MIX - NHẠC ĐÁM MA - VIETNAMESE FUNERAL MUSIC

Sad and otherworldly sounds of Vietnamese funerals ripped from YouTube

The music on this short mix is from North and South Vietnam. It features prominent electric guitar, and is for fans of (Mekong) Delta Blues, Reverb, and Bent Strings. 

Modern Vietnamese funeral music seems fluid and adaptable to different instrumentation, styles, and class. A well off restaurant owner might have a large brass band play on the street outside their business as part of the funeral procedures. A manual labourer from the South might have a group play stringed instruments and modified electric guitars through a digital reverb unit outside the family home.  The different styles of funeral music serve the same purpose and are not differentiated by name (as far as I know).

From the LA Times 

 "It [funeral music] has an important position in the life of the Vietnamese, but people do not look at it as an artistic activity," said Dang Hoanh Loan, deputy head of the Vietnam Institute for Musicology and a traditional music researcher.

"The picture of the funeral music nowadays is a musical mixture of several types," Loan said. "There are no more eight-piece bands.... It is no longer genuine."

[Funeral musician]Hoang Hiep Binh said most of the fault lies with the musicians, who were mostly less-educated rice farmers more accustomed to hard labor than to fine art. Their crude demeanour spoiled the image of funeral musicians, he said.

"They have themselves caused the disrespect," he said. "Sometimes I wanted to quit because of that social concept."

*It is bad luck to listen to funeral music outside of its context. 

** Second last song is not funeral music, but a type of mournful sounding folk music often sung by lottery ticket vendors and street musicians.

Kool fact - The scene in Apocalypse Now where the helicopters fly over the jungle playing "Ride of the Valkyries" was based on American helicopters blasting Vietnamese funeral music to demoralise NVA soldiers during the war. Movie woulda been cooler if they kept the funeral music.