Vietnamese Quan Ho Folk Song
Our folk-song Quan Ho, a very rich and beautiful musical storehouse of our people, has a very long lasting history. During all its existence, successive creations have unceasingly changed the type of the folk-song Quan Ho.
Today, there are "Quan Ho dai", "New Quan Ho", "the renovated Quan Ho". This shows that there may be some kinds of Quan Ho that are not real Quan Ho. Thus, from what epoch has the tradition of Quan Ho dated?
One of the traditional polular tales narrates as following: Once upon a time, Lung Giang village (Liem village) and Tam Son village (Tu Son), both in Bac Ninh province, were in very good relations. Every year, on the 13th of the first Lunar month, Tam Son village held a singing party at the communal house and invited five or six elderly men and five or six elderly women together with a great number of young singers of Lung Giang to come to join them. At the festival came into being a form of dialogue. Alternately, each time the young man of one of the villages had sung, the girls from the other village would reply in singing. Such singing competitions lasted all night until the morning of the following day. However, it's asserted that only under the Ly dynasty (1009-1225) did the Quan Ho begin to develop strongly and become joyful festivals lasting as much as half a month.
Annually, on the 13th of the 1st Lunar month, on the Lim hills or in the Lim pagoda's park, among the blossoming peony bushes, the pilgrims come from every corner of the country and distinguished and smart young men and young girls of the region gather for sight seeing, contemplating blossoming flowers, encountering and making acquaintance with each other and listening together to recitals of songs, or sing Quan Ho songs.
Coming festival of Lim in groups of young men or women, Quan Ho singers are dressed in their very best clothes, men carry with them an umbrella of black silk, women a fan under a cartwheel palm-leaf hat tucked under their arms. A female group may be the first to go up to a male group and offer betel quids, thus striking up an acquaintance. A dialogue begins in the form of songs. In any event, courliness is the rule. The men call themselves "Your younger bothers" and address the women as " Our elder sisters"; conversely, the latter call themselves "Your younger sisiters" and address the former as" Our elder brothers". Female duets keep up the conversation by exchanging songs with male duets.
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