GOm Show is not just a performance, but a multi-sensory experience space, where the audience is invited to enter the world of sound and performance art. GOm Show has no narration for each piece, here the music tells a story with layers and chapters, opening up a separate space, where only familiar and strange melodies resonate from musical instruments made from unique indigenous materials - ceramics.
The two GOm Show nights on June 28-29 at the Hanoi Opera House were both packed with audiences.
On stage, objects that were once familiar in Vietnamese life – jars, pots, and clay pots – have now become special musical instruments such as Chum drums, Lang drums, Nieu lutes, earthenware gongs, and rotating pottery… No two musical instruments are alike, each has its own unique sound, created by the hands and experience of the artist.
Unique musical instruments made from jars, pots, and vats create sounds that are both strange and familiar.
The sound of pottery is not ostentatious but extremely rustic, resonating from the movements of turning, tapping, and touching – sometimes as quiet as the sound of the earth, sometimes as clear as the sound of wind blowing through a tiled roof, sometimes as dreamy as the sound of water gently hitting the jar body. In that space, the audience not only hears, but also remembers – remembers things that are very old, very clear, and very real.
In the program, the artists will combine new melodies with traditional music of the M'Nong, Tay, Lo Lo, Ede, Ha Nhi ethnic groups...
GOm Show is also a journey of indigenous sounds. Where the sound of trumpets, the sound of Cham drums during festivals, the sound of gongs during highland festivals... - sounds from many different cultural regions such as H'mong, Tay, Nung Din, Lo Lo, E De, Ha Nhi - blend colorfully in a collective space. All meet on the Vietnamese pottery wheel, like a continuous, profound and enduring cultural flow.
GOm Show is a colorful picture of music and vision.
The special feature of GOm Show lies in the connection between music and visual. In the same performance space, artist Nguyen Duc Phuong brings a visual exhibition with the same theme: ceramics. The installation works made from bamboo, wood and ceramic pipes along with a series of paintings on Do paper in the exhibition act as a wordless extension of the performance, recounting the life of the ceramic profession - production, daily life, community development - in all regions of Vietnam.
GOm Show is the result of more than a decade of research and creation by the Dan Do artist group. After a long journey with bamboo musical instruments, the group continues to expand their creative materials with ceramics - a material with strong symbolic meaning, closely associated with Vietnamese culture and beliefs. At the same time, GOm is also a turning point in the musical journey of Dan Do, when the group decided to step backstage, becoming the ones to teach the next generation of young people - those with the mission of spreading culture to the world with a youthful and unique artistic mindset.
The Dan Do Group leaves the stage light and the mission of spreading indigenous culture and music to the public to the next generation of artists.
After two nights of performances in Hanoi, GOm Show will continue its journey in Ho Chi Minh City on July 19. Regular performances in Hanoi are also being planned to serve domestic and international audiences, with the desire to spread the sounds and culture of Vietnam to many international friends.
