MUSIC REVIEW : Festival ’90 : L.A. FESTIVAL : Family Keeps Vietnam Heritage

With the reunification of Vietnam under a communist government came a suppression of traditional culture. Trung Van Vo, a high school teacher, set about preserving the Vietnamese heritage in music, dance and drama, creating a living archive in his children.

Emigrating from Vietnam, the family arrived in the United Sates in 1986. Sunday, the seven brothers and sisters--ages 11 to 28--offered a friendly, engaging survey of Vietnamese music at the Hollywood Bowl Museum.

The heart of the program was accompanied song. The folk song set covered the various regional areas of Vietnam, with each song featuring a different solo instrument. It ended with “Binh Minh Tren Cao Nguyen,” carried blithely by Dai Lien Vo on the T’rung, a bamboo xylophone.

For Western ears, the following chamber music set did not demonstrate greater complexity, as much as greater stylization and subtlety. This group peaked with a bittersweet poem by Trung Vo about his emigration, sung by his wife, Phuoc Lien Vo.

After intermission came excerpts from three types of music theater. Most familiar was the Hat Boi scene, bearing strong similarities to the Kun opera seen earlier in the festival. Dai Vo played the imperious general (as a trousers role) going off to war, with Kieu Vo his distraught wife.

Huong Vo portrayed a flirtatious young woman in an example from Cheo Co, the North Vietnamese traditional musical comedy. She also sang the poignant utterances of a mother facing a rebellious son--Viet Vo--in a contemporary setting of South Vietnamese Cai Luong.

The set of temple and processional music emphasized percussion and winds. One of the pieces sounded very much like something from the Japanese percussion ensemble Kodo, but the wildly wailing Vietnamese oboe of Minh Vo sounds like nothing else.