I Hear the War Drum at Night for Fixed Media

I created this work of sound art using only one recording of me practicing the đàn tranh (Vietnamese zither). Even the drum’s sounds are also extracted from that sample. I employed a DAW to chop, juxtapose, stretch, loop, distort, and manipulate the sample, magnifying the strings’ subtle movements and turning the instrument’s sounds into different sounds that are surprisingly fascinating. In this work, I included a short quotation from my artistic inspiration, a piece of Vietnamese traditional music called Dạ Cổ Hoài Lang [Hearing the Night Drums, I Long for My Husband], composed by Cao Văn Lầu in 1918. The song is about a woman’s longing and distress when her husband, a military general, is battling far away from home. As I have had many encounters with war veterans and victims from Vietnam and the United States, the sensation of the old song continues to pierce my heart whenever I hear about the ongoing and imminent wars in this world.