Struggle to keep unique cheo tho alive

A gentle breeze sways the reeds along the banks of the Lang Giang River. Then, like a dream of bygone days, evocative singing fills the air as a boat emerges carrying people dressed in colourful traditional clothes and a palanquin.
They are artists performing cheo tho (operetta for worship), the intrinsic element of a traditional festival at Mung Temple, Nong Cong District in northern Thanh Hoa Province. The event lures visitors from far and wide with performances staged on rowing boats along a 10km stretch of the river.
The unique festival is held annually on the third lunar month by Trung Thanh and Trung Chinh communes. The procession moves through eight villages along the river. Hearing the voices of the cheo tho singers, local people come out of their houses and head to the river bank, singing to the people on the boat and waiting for their sacred offering.
Traditional melodies
Elders in Mung Village still remember 28 traditional cheo tho melodies which are sung to praise gods and celebrate the peaceful lifestyle and friendly character of local people.
A cheo tho performance is made up of four acts, including many ask-and-respond songs which can be performed over several nights between young men and women. Many young people woo their partners with their love duets.
Before the river procession, the villagers hold a cheo tho ceremony in front of the Mung Temple. For this, 16 women sing on red lacquer "boats" which do not have bottoms. The performers, decked out in brightly coloured dresses, sing and dance in unison using oars as if they were really rowing on the river.
Then, after a long drum roll, it’s time to hit the river. Tens of boats sit in the water by the shore, ready to be pushed off. All the vessels have roofs shaped like dragons and six doors painted with flowers.
As the team of boats go by, a group of people wearing masks follow on foot carrying spears and large models of elephants and horses made out of paper. When people on the banks hear the voices of the cheo tho performers, they sing in response:
We pray to gods, glory to Buddha and Your Majesty
There is bumper crop, please bestow rice on us
On hearing the song, singers on the boats don’t reply in song but throw a handful of steamed glutinous rice for the villagers on the banks. People believe that if they catch the rice it will bring them good luck for the year to come.
The singing is accompanied by various musical instruments including drums, castanets, dan nhi (two-string violin), dan tranh (16-chord zither) cymbals, wooden bells and flutes.
The four acts feature stories about faithfulness between husbands and wives, conflict between stepmothers and stepchildren, loyalty and romance. Along with Tong Tran - Cuc Hoa, a popular love story in the Vietnamese literary tradition, Mung villagers perform three plays which can’t be found in other regions.
Sacred festival
Cheo tho is performed to serve the gods. It is for this reason that it cannot be staged in front of an audience. The tradition cannot take place outside the village or at any other time than when the festival held at Mung Temple. This is why popularising cheo tho is not an easy task.
There are currently only four people proclaimed as masters in singing cheo tho, but the youngest, Nguyen Thi Dung, is now nearly 60 years old. The others are Le Huy Duoc (87), Le Thi Tran (94) and Le Thi Tî (86). Due to their advanced years, they sometimes find it difficult to recall all the songs and the community faces losing the melodies altogether when these elderly people pass on.
"Cheo tho is really more difficult to sing than other kinds of cheo," Dung says.
"While other styles of cheo use the sound /i/ to make the song softer and more melodious, cheo tho in Mung Village uses the sound /a/ at the end of each sentence."
Another special ingredient are the rhythms, many of which originate from the North, but some are unique to the village. The combination makes performing the custom even more difficult.
Since 1985, authorities in Mung Village and Trung Thanh Commune have regularly held cheo tho workshops and competitions to try and help preserve the artform and encourage young people to take an interest in learning it. A club of 14 singers and six instrumentalists was founded to bring the art to a wider audience and help discover its history.
Le Huy Can, 53, has been singing cheo tho and acting in cheo tho plays since he was six years old. Now he is manager of the club and head of the culture section for Trung Thanh Communal People’s Committee.
"The youngest member of the club is 18 and is always ready to perform," Can says.
Along with 28 sacred melodies and four plays, Can and his colleagues at the club are trying to make cheo tho more accessible to young people by composing new lyrics based on the old melodies. These songs tell stories of modern life and the renovation of the village and country.
"You will never hear cheo tho anywhere but Mung Village," Can says. "All people, young and old respect the art of their ancestors and want to perform it."
In the month before the official festival, when Can and other artists practise singing, all the children in the village gather around them with round eyes and imitate the adults singing.
"All the villagers have nurtured a love for cheo tho since childhood," Can says. "We desire to keep the art alive but we need much help from researchers because we cannot preserve it with enthusiasm alone."