Southern amateur music of Vietnam or Don Ca Tai Tu in Vietnamese recognized officially as the world’s intangible cultural heritage by UNESCO
At the seminar of the intergovernmental convention 2013 on protection intangible cultural heritage celebrated at Baku (Azerbaijan) on 5th December, all representatives agree to vote for the Don ca tai tu music of Vietnam as the world’s intangible cultural heritage.
The Don ca tai tu music is the folk music kind of the Vietnam southern originated from folk culture combination with Nha Nhac-a royal music mainly performing for nobbles and royal in Hue citadel about 19th century.
The remarkable point of the Don ca tai tu music is playing music combination with singing throughout performance. It’s also the typical culture of the Vietnam southern. In the past, it’s easy to perform by the boys and girls who are working or after hard working day. They always collect together to enjoy this elegant pleasure, the costume is not important, only mainly focus on melody.
The solo performance usually includes 5 main musical instrument Vietnamese zither, monochord, Er Hu, kim instrument and ty ba instrument. Nowadays there are the invention in use of guitar to perform Don ca tai tu music.
This music is also seem like chamber music usually performing in small spaces like as in house, weeding, death anniversary, birthday party, festivals or in harvest. The bold of kind music is strong relaxing feature than the ritual music feature.
About the costume, so people who take part in the southern amateur music performance are normally have close relationship, or neighbors or friends that the costume is simple and hardly focuse. When displaying temple or the stage, they should dress the costume which is suitable for purpose of those performances.