Int’l seminar highlights Bai Choi singing
(VOV) -On January 13,Quy Nhon city in the central province of Binh Dinh An hosted an international workshop on Vietnam’s Bai choi singing and similar arts in the world, attended by more than 100 domestic and foreign researchers and artists.
In his speech, Vice Secretary of the provincial Party Committee and Chairman of the People’s Committee Ho Quoc Dung spoke highly of the great event which will help finalize a dossier seeking UNESCO recognition of Bai choi singing as an intangible cultural heritage in 2016.
22 reports on the folk singing and world similar arts are to be presented by cultural researchers from France, Germany, Sweden, Laos, the Republic of Korea during the two-day seminar, said Director of the Vietnam National Academy of Music, Nguyen Binh Dinh.
The workshop is designed to introduce the history and culture of the central coastal localities from Quang Binh to Khanh Hoa, the performance art and music and measures to preserve and promote the values of Bai Choi singing.
Unique to the central coastal region, Bai choi is often seen at local spring festivals and resembles a game, using playing cards and village huts.
The stage for Bai choi performances encompasses nine cottages, each containing five or six ‘players’. One of the cottages, the central house, contains a troupe of musicians and instruments. A deck of playing cards is split in half, with one stack distributed amongst the players, and the other placed in the central house. The cards are stuck onto bamboo poles and erected outside the cottages.
The game singer delivers a flag to each cottage, all the while singing Bai choi, and then draws a card from the central house. Whoever holds the card closest in value to the game singer’s card wins.
The Bai choi songs are about festivals, daily life and work, and are accompanied by musical instruments.