| Description |
In San Diu language, “soong” means to sing, “co” means to sing. Soong co singing of the San Diu people in Vinh Phuc is a unique folk performance that was born in the labor, production and community life of the San Diu people. Soong co singing is mainly about love dialogue and singing at weddings. Soong co is sung according to a book, with a pre-written score. The singer must know the song book by heart, they quote the lyrics in the book to sing riddles, the person answering also quotes appropriate sentences to sing in response to questions. They sing songs about love couple, nature, praise the loyalty of marital loyalty, praise the merits of grandparents and parents, teach people to live virtuously, humanely, and filially... Traditionally, the custom of singing Soong Co often takes place during the off-season, after harvesting crops in November and December of the lunar calendar, or during festivals, New Year's Eve, weddings, love songs, welcoming friends, brothers...
Through actual surveys, the Soong Co of the San Diu people has about 1,000 songs. The language in Soong Co has a rustic origin, using onomatopoeia and ideograms quite richly and attractively. The way of addressing in Soong Co clearly shows the method of performing direct response singing, mainly in the first and second person.
The basic characteristics of Soong Co music are expressed in melodies with 4 tones, sometimes 5 or 6 tones; The 4-tone scale is closely related to the 5-tone and 6-tone scales, appearing more often and creating a unique feature in the use of scales and singing rhythms. The rhythm in Soong Co singing is stable in duration, often using 2/4, 4/4 rhythm, sometimes free rhythm. Another outstanding feature in Soong Co music is that the pitch is not too large, the intervals are always successive, the high and low pitches are not high. The sounds a, ư, ơ, ơ, ơ... appearing at the beginning or end of the sentence mainly play the role of momentum notes, making the lyrics performed in an improvisational style, further enriching the musicality. With its typical value, Soong Co of the San Diu people in Lap Thach, Tam Dao, Binh Xuyen districts, Phuc Yen city, Vinh Phuc province was recognized by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism as a national intangible cultural heritage in 2018. |
