playing đàn tranh

film collab BTS in New Orleans, and an instrumental track of my version of roots music

Hello all!

This past November I collaborated on a film project with filmmaker/ visual artist Tuan Andrew Nguyen and film producer Marion Hill for Prospect New Orleans, a contemporary art triennial.

Marion, myself and Tuan, an artist whose work I LOVE and first encountered at the De Young in SF.

I’ll be referencing this project in the future, as it was a very special and spiritual undertaking for me, but today we will only talk nominal zither.

For part of the score I wanted to spend time with the đàn tranh, a Vietnamese zither. It was, looking back, a pivotal element of my soundscape growing up, but I’d never played one before.

I don’t own one yet, but did and do happen to have a ghuzeng ( a predecessor of the đàn tranh, of Chinese origin) laying around the house, thanks to my friend’s stepdad who is one of those extremely generous deep hobbyist types who gives the thing away after they’ve moved on to pursue something else just as earnestly. I hope you somehow have this type of person at least tangentially in your life as well. I hadn’t ever taken the time to incorporate the ghuzeng into a recording but this was an obvious opportunity. It felt a little like playing lap steel to me so I incorporated a slide. Wanted to nod to influential musical traditions in the film.

I mad dash recorded ghuzeng and slide for the score because we needed the music before we started shooting then I flew to New Orleans.

ON SET - Kens’s Pharmacy, New Orleans

photo: Kim Ha

These nails were beautiful, extremely long and sharp and great for camera but resulted in no truly successful zither playing on set. These shots/ this scene didn’t end up making it in the film. But we did use the instrumental in the score.

For the NOLA film/ exhibit premiere we performed the score live with incredible local musicians, incorporating various traditional Vietnamese instruments. Here I am playing a borrowed đàn tranh. (Amongst the Disquiet was exhibiting at New Orleans Museum of Art for a few months, and is and will be exhibiting in different art museums/ gallery spaces moving forward)

Below for your listening pleasure: a longer instrumental of me playing ghuzeng with a slide. This length is good for ambient pure mood. (Who remembers Pure Moods CD compilations!? I had volumes 1 and 2.)