to a firmly established tradition, in which the ornamentation and the sequence of melodic patterns are quite clearly defined. Hence, the identity of this music is in many ways as fixed as that of any composition in Western art music. How can hybrid identities be negotiated in a cross-cultural collaboration like ours? How can we identify musical meaning in music that redefines the fundamental building blocks of a certain musical tradition?The rehearsals before the recording session with Lê PhÕ, a leading proponent of traditional flute music in Vietnam, were memorable. Not only were we taken aback when we heard a musician with such a strong foundation in traditional music he is currently the head of the department for traditional music at the Vietnam national Academy of Music -take off in free flight like a Vietnamese Charles Lloyd. Also, our encounter with Lê PhÕ became an expression of how music can speak beyond language. We had decided to work on a traditional piece titled D¡ CÕ Hoài Lang.(This piece is also recorded on the CD as a duo with dan tranh and guitar.) The lyrics describe the love of a woman for her husband who had been away for a long time at the front. Hence, yet another piece of Vietnamese music that expresses longing and melancholy. Thuy and My were on tour in Thailand so Henrik and I had no one to help us with translation. We had never met before the first rehearsal, just a few days before the recordings were made. Henrik was playing electronics based on loops that we had recorded. In fact, I think the way we structured the electronics was a more Western take on melancholy: the sonority of the loops based on guitar samples that we made in the hotel room and the way they created a soundscape that somehow enhanced the expression of the flute and guitar music are not so distant to the melancholy of a Daniel Lanois production. Anyway, we were of course anxious to know how Lê PhÕ felt about working with electronics like this. (Henrik was also processing the sound of the flute.) To our surprise, he didnt say anything about the electronics, he just looked like beyond himself (but maybe he was rather looking inside himself) and said it was fine, he thought of his mother and her house and then he just played. It is only now when we talk about the expressive content of this song that I realize what he actually was saying. When he speaks of his mother, he is talking about the same longing for the past as is the fundamental resonance of this music. The titles of the two tracks recorded with Lê PhÕ D¡ mÙt and D¡ hai- refer primarily to the first line in the text of the original song, D¡ CÕ Hoài Lang. The ancient meaning ofD¡ is night. In modern Vietnamese it may refer to heart, mind, memory and to many other inner qualities. Beyond the fact that we did not share a verbal language to communicate with, the making of these recordings expressed so much of the D¡ that we all carry inside.The making of this album confirmed an already ongoing widening of the space for the work of the group. Three more guest performers in the recording sessions point towards the many currents of experimental music on the lively scene in Hanoi. Of course, for us, the presence of Trí Minh, Vi Nht Tân and Tr§n ThË Kim NgÍc was different to the encounter with Lê PhÕ. These three leading musicians within experimental Vietnamese music were close friends of ours since many years.Sinc
Keywords: 21st Century (2001-2100); Instrumental music; Avant-garde