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From: Dr. Tran Van Khe
Honor Member of CIM (UNESCO)
Vitry-sur-Seine FRANCE
To: Guitarist Vo Thuong
Westminster, CA 92684. USA
Vitry-sur-Seine, April 20, 1997
Dear Vo Thuong,
It has been four years since my son Tran Quang Hai invited me to
listen to your CD, in which you played the guitar, and told me that you
are his close friend, that you are a Vietnamese musician of marvelous
talent.
After that, I've had the pleasure to hear and see you play
casually, in person. I've had the pleasure to hear -- through those CD's
you gave me, you play many melodies of the pre-war period, many famous
pieces of Vietnamese and international music. The more I listened the more
I agreed with Hai's appreciation of your music. Your music is truly
"magical"! It is exceptionally captivating: once hearing the first phrase,
people feel eager to hear the next phrase, and so on, continuously until
the end, and then they still feel a reverberation of the melody.
Those melodies you played were very familiar to the listeners; but
through your style, each one had a new and rich vibrancy. With your
particular style, you do not only play with your fingers but also with
your heart; you do not only show your excellent technique but also your
wonderful art. When playing music, you do not recite the melodies but you
recreate them.
I know that you don't have to read music notes. For you, just
listening to a tune is sufficient to store it in your memory -- its melody
permeates into your veins to become your blood, your flesh and even your
soul. You are not an ordinary musician who recite musical notes of a tune
or the lyric of a song, but an artist who wholly perceives both the melody
and the lyric, who completely lives with the content and the form of the
musical piece. And when the music comes out from your body, from your
heart and soul, it brings along an emotion, a particular passion of yours
own. The listener finds that although tune is familiar but it is also
different, though old but also new. The music follows the artist's
inspiration to flow out like a cascade, to float like the cloud, to drift
like the wind, to resonate like a bell. |
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You have the instinct of a
Vietnamese musician to intuitively apply the Vietnamese esthetic
principles of "truth, square, flower and leave." We are "truthful" when we
learn the true basic of the art. We also learn it "squarely", i.e.
conventionally. After we have grasped the "truth" and the "square" of art,
when we play it we add our own emotion and idea to it, we place a "flower"
here a "leave" there, in order that the melody has more color and more
fragrance of nature in the world.
My observation might be objective, but I am truthful to myself and
I am saying what I feel. I try to explain why your music does not only
delight myself but it also make my children, my grand children, my
friends, feel like they were "intoxicated" when they hear it.
Sometimes I wonder if it is coincidental that your name Vo Thuong
"Impermanence" reflects your music... [In Buddhist philosophy] everything
is affected by the law of "Vo Thuong" to exist and then perish in its
natural progression, to change incessantly. The "Vo Thuong" music would
arise and then recede, resounding and then soft, fast and then slow, as if
it were leading the listener into the realm of nothingness. I don't say
that your guitar playing is the best, and I never want to compare you with
other excellent artists. I only want to analyze some of my thoughts and
feelings to explain the effect of your music.
Although I particularly like to enjoy traditional music of Vietnam and of
countries all over the world, and I have been familiar with many modern
Vietnamese songs, I am still easily lured into your world of sound, to
enjoy those moments when I feel like I leave this profane world to cling
to the wing of music to fly to the Paradise. Thank you for giving to life,
to people, and to myself those "out-of-this-world" moments.
Lovingly wish that you are always in good health, that you don't stop here
but will advance much farther in the realm of musical art.
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