Thứ Hai, 6 tháng 4, 2009

ABC - Australian Journey

A Vietnamese bamboo musical instrument which was made in a refugee camp in the Philippines in the early 1980s. Its “ancestor” was a dàn tre made in a prisoner of war camp in the central highlands of Vietnam by a man named Minh Tam Nguyen. Minh used the materials that were available to him to make a unique, new-sounding instrument. He was here in Australia with his son, and to connect him with his homeland and to help him ease the pain of separation from his family, he made the instrument.

Không có nhận xét nào:

Đăng nhận xét

National Museum 29-01-2009

National Museum opens new culture gallery

Posted Thu Jan 29, 2009 6:33pm AEDT
Updated Thu Jan 29, 2009 7:48pm AEDT

The new National Museum gallery Australian Journeys

Curator Kirsten Wehner says they wanted to develop a gallery that picked up on the transnational history of Australia. (ABC News)

A new permanent gallery has opened at the National Museum to showcase some of its prize pieces.

Australian Journeys is the first new permanent exhibition to be built since the museum opened in 2001 and includes 750 objects which tell the story of Australia's connection to other cultures around the world.

Curator Kirsten Wehner says it contains significant purchases including a table from the First Fleet, impromptu musical instruments fashioned by Vietnamese refugees and a motion picture camera used by filmmaker Frank Hurley in Antarctica.

"We wanted to develop a gallery that really picked up on the transnational history of Australia," she said.

"[One] that thought about Australia not simply as bounded by the continent, not simply as a nation, but rather looking at the nation's role in a much broader global framework.

"I think the gallery, in fact, makes an argument that part of [Australia's] vibrancy and contemporary strength comes from the fact that it can both be Australian, but also draw on knowledge and skills and experiences from overseas."

JAAMIM June 2008

Minh Tam Nguyen

And The Dan Tre

By Pat Sephton (ACT)

We don’t usually detail the background of new members but Minh’s is unusual to say the least.

During the Vietnam War Minh was a regular officer in the South Vietnam forces until his capture by the enemy a few weeks before the fall of Saigon. He spent the first few years under brutal prison camp conditions working as force labour in the jungles felling trees and bamboo for North Vietnamese works. There was never enough food and a number of his fellow officers died as a consequence of the harsh regime.

One of the sustaining forces for Minh during those difficult years was his love of music, both Vietnamese and Western and over a long period the resolve grew in his mind to construct some kind of musical instrument. He pondered long and constantly on how to design and more importantly how to obtain the materials for such a construction. Whilst working in the jungle he managed to obtain a metre length of stout bamboo which he slipped back to the camp. He hollowed it out, made tuning pins (which went right through the upright piece) and bamboo bridges. For a resonator he retrieved a 20 litre cast-off food can (supplied to the North Vietnamese by China) whilst the 20 odd strings were obtained by stripping the thin wire from inside a length of telephone cable. The great day came when the instrument was “quickened” and he recalls that it sounded somewhere between a piano, zither and a harp. He named it Dan Tre (bamboo musical instrument).

After three years he was transferred to prison concentration camps where they were indoctrinated and “re-educated”, as he put it. He said he would have needed a brain transplant to have swallowed any of this propaganda.

Minh was discharged from prison camp in 1981 and shortly after fled Vietnam by boat for Philippines where he was housed in a refugee camp prior to being granted residence in Australia. He brought part of a replica of the original Dan Tre which he had constructed whist in the Philippines.

Minh has a number of TV and radio performances with his Dan Tre to his credit since residing in Australia but his most vivid and poignant memories will always be of the concerts he gave to his fellow prisoners and their guards at the request of camp commandants, sometimes before audiences of thousands.

The Dan Tre has since been gifted to the National Museum in Canberra where it will be on display later this year.

Welcome to our Association, Minh. We salute you!

Đàn Tre