Lovers woo to the sound of the bamboo flute

A Mong craftsman dedicates his days to fashioning the perfect khen (bamboo flute). The strains of the flute are the soundtrack to many courtships.
The sound of the khen (bamboo flute) resounds from a distance, as the wind blows through the surreal landscape of wooden houses to welcome me to Ta Cu Village, Ho Quan Phin Commune, Dong Van District in Ha Giang Province.
As I tour around the town, I see where the sound came from as I watch some local Mong ethnic minority boys playing the khen, their body and souls caught up in the music.
It’s a custom for men in the village play khen to find a partner on love-market day, or to show-off their talent during the festival season. Mastering the khen technique to provide the beautiful melodies for songs and dances, however, is no easy feat.
Six brothers
In the story of the origins of the Mong ethnic minority’s khen, there was once a Giang family of six brothers who excelled at playing the bamboo flute. Their six different, melodious sound combined into a beautiful tune and the boys’ performance became a prerequisite for village festivals, including gau tao, new rice, funeral processions and engagement ceremonies. Once they started to marry off, the six brothers hardly ever got together and their flutes were played in discordant fragments. They decided to make their own musical instrument from the six flutes. The six bamboo cylinders harmoniously created the six beautiful sounds. The khen has since been a spiritual object to the Mong people.
At 57, Mua Sinh Po is known as the king of khen as he spent the last 37 years studying and popularising the musical instrument to the villagers.
At 20, Po started making his own bamboo flute under his father’s guidance.
"My father always told me that only patience and desire could help me make a performance of khen sound and look beautiful," recalled Po.
Holding a flute, he explained to me how the unique instrument worked. Six bamboo flutes of different sizes and tones are connected to each other by a wooden handle with a hole to create the music. In each wind instrument, there is a thin copper piece lying in the connection between the six flutes and the handle. By controlling each flute with fingers, the artisan makes his own melody.
"Putting the thin copper in the right place is the hardest part for most flute makers. One wrong move can ruin the sound and make the flute worthless," said Po.
"To get the right sound, the flute maker has to try hundreds of times, putting it in a certain place and playing a while to tune it until it has the sound it should," he added.
Although he’s now familiar with the flute-making process, it still takes Po at least two days to finish one. He’ll spend the year wandering the forests with his father to choose the best Gisong tree, used to make the flute body.
"In my early days, when I would pierce the wrong hole in the flute body, my father would use that flute to hit my hands. When the broken bamboo flutes piled up as high as the dry grass in the garden, I finally made the perfect one," said the artisan.
Besides making the flute, the artisan also sells them to tourists who fall in love with the sound of khen and ask him for one. The price for each flute is VND150,000 (US$9), bringing his family VND35 million ($2,000) annually. The artisan also guides 23 households in the village on how to make the flute to help them supplement their incomes.
Po is always willing to teach young boys to make and play the flute if they really want to. Mua Va Tua, his oldest son, has studied his father’s technique and showed off his talents during the festival season.
"The bamboo flute is the important musical instrument to the Mong people. I just want to help develop and preserve it for future generations," said Po.
The khen will soon become an official traditional handicraft of Ta Cu Van Village. The Denmark Viet Nam Culture Co-operation Fund recently visited the village to study what investment was needed to help residents in producing and selling their khen, according to Nguyen Trung Thuong, the director of Ha Giang Culture and Information Department.