Abstract
Musicians worldwide increasingly experiment with transcultural collaborations, which challenge conventional ways of listening. How can such artistic practices be developed to allow equitable and inclusive forms of interaction, ensuring that the intentions of individual artists are apprehended? This publication demonstrates how collaborative stimulated recall analysis, a pioneering method shown through the creative work of the Vietnamese/Swedish group The Six Tones, can be applied for a decolonizing approach to artistic and scholarly work in transcultural music ensembles. We relate recently collected material from fieldwork in Vietnam to the long-term method development within The Six Tones, of which three of the authors are founding members. While the book discusses findings specifically from transcultural collaboration in music, we argue that similar methods can be adapted and used in many forms of artistic practice and research.
Media Files
The video recordings which form the basis for the analysis in the book were recorded in Sài Gòn in October 2018 and a second period starting in December of the same year and ending in January 2019. However, the very first example is drawn from documentation of a rehearsal with The Six Tones at the Electronic Music Studios (EMS) in Stockholm, when preparing for a Scandinavian tour in 2009.
Video 3. In the afternoon of the 31st of October, Môn and Stefan recorded two pieces on electric and acoustic guitars combined with live electronics played by Henrik Frisk. These turned out to be the most radically different pieces so far, and in a stimulated recall session the next morning, the first take was played back in its entirety. The conversation on this day is more dynamic, potentially sparked by the more radical nature of the music. It also brought out more of the perspective of the performers in both groups, and some contrasting opinions, as can be found in the video.
Video 5. During the 2018 Hanoi New Music Festival, a first public outcome of the collaboration was presented in a concert with Phạm Công Tỵ, Phạm Văn Môn, Huỳnh Tuấn and Lương Huệ Trinh and The Six Tones. After the performance, the group reconvened at VICAS, and in the very first stimulated recall session, the entire team watched and listened to a recording of the piece played in the festival, but here in a video from a rehearsal at the Hà Nội National Academy of Music, in åpreparation for the festival performance. At the end of the playback, Môn was quick to pose a question regarding which version it had been, as heard in the opening of the clip. But what followed was a series of questions related to listening and the tension between different approaches to tonality in the two groups.
Video 1. This video was recorded in a rehearsal with three members of The Six Tones at EMS, 24 March 2009. The group was preparing a performance of the traditional piece Tứ Đại Oán, with the aim of finding ways of moving seamlessly between sections performed according to the structure of the traditional piece, and sections in which one or more players instead created layers of “free” improvisation. This turned out to be one of the most challenging approaches adopted by the group to this date, and the rehearsals were characterized by both uncertainty in the interaction between all three performers, sometimes in terms of musical initiative, but perhaps even more in the verbal interaction. The videos recorded in the rehearsals and performances were analysed by the members of the group using open coding, first in spring 2009, and then in repeated coding sessions in 2010, 2012 and finally in 2019.
Shared Listenings
Methods for Transcultural Musicianship and Research
Stefan Östersjö, Nguyễn Thanh Thủy, David Hebert and Henrik Frisk (2023).
Series editor: Simon Zagorski-Thomas.
Cambridge Elements. Twenty-First Century Music Practice.
interdisciplinary approaches to the study of the renewal of Vọng Cổ music from the south of Vietnam 2018-2021
Video 4. The second round of stimulated recall was carried out in Dec 2018 and January 2019 at the Vietnam National Institute of Culture and Arts Studies (VICAS). Here, we made stimulated recall interviews with Phạm Công Tỵ, Phạm Văn Môn and Huỳnh Tuấn, looking back at recordings of solo and trio recordings of Vọng Cổ, made in August and December 2018. While many important topics were covered across those interviews, in the present video we find an excerpt from a session with Tuấn in which he expresses that so far, he is not pleased with his solo playing. His reflections are related to the particular challenges found in playing the historical form of Vọng Cổ nhịp 8. The clip starts at the moment when David poses a question, asking Tuấn to compare two different versions he played of the opening Rao.
Video 2. The first working period in Musical Transformations took place in October 2018 in Huỳnh Tuấn studio, which is located in a dead end alley in a small street in the otherwise busy 10th district in Sài Gòn. At the end of the second day, we made the first recordings of all musicians—the four members of The Six Tones and the three master performers selected for the recording project, Phạm Công Tỵ, Phạm Văn Môn and Huỳnh Tuấn—playing together. It was an explicit wish that Tỵ, Môn, and Tuấn should retain a structure from Vọng Cổ, and The Six Tones would seek ways to interact with their playing. We made several takes that afternoon, some with just one of them, and sometimes all at once. These recordings were mixed in the evening and on the morning of October 31 we listened back to these takes, with the agreement that any one of us could stop the playback to comment on a certain moment. This stimulated recall session was carried out with all musicians present, and with Nguyễn Thanh Thủy also acting as interpreter. The comments made by Phạm Công Tỵ and Huỳnh Tuấn capture some of the uncertainty and doubt, coupled with humour, that characterized the first working days.
