Heritage Field of Quoc Trung and Nguyen Xinh Xo

Heritage Fields is a slow, dark, pensive, melancholy sonic journey that builds energy in each individual track and runs throughout the album, like a storm brewing.

The album Heritage Fields consists of two separate creative albums, which are also two different parts of one story.

It's been 20 years since Quoc Trung returned with a studio album, since Duong xa van dam, which was full of world music with Vietnamese folk elements in 2005.

Nguyen Xinh Xo, the creator of sharp and contemporary electronic sounds, has been 'absent' for a long time, but has just returned with the charming EP Hanoi Waltz not long ago.

This time, the two went to the heritage fields, leading the audience on an overwhelming and intimate journey of sound, from the clarity and brilliance of the Northwest mountains and forests to the noise and silence of the city streets.

There, the music tracks are like a diary of the time and space in which they were created, and the two artists are like diligent note-takers.

There will be a few more posts to fill this out but this is really the most "rounded" project I've done.

Musician Quoc Trung

The Last Moments

The album was initiated from a project that was first introduced within the framework of the 2023 Monsoon International Music Festival. At that time, Quoc Trung and Nguyen Xinh Xo played a set of The Field of Heritage - The Field of Heritage full of juggling and sublimation between music and visual effects.

However, because of its short length, music lovers had to wait until this album was released to fully and satisfactorily "touch" it. Compared to that performance set, the sound in the album overwhelms the visual art, and when listening, it also expands the spatial imagination more.

Heritage Fields is essentially a double album with two separate creative albums, which are also two different parts of one story.

Quoc Trung's album The Field of Heritage: Life on high has four tracks: The Sun, Misty Twilight, On Mother's Back, Cloud depicting the space and beauty in the life and culture of ethnic groups in the highlands.

The album The Field of Heritage: City Life by Nguyen Xinh Xo includes seven tracks: Dream of Distant Village, Street that Awake at Night, Morning in the city, Where He Belongs, Leaving the Village, Rhythm of the Soil, Boulevard He's Never Seen, which touches on the thoughts of highlanders who migrated to the city to make a living, always missing and worrying about being far from home.

The two artists tell stories of ethnic people from remote areas migrating to cities, leaving behind their villages and roots. In the brilliance and sparkle of the mountain heritage, there are fading and irretrievable losses...

They want to record to remember, to live, to keep the last moments with that same sonic heritage and further develop it with pure analog electronic sound.

Thereby depicting the migration journey of the young generation in the Northwest mountains, quiet but filled with many worries, where the forest gradually retreats before the concrete blocks, where people stand between the struggle between memory and reality.

Musician Nguyen Xinh Xo and musician Quoc Trung (right) - Photo: FBNV

Cinematic Fields with Music

"Native" Quoc Trung shared that he wanted a product with "many nuances and emotional tones to create a space that stimulates the imagination".

The songs in the album are all quite simple to very simple, usually only having four notes, especially some songs when mixed only have five tracks but are not monotonous at all.

In Quoc Trung's four tracks, there is the song Misty Twilight , in which the artist uses four musical notes in the gong style of the Muong people. However, the gong sounds change with different timbres as the artist plays. Sometimes the high notes are clear, but sometimes there are accompanying low notes.

Nguyen Xinh Xo and Quoc Trung in the performance set The Field of Heritage - The Field of Heritage at the 2023 Monsoon International Music Festival - Photo: FBNV

The product has the contribution of folk artists in their 70s who still sing very well. They are like soloists, although their voices are not constant, occasionally echoing but still enveloping, covering the whole space. It sounds distant, majestic like the time when the land and water were born.

When making Heritage Fields , Nguyen Xinh Xo had never set foot in the Northwest. Having studied classical music since childhood, he had almost no contact with the music of the highlands. The artist had to use his imagination and a lot of unconscious feelings to create seven musical tracks that make up the entire Heritage Fields that we have.

But as Xinh Xo talks about young people leaving their villages for the city, it unintentionally recalls and reflects his own journey when he left Vietnam, closing the beautiful childhood memories, the distant dreams of adolescence and the sadness of losing loved ones to enter a new, strange life, full of loneliness and brokenness.

So when performing, sometimes he sees a part of himself in the story, in the nostalgia, in the gap between the origin and the present.

In her album, Xinh Xo chose the Meo flute as the main sound because its timbre is very unique, sometimes viscous, sometimes high-pitched, sobbing, hesitant and very expressive. It directly expresses the feelings of the departed without any "filter".

Two folk artists contributed their voices to the album Heritage Fields - Photo: FBNV

Heritage Fields by Quoc Trung and Nguyen Xinh Xo uses electronic rhythms combined with folk and ambient sounds, creating a feeling of a journey that is both strange and familiar, intimate but also precarious, fragile, and easily dissolved.

All rolled into a natural storm that grew bigger and bigger, blooming and beautiful. Accompanying it is a brilliant cinematic sound space, telling us a lot about a golden streak in the sound heritage, the cultural heritage of the nation.

The album draws inspiration from the past to explore the unique soundscape of the Northwest region. From the sounds of the mountains and forests, local literature and culture to traditional songs and languages. The result is a total of 11 beautiful tracks, showing the development of the two artists' perspectives and cultural reflections.

BEANS

Source: https://tuoitre.vn/canh-dong-di-san-cua-quoc-trung-va-nguyen-xinh-xo-2025070108425528.htm