Hát Chầu Văn
combines trance singing and dancing, which is a religious form of art used for
extolling the merits of beneficent deities or deified national heroes. Its
music and poetry are mingled with a variety of rhythms, pauses, tempos,
stresses and pitches.
Hat van,
in essence, is a cantillation where the tunes and rhythm depend on the contents
of the sung text and may be linked together into a suite, used in relation to a
mythical happening, with hints at some features of modern life.
The breathing of a hat van singer comes from his or
her midriff to nasal cavity, which works as a resonance box and creates an
effect appropriate for religious subjects, particularly when heard in an
atmosphere of incense and candles.
The words of the chanting must be clear enough so
that all those attending the ceremony are able to understand. There are two
kinds of hat van: hat tho and hat len dong.
Hát thờ
(worship singing) is the chanting accompanying an act of worship. Hát thờ is slow, grave, and dignified.
Variations in the music are few and contain little contrasting pitch and
stress.
Hát Lên Ðồng
is the cantillation accompanying psychic dancing claiming to respond to occult
powers and expressing the will and orders of some super-natural being. It may
contain many variations depending on the number of verses sung, often coming to
a climax or slowing down to the tempo of a meditation.
The instrumental music accompanying hat van plays a
very important role, either in emphasizing important passages or creating
contrasting effects, in any event enriching the content of the chant.
The main instrument used in hat van performance is
the dan nguyet or moon-shaped lute,
accompanied by the striking of the phách
(a piece of wood or bamboo) marking the rhythm, xeng (clappers), trong chau (drum) and chieng (gong). The 16-stringed zither
(dan tranh) and flute (sao) are also used in the recitation of certain poetry
and sometimes the eight-sound band (dan bat am) is also used in certain
ceremonies.
Hát Chầu Văn
has acquired over centuries both learned and folksy characteristics and has
proven to be a strong attraction to musicologists at home and abroad.
The dress worn by hat van singers, based on the cult
of the "four palaces", includes a red robe for the cult of the
"heavenly palace", a yellow robe for the "underground
palace", a green robe for the "musical palace" and a white robe
for the “aquatic palace". The style of the robe and the headgear is
related to the rank of the supernatural being honored in the act of worship.
Over time, the style of the costume may vary but the rules about the colors
have remained unchanged.
The art of hat
van originates in the Red River Delta and dates back to the 16th century,
later spreading to the whole country. It has also adopted the essential beauty
of folk songs from the uplands and highlands of the North, Center and South.
Hat Chau Van in Northern Vietnam
In the North, a ceremony always began with a mass to
invite deities to come. The master of the ceremony (cung văn) read a petition
and said some incantations to the underworld. After the invitation to the
spirits, the person, frequently a woman, who was going to be become the speaker
for the spirits sat on a mat in front of the altar. When the spirit had not yet
seized the person, the cung văn and
the orchestra played together to encourage the spirit and to distrain the
person.
The lyrics in Hát
Chầu Văn were strongly emphasized. The cung
văn not only had a good voice and knew how to play musical instruments, but
he also knew how to give compliments at the right time and in the proper
situation.
Finally the distrained person let the cung văn know by a certain gesture that
she had already been seized. When a distrained person was seized, a fairylike
life began: a life full of flowers and butterflies like those of the spirits.
However, sometimes when the spirits were in a sad mood, the songs and melodies
also changed to fit the situation.
Hát Chầu Văn in Central Vietnam
One significant aspect of Hát Chầu Văn in Central Vietnam is that people serve as distrained
persons en masse; sometimes five persons participated in the same ceremony.
Every year, a festival of distrained people was
organized in the Hòn Chén Palace near
Huế. This palace is located on the bank of the Hương River, and because of the
outsize number of participants, they had to celebrate the ceremony on their
boats. The river was crowded with thousands of boats, thousands of people
dressed in colorful clothes, dancing to the offering music in an atmosphere
full of incense and scent of offering fruits and flowers. Hát Chầu Văn adopted even the tunes of the Music of the Court
Banquet.
Hát Chầu Văn
in Central Vietnam is generally more prosperous than Hát Chầu Văn in the North. The melodies lie in many different
pentatonics, the rythm is far more complicated than that of the North.
Hát Chầu Văn in South Vietnam
Hát Chầu Văn, also called Hát Bóng, in the South
follows the same pattern of Hát Chầu Văn in the North and Center. Some of the
tunes are influenced by the classical music of the South.