Viet Anh - Wanderer and his guitar
A photo sent by my friend immediately mesmerized me. In that photo, a man was holding an odd-looking guitar with 21 strings instead of the usual 6.
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| Wanderer and his guitar. Guitarist Viet Anh. (Photo: MH) |
A childhood craving for guitars
He said: “I was born in Hai Phong and am the youngest in a family of six children. Back then, I would imitate how to play the guitar from my friends or siblings. With a bit of savings from my lucky money and an extra 25 dong I asked from my mom, I bought my first ever guitar which cost 130 dong from the Hai Phong Department Store.
The guitar’s quality was so, so terrible that even the copper fingerboard was not filed flat, leaving a cut across the palm of my hand as my fingers slid down a sharp fret.”
Viet Anh reached his turning point at age 12. As his summer vacation came, he asked his parents to let him learn playing drums at the Children's Cultural Palace in Hai Phong. Coincidentally, in the last performance of his drum course, Mr. Van, a vocal coach, found out that he could play guitars. The coach immediately got the boy into the light band of the Cultural Palace, and Viet Anh officially became the band’s lead guitarist shortly after.
Viet Anh gently smiled: “It was my heyday and also a mark for my first income from playing guitars.” It was also when Mr. Kien, an orchestra teacher and conductor with a very progressive perspective at that time, instructed the band to play BoneyM or ABBA’s works outside of their children’s music practice.
After graduating high school, Viet Anh decided to go to Ha Noi for intensive learning to fulfill his passion for music.
“Singing non-professional political songs was an active movement then. I accompanied a performance team of Hai Ha Confectionary, and luckily, they hired me as a part-time worker and let me be in charge of their entertainment section. I had a stable minimum income to live on thanks to that”, he said.
Having worked in the confectionary for over a year, Viet Anh accompanied two singers auditioning for the professional troupe of the Border Guard, and to his surprise, he got called to work there officially, although he had never submitted his application or auditioned before.
During his post, Viet Anh was always proud that he completed all of his missions successfully and managed to bring spiritual culture to every soldier, border guard post, and compatriot in remote areas. His troupe had to march on foot to the places where no vehicles could access them, while some places were so far away that even the locals could not set foot in, taking the troupe two days to walk there. And to get to the border guard posts on towering mountain tops, they did not hesitate to mount all the clouds and let the wind mess up their hair.
However, after many years of traveling here and there, he asked to leave the army and finally returned to Ha Noi, working at Ha Noi Steel Corporation as a diligent warehouse keeper.
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| Guitarist Viet Anh and the author. (Photo: MH) |
Love again from the beginning
“It seemed as though my bohemian life had been destined and that I was finally retired from art. But things eventually followed the law of attraction as I was invited to play the guitar at the Daewoo Hotel inaugurated a few months ago”, he recalled. Viet Anh then chose to follow his heart and quit his job at the Steel Corporation to focus on his music career. He passed the entrance exam to the Viet Nam National Academy of Music at the faculty of theory, composition, and conducting—formal training.
From this time on, he began learning about the root of the guitar which is the Flamenco genre. As he started playing this art form, a new era of Viet Anh opened and has greatly influenced future generations.
In 2000, Viet Anh officially established the band Lang Du to rule the roost with his love for guitars. His band has been very active and has quietly participated in large and small events in various fields since then.
He stated, "I'm trying to find a new breeze like I did with Flamenco, but it still has to be an official and professional art. I will not follow society’s temporary trends just because what I’m doing is hard."
The story led me to his 21-string guitar—something that mesmerized an amateur who knew how to sing and play the instrument a little bit like me.
“I chose Flamenco as my niche because of the strong emotions I had for this genre when I first heard it a long time ago, but I never had the opportunity to perform it. Besides, I realized that I have taken part in many events as a mercenary no less. There was no sense of achievement for me no matter how successful those events were.”
“Influenced by the guitar tradition of the family of Mr. Pham Ngu, a king of Vietnamese classical guitar, I want to maintain and develop this tradition. I want to find the guitar’s deep root and true core, and that is Flamenco music. But even though I wanted to continue his family’s heritage, I chose the New Flamenco genre as my own music-developing path", he added.
Viet Anh shared that he was too shy about ‘the best in Flamenco’ title given by many of his audiences and colleagues, and said perhaps he was loved for his devoted playing style. Despite his modesty, it cannot be denied that he and Lang Du have actually ignited a new trend for a large number of youngsters to pursue and play Flamenco quite widely today. He said, “I don't need anyone to acknowledge anything. I feel happy for I can contemplate, test my thinking, and see whether my choices are right or wrong. My father always taught, in all matters, if the shoe doesn't fit, that isn’t your shoe. Just wander to the horizon. What will be, will be. Good wine needs no bush.”
Always be yourself
Lang Du has had multiple opportunities to perform at very formal events. Hue Festival is an example. This is an international cultural and arts festival that is held every two years, with the participation of troupes from numerous countries. Hue Festival's programs, both large and small, take place everywhere and are completely free, but the event at An Dinh Palace is the only place that sells tickets, where only international artists and A-list Vietnamese artists perform. Lang Du is honored to have been on its stage many times.
Viet Anh shared: “I did not have to say much during my performances and exchanges with friends from outside our country, since music is like a common language for all of us, and through music we can feel and understand each other. The genre we play is nothing strange to our international friends. They could relate to us and frankly shared that how we dared to play the kind of music we like and did not go after the majority’s trend is something truly admirable.”
Viet Anh brought out a 21-string guitar from the house and placed it next to the tea table. I was overwhelmed to see it.
He said, "In my opinion, a true artist should not only inherit and settle for what the previous generation achieved. We must reach the very end to grasp and exploit the good things we already have and find out what is missing or what we can do to develop them further. By doing so, the next generation can acquire more complete and appropriate knowledge."
In addition to the artist's sense of responsibility, a normal guitar has certain limitations and has not yet meet his inner musical satisfaction, as he noted. The artist said his intuition told him he was entrusted, guided, and had a mission to find what he wanted. That's why, over the years, Viet Anh has always painstakingly researched, discovered, and learned to build guitars that can live up to his passion.
Be creative with your guitar
Lifting the 21-string guitar carefully, he said it would be hard to describe the sound of it in words.
Viet Anh analyzed: "Among the countless types and styles of playing, there are only two ways to play guitars: playing in an ensemble and playing solo. If you only play in ensembles as mentioned above, a traditional guitar can perfectly do that job. And what about playing solo? The traditional guitar has always been used in solo because it can create all three elements: melody, harmony, and rhythm. However, it is limited in range. That's what I want to change."
“A guitar does not need lots of strings to be fancy. The strings should be enough in number and, more importantly, distributed properly to help the guitar adapt to different music genres. Therefore, I decided to create this one (the 21-string)," he said.
While explaining to me the new function of the 21-string guitar, artist Viet Anh played a few pieces of music to demonstrate. With my humble understanding of this field, I could see how unique and impressive that guitar was. He said, “I won’t just stop here. I want to give my guitar the function of a keyboard so I can get thousands of tones from almost every musical instrument in the world. It can be an acoustic guitar, not only for soloing but also for simulating a band of about four players that possesses guaranteed quality and quantity in sound, diversity in performing ways, and richness in tones and colors. I can only stop my guitar reinforcement once it meets all of these criteria."
I got carried away by the passion of such a talented artist, while Viet Anh was being pulled along an endless road by his love for music. That's easy to understand because true creative artists always choose challenging and rather lonely paths to go down.
