The most prominent model is the Nghe Tinh Vi-Giam singing club in Hung Tan Commune, Hung Nguyen District. Members, from the elderly to the youth and children, all join hands to preserve and promote the value of Nghe Tinh Vi-Giam singing in the community.
Nghe Tinh Vi-Giam Singing was born in labour, associated with the working and production environment. Each profession has its own vi verses and melodies, such as vi phuong cay, vi do dua, vi leo non, and ho keo go.
Established in 2012, the Nghe Tinh Vi-Giam singing club in Hung Tan Commune has 45 members, actively participating in activities, collecting and teaching heritage.
Artist Cao Thi Tu and artist Ngo Thi Huyen are now in their 60s and are active members, regularly practising, performing and exchanging art with neighbouring communes, participating in competitions, and mass art performances and teaching young people in the countryside.
The sweet and profound lullabies, vi songs, antiphonal songs, and improvisations learned orally from grandparents and parents while working and farming, are now taught to the next generation.
Passionate about each vi verse and melody imbued with the love of the countryside, the artists affirm that Nghe Tinh Vi-Giam Singing will never fade, because one generation naturally teaches the next.
Nghe Tinh Vi-Giam Singing was born in labour, associated with the working and production environment. Each profession has its own vi verses and melodies, such as vi phuong cay, vi do dua, vi leo non, and ho keo go.
Nowadays, traditional craft villages are gradually disappearing, causing traditional performance spaces to disappear, instead, new performance environments are being built and formed on walking streets or reenacted in festivals, performances or stages, associated with political events, festivals, and holidays.
According to artisan Nguyen Trong Tam, Vice Chairman of the Nghe Tinh Vi and Giam Folk Song Club in Hung Tan Commune, the most important thing in staged performance spaces for Vi and Giam folk songs is not to be distorted or deviate from tradition.
This is very necessary, both to serve and satisfy current tastes and at the same time to create an environment for folk songs to exist. People, tourists, and audiences will have access to Vi and Giam folk songs. If the performance space is limited, young people will be far away from this traditional heritage.
Members of the Nghe Tinh Vi-Giam singing club in Hung Tan Commune have also actively preserved and protected the heritage with many solutions, focusing on preserving ancient documents and values that have been passed down in the community such as melodies, excerpts, folk plays of Nghe An, and folk songs.
Club members actively record and edit through musical notation activities, collecting ancient melodies from the elderly. Since its establishment, the club has collected 15 valuable folk works, adding to the folk document repository of Nghe An Province.
As someone who actively composes and writes new lyrics for ancient melodies, artist Nguyen Trong Tam said: “In addition to the simple, rustic melodies composed during labour, folk songs, and Giam songs also have ancient lyrics with profound teachings and education from the ancients, advising children to live filial piety such as: Father and son affection and Ten graces of parents.
To make it easier for the younger generation to access, I choose new themes that are suitable for contemporary life, adapt and compose easy-to-listen and easy-to-remember lyrics so that young people can easily understand and absorb them.”
Up to now, the club has composed, arranged and performed 38 new folk songs. Determining that the transmission of heritage plays an important role for the younger generation, once a month, the artisans and members of the club’s board of directors actively coordinate with schools in the commune to teach students during extracurricular activities.
The club has more than 20 children studying, who now know how to sing the basics of Vi-Giam folk songs. Along with many solutions, in competitions, performances and exchange forums, attention is paid to including the duration of Vi-Giam folk songs to widely promote this heritage.
The Vi-Giam singing club of Hung Tan Commune was also assigned the task of performing experimental performances to promote heritage, welcome visitors, and exchange models, but has not yet been able to build a typical local tourism product to attract tourists. In addition, the club’s activities still face many difficulties, the most limited of which is operating costs.
Although there are many challenges in preserving and promoting heritage values, it can be seen that the children of Hung Tan have made constant efforts to keep the Vi-Giam melodies alive, enriching the spiritual life of the people as well as propagating, developing and widely promoting the value of this precious heritage in contemporary life.
