Traditional music in southern Vietnam does not sit idly on the sidelines of cosmopolitanism, globalization, and modernity. Musicians travel from Long Xuyên to Hồ Chí Minh City and then fly to Bangkok, Dubai, and Seattle, interacting with a greater number of musical types, media, and ideas than in previous decades. As musicians navigate sources of global cultural power, they adopt new performance techniques and acquire new audiences in Europe, Asia, and the Vietnamese diaspora. These engagements activate disparate ideas concerning musical creativity, and the emergence of competing creativities in Vietnam forces delicate negotiations of so-called “authentic” and appropriately “developed” performance practices. Oftentimes adept or “charismatic” individuals lead the negotiation process; ultimately, however, communities of musicians sprout to make sense and maintain these practices. Traditional music, therefore, is profoundly creative and does not simply index the past but actively constructs the present and tackles the uncertainty of the future.
Drawing on models of music practice typical in research on Western art music, ethnomusicological studies of Vietnamese music often focus on individual prowess where scholars measure creativity as the individual’s ability generate the new and garner a following (Phạm 1972; Lê 1998). Recent research in ethnomusicology and other fields posits instead that creativity is a social endeavor actively negotiated by groups of individuals (Csikszentmihalyi 1996; Hill 2012; Pang 2012). To understand creativity, therefore, one must investigate both the authority and power that establish boundaries of appropriate practice (Lam 1998; Ramnarine 2003) and the reactions to this power. Individuals do not necessarily engage in overt strategies to overthrow authority but instead adjust to their surroundings in more subtle ways. New modes of practice enter the bounds of the authorized, and other modes are omitted or disappear; in this sense, creativity both builds and destroys as communities of musicians re-craft their social worlds.
My research expands this work and specifies multiple levels of creative practice within southern Vietnam. I first examine how creativity emerges in spheres of traditional music performance from the interaction of authority, cultural policy initiatives, the labor of musicians, metaphors drawn from literature to direct preservation, and musical techniques from outside of Vietnam introduced by new participants. I then investigate the interaction between different scenes of performance and indicate how conflict between them sustains interest in traditional music. The juxtaposition of competing creativities forces debates concerning the Vietnamese identity in an increasingly cosmopolitan and globalized Vietnam and encourages Vietnamese practitioners to make sense of new societal conditions.
Vietnamese musicians impart their understandings of creativity [sự sáng tạo] using specific experiences with others in community settings. Ethnomusicologist Trần Văn Khê (2013) argues that he “best internalizes creativity” with the phrase “học chân phương mà đờn hoa lá,” meaning that one must understand the truth or roots [chân phương] of music practice but improvise as foliage [hoa lá] grows on a tree. Musicians negotiate “truth” and “foliage” while operating in multiple social worlds. Musicians affiliated with conservatories and other institutions implement cultural policies written by the Ministry of Culture, Sport and Tourism to direct practice and cultivate international recognition; master musicians seasoned by experience intersect and redirect these policies; newspapers provide suggestions for improvements; young people organize online forums to discuss and debate the authority of musicians and suggest sources for studying best practice; and musicians returning from abroad enter the mix to suggest new sounds and ways to preserve practice. Out of the interactions of these various actors, communities form in strategic urban, rural, and virtual spaces, lending authority to new viewpoints.

To focus my conclusions, I draw on my fieldwork research conducted with musicians of traditional music in southern Vietnam and their students in Vietnam and abroad. In this paper, I specifically examine the creativity of one musician, Nhạc sĩ [artist] Huỳnh Khải, who plays a genre of southern Vietnamese traditional music called đờn ca tài tử [“music for diversion”]. Huỳnh Khải is an emerging leader of đờn ca tài tử and, currently, heads the Department of Traditional Music at the National Conservatory of Music in Hồ Chí Minh City.
He attempts to expand the audience of consumers of traditional music by composing new pieces, organizing festivals and producing đờn ca tài tử shows for television and radio. He performs in both the Mekong Delta and Hồ Chí Minh City and advocates the constant exchange of musical details between the two areas. Recently, he has undertaken new kinds of exchange by performing at festivals abroad–including in Shanghai and Dubai–and by posting photos and videos frequently on YouTube and Facebook. Such methods of exchange bring new possible foliage into the structures of music practice and expand consumable traditional music to new audiences in Vietnam and abroad. The meetings of individuals and practices enabled by Huỳnh Khải generate knowledge and serve, oftentimes, to make knowledge more versatile in ever-changing supra-local contexts.