VIETNAM • THE CA TRÙ

Ca trù is an art musical form, mostly vocal which originated six centuries ago in North Vietnam. It is performed for a small group of listeners at leisure time  and in the intimacy of a small room. Women sing these songs and mark the rhythm on a phach, a thin bamboo or wooden board thirty centimetres long which is struck using two wooden sticks. The singer is accompanied by the dan day lute; a drum called trong chau marks the phrasing and indicates well-sung passages. A music which bears witness to the high refinement of the Vietnamese literati.
The Nguyen family, disciples of master Quach Thi Ho, revives this six-hundred year-old  tradition.