LEARN NC

K–12 teaching and learning · from the UNC School of Education

Vietnamese water puppet show: Lullaby

About this recording

Creator
Kristin Post
Date created
January 24, 2001
Duration
3:32
Location
Hanoi, Vietnam
File
MP3
License
This recording copyright ©2001. Terms of use

Related media

Learn more

In the classroom

Please upgrade your Flash Player and/or enable JavaScript in your browser to listen to this audio file.

Download audio file (Right-click or option-click)

Vietnamese water puppetry is a unique folk art that originated a thousand years ago during the Ly dynasty. Villagers in the Red River delta and other rice-growing regions in Northern Vietnam staged water puppet performances to celebrate the end of the rice harvest, religious festivals, and other important occasions.

Rice, the main staple of the Vietnamese diet, grows in a water paddy. The original water puppet festivals were literally held inside a rice paddy, with a pagoda built on top to hide the puppeteers who stand in the waist-deep water. The water acts as the stage for the puppets, and as a symbolic link to the rice harvest. It also hides the puppet strings and puppeteer movements, improves the musical and vocal acoustics, and provides a shimmering lighting effect.

A water puppet show depicts the daily activities in Vietnamese rural life as well as important historical events and ancient legends. Each water puppet is hand-carved and given five layers of lacquer paint to protect the puppets from the water and to add vital colors to the performance.

The instrument you hear after the multi-lingual introduction (in English, Chinese(?) and French) is a dan bau, a one-stringed instrument native to Vietnam. Its plaintive tone mimics the human voice, and was thought to have strong powers over the hearts of young women. You can also hear the flute.

Transcript

And now, a lullaby, played on dan bau. The (?) original instrument of Vietnam.