Their movements and their long wrapped skirts hinted at the nearness of the Cambodian border, some twenty kilometers away. After the performance, members of the troupe invited their audience to join them in sipping rice wine through long straws from an earthenware jar, two people at a time. I hung back in the shadows at first, until one of the dancers, a sweet moon-faced girl, walked deliberately toward me. Smiling, she took my hand and led me to the jar, where we knelt beside it and drank the strong liquid together in what I now understand was a friendship ritual. The following morning, at the foot of Ba Ra Mountain, where the French once housed political prisoners, the S'tieng repeated their performance by daylight.
Intermediate gongs embellish the rhythm and add melody.
Back in Saigon, an instrument maker and friend of Dr. Nguyen's opened his home workshop to the Earthwatch team, displaying finely crafted zithers and monochords. A performer as well as an artisan, he then demonstrated their use, accompanying himself on a moon-shaped lute as he sang traditional melodies. By night, some of us escaped the barn-like dining room of the Tao Dan Hotel and its television set cranked to top volume to sample the music scene in Saigon at large. At the Vietnam House, diners sampled regional specialties to the sounds of young women in ao dai playing the monochord and the sixteen-string zither. On the top floor of the Caravelle Hotel, a former haunt of war correspondents, a classical string trio that I thought delightful drew thumbs down from Hazel.