Why So Tiny When So Famous?!

By Carly

We walked into the tiny deserted hallway. We were going to a traditional Vietnamese music shop to see the owner and his daughter play some traditional instruments. 

The tiny, deserted hallway

We walked into the main room.  You probably are thinking the main room is a big room with instruments on stands and all kinds of shiny and fancy things, but it was almost the complete opposite. Though he was one of the most famous traditional musicians in Vietnam, his shop was a tiny room, about ten feet wide by ten feet long. It had wacky instruments covering all four walls and lining the edge of the floor. There were also some instruments hanging from the ceiling!  Two instruments had been placed on the floor. A girl who looked about 14 years old sat in front of one and an old man sat at the other.  

  

It turned out that the girl was actually 20 years old and was studying at the Traditional Music University and the old man was her father so he was probably about 45 or 50 years old, though he looked older.  

Adele, Perrin, Emma, Zoe and I sat on the floor and the grown-ups sat on spindly wooden stools. Once we were all seated, the man and the girl started to play. The song was called “Woman Are As Beautiful As The Moon.”  

It was like traditional Vietnamese music and classical music mixed together. It was beautiful and the funkiest music I had ever heard. While we were listening, I looked around at all the instruments. I saw a long object that looked like a banjo with two strings and a bow. 

I saw some hollow, oval-shaped objects that were, for some unknown reason, painted to look like eggplants. Each had a crack in the side to let the sound out.

The song ended. We all applauded happily. The girl and father asked if anyone wanted to try to play the instruments. We eagerly agreed.  I got to play the daughter’s instrument that had one string that was pulled between a bamboo stick on one side and a sliver of a water buffalo horn on the other side.  You put your finger on one of the markings on the shaft of the instrument and with a little piece of flat bamboo, you twanged the string to make a note.  You could make the note go higher or lower by bending the water buffalo horn.  The instrument had a battery in the bottom to project the sound.  We thought that was funny because we didn’t think a battery would be inside an instrument that had been played for more than one thousand years.  The sound a thousand years ago would not have been as loud or as nice because they didn’t have batteries or modern tools.

After everyone had had a turn, we walked out of the main room and into a tiny storage room. There were a whole lot of drums and a bamboo xylophone that slanted downward so if a squirrel wanted to it could slide  down it and have a nice, powerful back massage.   I wish there were bigger ones for people!  There was also a wooden frog with a hole in the middle and a spikey line down its back.  You use a wooden stick and run it down the spikey back to make a croaking sound. We banged and goofed around for a while, of course not damaging anything, and then, when everyone was ready, we said thank you and stepped back into the Vietnam sun.