Researcher digs up old instruments

Vietnamese-American researcher Nguyen Thuyet Phong has determined that 15 of the century-old musical instruments possessed by Michigan University’s Stearns Collection of Musical Instruments were Vietnamese.

“The musical instruments were brought from Viet Nam 108 years ago by Frederick K. Stearns, a pharmacist-businessman in Detroit,” Phong, a world-renowned musician and researcher who was awarded the American National Heritage Fellowship in 1997, said.

Frederick K. Stearns was known for his passionate interest in musical instruments. He travelled around the world to collect musical instruments, especially Asia .

Phong said: “He also bought all the Vietnamese musical instruments on display at an international exhibition in Paris in 1900 and brought them to the US . Seven years after he died, his estate donated to Michigan University the US ’s biggest collection of international musical instruments, numbering nearly 1,000 pieces.” The collection was subsequently named the Stearns Collection of World Instruments, which now contains more than pieces of historical and contemporary musical instruments from around the world.

“I found many instruments like the monochord, Vietnamese two-chord guitar, and cylindrical drum. I found one instrument missing in the collection, a bamboo flute. The Vietnamese collection should have had 16 pieces,” he said.

The university has approved Phong’s proposal to display the Vietnamese collection. He hoped Vietnamese artists would come to the US to play such instruments to popularise their traditional music.

Phong, 61, was born in the Mekong Delta province of Vinh Long and studied traditional music as a child. He moved to France in 1974 where he performed frequently and earned a doctorate in ethno-musicology from Sorbonne University in 1982.

Now a professor at Kent State University in Ohio and the University of Washington , he is also a visiting faculty at universities in Europe and Asia . He is the second Vietnamese after veteran musician and researcher Tran Van Khe to have his name and biography entered in the New Grove, an international dictionary of music.

(Source: VNA)