Blind Spot – Hanoi New Music Festival Performance Review

Our music reviewer Paul Zetter sees The Hanoi New Music Festival kick into action with five mesmerising performances

With our daughter now in the midst of the ‘terrible twos’ experimenting with the sound of food thrown on the floor, nighttime wailing and using household objects as percussion instruments, I may find it difficult to attend all the events in the exciting Hanoi New Music Festival 2013. This is a great shame because judging by last night’s performances in Blind Spot and the concert programme, leading contemporary musician and musical director Kim Ngoc has curated a festival of depth, variety and ambition.

Blind Spot included five specially commissioned pieces spanning the ages, new and old technologies and theatrical traditions, all played by the leading crop of Vietnamese experimental musicians. We were treated to a show that brought with it the sweep of nascent and traditional Vietnamese culture harnessed to cutting edge experimental innovation in sound and performance. The pieces left me mesmerised, set adrift in swirls of emotion, unexpected cultural juxtapositions, a deep sense of longing and Kim Ngoc’s real speciality, the silences between sounds.

We are lucky enough to be in the midst of musical evolution – could such a varied, high quality experimental music programme have been put together 5 even 2 years ago? I doubt it. Things are changing fast, risks are being taken more frequently and new initiatives such as Domdom are spearheading this blossoming of talents from both performance and audience development perspectives, just like Doclab have done and continue to do for experimental film. Most of all the music is losing its previous tendency towards insularity and is now reaching out to new audiences to question and challenge them.

And as the music evolves so too performers are becoming more creative by stretching the genre and adding theatrical elements such as dramaturgy and storytelling. Last night, drawing on Ca Tru, Tuong Opera traditions and intermingling them with hip-hop, rock drums, mime, mouth harp, live sound, violin, traditional Vietnamese instruments and electric guitar, this panoply of sounds felt more connected to the world we live in and paradoxically, given this great variety, more homogenous to the emerging Vietnamese experimental music canon.

But with this enlarging of scope and ambition come new challenges such as lighting design, stage management and stage craft. As musicians bring in new elements that combine music, movement, dance, theatre and cultural traditions so too must a new vocabulary and skills set of stagecraft and lighting be developed to bring the music out of the shadows, literally and metaphorically. I’m sure these will all be addressed in good time by the likes of Domdom, Kim Ngoc and her cohort of experimental musicians.

Below are some details about each performance in note form from the scribbles I made in the darkness at the show. At first I was going to edit them into something more comprehensible but then thought it better to leave them be but with some small clarifications.

Circle of life
Pham Thi Hue
Nguyen Khac Linh

Exquisite opening plucked notes, lost in silence, hanging in the dark, light catching the gently swaying tassel of the Dan Ty Ba, building momentum, Linh’s weaving hands above Hue’s head mesmerising, Linh grabbing Hue’s fretboard in full strum – heartbreak in the violence, resolution in unity, I will remember this forever.

Piano and concrete drilling and cutting
Vu Nhat Tan

Good to see Tan back at the piano, beginning to feel affinity with his noise concept, simplicity of one person alone duelling with sound, lovely slightly out of tune upright piano evoking a home piano, swells and crescendos of drills so musical! (yes I really wrote that!)

Fall into sleep
SonX
Nguyen Duc Manh
Dao Van Trung
Nguyen Thanh Huyen
Luong Hue Trinh

Disparate percussive sounds really resounding in the theatre, not sure about SonX passively watching his own show! Manh’s Tuong costume impressive but muted in this light. On his back vibrating like a disturbed insect, extraordinary incandescent crescendo full of spectral sounds at close intervals – falling away at the end like the mourning of a great loss. Beautiful.

Shhhh
Nguyen Manh Hung
Nguyen Dinh Nghia

Hung’s music is like his paintings – getting to the soul of things. Did Leo Fender envisage such sounds when he invented the Stratocaster? Alien space-like sounds developing into soulful loop, Nghia wonderful driving intensity on drums building slowly, ending up with Ginger Baker-like bass drum clusters – impressive. Ending drifting away. I love the interplay between them, Hung always plays so soulfully amidst the pedals and electronics.

Waiting For Wind to Fly a kite
Nguyen Anh Duc
Nguyen Duc Minh

Zen-like, voices emanating from deep within, music of the monastery, beautiful physical theatre feel with gentle touches so well executed, lonely wailing, looking for a lost partner, nose flutes like birdsong in a forest, jews harp resonating his whole body. The ending of silence such a beautiful way to finish – over 60 seconds of it – this is what it’s all about. So beautifully understated.

So if you like your music with an edge and have some free time between now and 8 December get your green or yellow pass and attend as many of the festival events as possible – you’ll be part of something exciting and meaningful. Meanwhile, I’m back to my own young experimental musician…