‘The Six Tones’ Performance at Free Range

Six-Tones-Performance

This is one shot of sevcral that I took last week at a remarkable event at Free Range in Canterbury by a group called ‘The Six Tones’. They consist of three players using traditional Vietnamese instruments with added electronics by Matt Wright from Christchurch University. The performance consisted of music and movement within the confines of glass boxes or ‘vitrines’ and was designed to subvert the popular representations of female musicians in this genre in Vietnam. The old instruments which were originally played by men are now apparently largely played by women and the popular media in Vietnam like to portray them as graceful or beautiful, often in idyllic landscape situations. ‘The Six Tones’ are trying to undermine this perception and at the same time extend and modernise the repertoire of the instruments. It really was a captivating audio-visual event.