VietNamNet Bridge – Director Luong Dinh Dung, 39, planned to shoot “Xam Do,” a documentary about Ms. Ha Thi Cau – the last xam singer of Vietnam, in one month but this work was finished after over two years.

The documentary has no dialogue or comment. The film is a solo performance of artisan Ha Thi Cau. “If I add dialogues or comments into the film, it may be easier to understand but I want the audience to feel, to see, to listen to and to talk with the character,” Dung explained.

He said that without dialogue or comment, he had to shoot a lot of scenes to make links between them.

Dung planned to shoot the documentary in one month but the work took him over two years. His crew had to move very often from Hanoi to Ninh Binh province, where Ms. Ha Thi Cau, 95, lived. Dung had to spend a lot of time to persuade Ms. Cau to allow him to shoot this film.

When the last scene was filmed, Ms. Cau told Dung: “It is lucky that you shot this film early. I’m nearly unable to sing.”

From more than 1,200 minutes, Dung selected 35 minutes for his documentary. He planned to make a longer version.

Dung said he named the film “Xam Do” (Red Xam) because if xam is described by color, the red is the most suitable. “Red is the color of alarming. Xam may be lost along with the death of the last xam artisans. Red is also the color of tears and sweat of poor and unfortunate xam singers in the past,” he added.

Ms. Ha Thi Cau has been honored as the Folk Artist, Outstanding Artist and won the Dao Tan Prize for her contribution to preserve hat xam, but her life is very hard. Her family is one of the poorest in her commune. Her daughter is a trader at a local market while his son-in-law is a fisherman.

Xam or Xam singing a type of Vietnamese folk music which was popular in the Northern region of Vietnam, but is considered nowadays an endangered form of traditional music in Vietnam. In the dynastic time, xam was generally performed by blind artists who wandered from town to town and earned their living by singing in common places. The melodies of xam are borrowed from different types of Vietnamese folk music.

The origin of xam was dated from the Tran Dynasty in 14th century. At the beginning of the 20th century, xam artists performed on the trams of the public transport system of Hanoi, hence this type of folk music was sometimes called tram xam).

When the tram lines were abandoned in the 1980s, tram xam disappeared and xam gradually fell into oblivion. Facing the unstoppable decline of xam, researchers and devoted artists tried but failed to revitalize this art form.

Nowadays, xam is considered an endangered form of Vietnamese traditional music because the number of experienced artists rapidly declines, while the younger generation usually prefers modern types of music.

The most famous surviving artisan of this art form is Ms. Ha Thi Cau, the so-called "Last surviving artisan of xam" is one of the few artisans who were honored by the title Outstanding Artist.

Besides “Xam Do,” Dung produced a DVD on he cheo (clowns in Vietnamese cheo – traditional operetta), as a gift for the 8th International UNESCO Congress in Vietnam last year, in order to introduce Vietnam’s traditional art to the world.

Compiled by Phuong Linh