VietNamNet Bridge – Respected artisan Ha Thi Cau – who is considered the "living treasure" of the hat xam art – passed away on March 3, 2013, at the age of 86.

 

 

Artisan Ha Thi Cau and her dan nhi. 

Mr. Noi, the artisan’s son-in-law, said: "She suffered from brain stroke from November 2012. Before the Lunar New Year, she was hospitalized but after Tet, the hospital sent her home and asked our family to prepare her funeral. She was in critical condition about 10 days before her death."

Noi said that artisan Ha Thi Cau had foreseen her death. When she was weak, but could still speak, she told her descendants to hang her two dan nhi (Vietnamese two-chord fiddle) on her altar, not giving them to anyone.

Composer Nguyen Quang Long, deputy editor of the Music Publishing House, said last week he and some colleagues went to Ninh Binh to visit artisan Ha Thi Cau. At that time she could not speak and could not recognize anyone.

Mr. Long said with the death of artisan Ha Thi Cau, the hat xam art may be lost forever the quintessential characters that only have in the artisan who sang xam for the lifetime.

Director Luong Dinh Dung, who made the documentary film about artist Ha Thi Cau said that hat xam became the flesh and blood in the life of Mrs. Cau. He said: "In the last years of her life, sometimes she got confused of the names of her descendents but she did not forget the xam lyrics."

Artists Ha Thi Cau was born in 1928 in Y Yen, Nam Dinh, whose real name is Ha Thi Nam (Cau is the name of her first son). She is the daughter of a famous sam xinger in Nam Dinh. She then became the 18th wife of Chanh Truong Mau, the boss of xam singers in Ninh Binh.

According to composer Nguyen Quang Long, Mrs. Cau is perhaps the only wife who had children with Mau. They had seven children, but lost four due to of poverty. Then, she had to present her daughter to a couple. She only raised two children – her first son and a daughter named Man. Artist Ha Thi Cau lived with Man and her husband, Mr. Noi.

Though she was presented the People’s Folk Artisan, the Meritorious Artist titles and the Dao Tan Award for contributions in preserving traditional art, artisan Ha Thi Cau lived a hard life.

The artisan will be buried at the cemetery of Yen Phong commune, Ninh Binh district, Ninh Binh province tomorrow.

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.

T.Van