Nguyên Lê Blends Past and Present

News, From the Magazine, Cuong Vu, Nguyên Lê

By Bill Milkowski I Dec. 16, 2019

Guitarist Nguyên Lê’s latest album is *Overseas*.
(Photo: Phuc Hai)

Since his crucial 1996 recording, Tales From Viêt-Nam, electric guitar virtuoso Nguyên Lê has married the music of his ancestral Vietnam with cutting-edge contemporary jazz. “Traditional Vietnamese music used to be considered as kind of corny,” said Lê during a phone interview from his home in Paris. “But now there’s a new interest in the tradition. And I want to show the Vietnamese people that their own tradition can be hip and can be very exciting to mix with new elements from modernity.”

Overseas (ACT), his latest recording, finds the bandleader blending a contemporary aesthetic with the kind of traditional Vietnamese music explored on his 2017 album, Hà Nôi Duo, an intimate encounter with singer/multi-instrumentalist Ngô Hồng Quang, who returns on the new album. “He is, for me, very symbolic of that new generation of traditional musicians in Vietnam,” said Lê. “Because they were born with that tradition, they know it from the bottom of their hearts. At the same time, they’re young, very talented and very open-minded. They grew up in this modern society and are very curious about learning everything. They read music better than me, they can play everything and they have new points of view on the tradition.”

Seattle-based trumpeter Cuong Vu, who guests on Overseas, praised Lê’s organic approach to this unique kind of fusion. “I’m struck by how well the traditional Vietnamese music and its characteristics have been integrated into one coherent and homogeneous sound/approach on Nguyên’s latest project. And he’s able to do it in a way where the sum of the parts sound completely holistic, avoiding the pitfalls that so often are problematic for fusing different genres and cultures together; where it sounds synthetic and cheap, as if it’s just cultural appropriation.”

Originally composed for a performance project combining dance, acrobatics and music, and directed by Tuan Le—founder of the world-renowned Nouveau Cirque du Vietnam and a former choreographer for Cirque du Soleil—Lê’s music for Overseas captures the soul of traditional Vietnamese music via zither, jaw harp, bamboo flute and bamboo xylophone while introducing modernist elements. Hanoi-born beatboxer Trung Bao enlivens “Noon Moon” and “Square Earth” with his EDM-inspired vocal percussion techniques. And on the exhilarating “Beat Rice Box,” he goes toe-to-toe with the leader. “He’s fantastic,” said Lê, of the Portland-based Bao. “He doesn’t read music, but of course he has a great ear. He’s a born musician.”

Other tunes like the atmospheric “Origin” and the African-flavored “Tribal Symmetry” are awash in ambient sounds. On the North African-flavored closer, “Red Sky,” Lê conjures up metalesque fury in his distortion-laced licks, and he unleashes fiery fusion chops on the shredding vehicle “Year Of The Dog.”

“I’m kind of obsessed with speaking with my own voice on the instrument,” Lê said. “I’m really trying to integrate everything that I’ve learned from all the musicians I have played with from all over the world. And it shows up in my phrasing, in my sound, in every inflection.” DB