The Resonance
Music - the language of emotion
The Full Story
I started learning the erhu while researching traditional instruments for the project Culture of Vietnam. It was not part of the plan. I was simply looking for materials, and ended up staying with a two-stringed instrument that sounded too human to ignore.
The first months were brutal. My fingers hurt, my bow slipped, and everything I played sounded like it was apologizing for existing. There were days I considered quitting. Instead, I learned to listen to the instrument rather than trying to control it.
Two years later, I joined Traditional Melodies club as a Two Cord Fiddle Player student club built on a simple idea: tradition does not need to be preserved in glass boxes. It needs to collide with the present.
I trained and worked with 40 members, helping them blend erhu with piano, guitar, and digital instruments. Some rehearsals were a mess. We argued about tempo, tone, even about whether the erhu belonged on a modern stage at all. But those failures became our method.
We brought the erhu to a Mid-Autumn Festival booth at Complex Tay Son and let children touch it, struggle with it, laugh at the strange sounds they made. Later that night, we performed a concert of traditional instruments. It was imperfect, and unforgettable.
At Hoan Kiem Walking Street, we organized two public events titled "Âm Vang Tổ Tiên”. Our piano - erhu mashups drew more than 500 people. Not everyone stayed until the end. Some passed by. Some stopped, surprised. Enough stayed to remind me why I kept going.
