Seeding the Tradition: Musical Creativity in Southern Vietnam
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Book Overview
Critically evaluates assumptions of creativity by exploring the dynamism of southern Vietnamese traditional music
For artists, creativity plays a powerful role in understanding, confronting, and negotiating the crises of the present. Seeding the Tradition explores conflicting creativities in traditional music in H Ch Minh City, the Mekong Delta, and the Vietnamese diaspora, and how they influence contemporary southern Vietnamese culture. The book centers on the ways in which musicians of đ n ca t i t , a "music for diversion," practice creativity or s ng tạo in early 21st-century southern Vietnam. These musicians draw from long-standing theories of primarily Daoist creation while adopting strategically from and also reacting to a western neo-liberal model of creativity focused primarily--although not exclusively--on the individual genius. They play with metaphors of growth, development, and ruin to not only maintain their tradition but keep it vibrant in the rapidly-shifting context of modern Vietnam. With ethnographic descriptions of zither lessons in H Chi Minh City, outdoor music cafes in C n Thơ, and television programs in Đ ng Th p, Seeding the Tradition offers a rich description of southern Vietnamese s ng tạo and suggests revised approaches to studying creativity in contemporary ethnomusicology.
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