Japanese and Korean tourists rarely miss a visit to the Diem Mot Thoi Tea Salon in downtown Ho Chi Minh City. Open for three years, the upstairs salon hosts performances of traditional music in an authentic setting – lots of dark furniture in an all–wooden room with an intimate stage. “The best in Saigon”, says Le Quy Duong, a contemporary playwright who suggested that I speak with the salon’s artistic director Si Hoang, a designer with a serious interest in preserving Vietnam’s traditional music.
The tearoom, Hoang says, is popular with VIPs. APEC dignitaries departed from their rounds of talks in Hanoi last year to listen to performances on indigenous instruments like the one-stringed dan bau, the t’rung (a triangular instrument made of bamboo pipes), stone drums and gongs. Last month Vietnamese and French government officials sat on intricately carved benches and sipped tea during the first half-hour of the show as models showed off the national dress, the ao dai.

Thinking big
Hoang indeed has big plans to introduce Vietnamese traditional music and theatre to the rest of the world. “With the country opening up, we are learning more about the outside, but forgetting ourselves,” he says.
His dream, he says, is to build a 1,000-seat structure in Ho Chi Minh City for traditional music (both folk and operatic forms) based on a similar theatre in Hue that has been designated a UNESCO heritage site. “We shouldn’t play in the Opera House. Music needs its proper setting.”
Fundraising has begun, and not a day too soon, since Hoang needs US$17 million to get the theatre up and running in two to 10 years. The tearoom is the only one of its kind in Vietnam, but the theatre would be especially notable – every traditional musical form would be presented including cheo, tuong, cai luong (traditional operetta which incorporates dance and acting), folk songs, ethnic music and dance.

An international audience
Eleanor Clapham, an Australian who has mastered cheo and tuong and recently performed at the Hanoi Opera House, shares Hoang’s enthusiasm for the country’s traditional music. Now in Saigon learning cai luong, she plans to introduce the music in an international tour and then return to Vietnam to open a company that will offer short extracts of musical theatre.
“Historical operatta like cheo can be too long and boring,” she says.“You need to make it accessible for modern audiences but not destroy the core of the art.” The stories in Vietnamese traditional drama are “amazing, with unusual twists”, perfect for introducing foreign audiences to an art form that the 26-year-old singer believes is unlike any other in the world. “It’s very physical. Cai luong is the equivalent to a ballet dancer singing opera at the same time.”
Both Hoang and Clapham say they will devote all their energy to see their dreams become reality.

For general information on traditional Vietnamese opera and music, go to www.vietnamopera.com. Eleanor Clapham’s website is www.eleanorclapham.com.