Each writer sets his own goal to achieve, his own reasons and his own pursuit of work. Some try to get fames and fortune while others prefer unknown. Yet, timely responses from readers always bring pleasure and encouragement to the writers. From this angle, quiet research of the folklorist Ha Giao is seemingly an acceptance, a choice and a self-motivation of his own.
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The folklorist Ha Giao
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From deep affection towards the country in hardships…
Ha Giao was born in 1937 at the commune of Vinh Hoa, the mountainous district of Vinh Thanh. It is seemingly that his place of birth of is nothing special. In other words, it is the same to birthplace of anybody else. Yet, Vinh Hoa – his hometown – is actually different.
It is the place that he stationed as a soldier and tilled on fields for crops in 5 consecutive years. He returned the native place in 1993 and saw the village patriarch, bok Doan, singing 30 interesting hoamons for the local villagers.
The hoamons are the epic poems narrating about legendary heroes who fight for the village protection, for the good, against the bad and the evil. Besides the victories of the heroes, the hoamons also tell about distinctive lyrical beauty of the southern part of the Truong Son mountain range.
You stopped working with bush-hook, the shovel, the gun to start the new job with the pen. Could you talk about the predestination of your writing?
I joined the army in 1965 and then worked as a journalist for the Liberation Army of the Military Zone V 5 years later. I mainly wrote about heroes like Nguyen Cong Tong, Vo Lai, Le Van Cao, Nguyen Huu Quang.
The year 1968 was a momentous turning-point in my life as my short story The bush-hook won a literary prize. I was injured and taken to the north for the treatment in late 1971 and I went home and worked as an editor for Office of Letters and Arts, the Liberation Radio Station in 1974.
1 year later, I worked for Nghia Binh Newspaper and then the provincial Department of Culture, the predecessor of the Binh Dinh Association of Letters and Arts. In 1999, I retired from Binh Dinh Association of Journalists.
Looking back the last period of writing, I am happy as I made specific contributions to the provincial literature with dozens of books about mountainous folklore. Those works show my strong attachment and deep affection towards the mountainous region, the highland village as a way to pay the emotional debt.
The violent war with its hardships, its bloody losses was over. So did part of his body at the remote battlefields.
Yet, the village with its local poor but generous people became an inconsolable obsession and invitation in mind of the man living far away from his homeland. So, he made continuous expeditions to the native place as natural harmony between the deep affection and the destiny.
To the attraction of the beauties
To collect and translate the folklores from the ethnic minority languages into Kinh ethnic isn’t easy at all if the researcher has no ardent passion for it, no respect towards the culture of the highlanders. How did you develop strong attachment to this realm of literature?
I was interested in listening to folk songs and folk tales even tens of years ago and found big surprise to listen to hoamon singing by bok Doan in a visit to my hometown. I didn’t expect that the very land had such great epics. Besides bok Doan, many patriarchs of other villages like Ta Lang, Ta Diek, Ha Nhe, Ta Lak, Klot, Kon Blo could sing hoamon very beautifully in hours.
I, thus, decided to make a lot of coming back journeys during 5 years to collect and translate dozens of Bahnar Konkdek and Bahnar Kriem ethnic historical epics. Each epic had its own different subject and details with different attractive happenings.
Yet, all of them were either great heroics or ardent lyrics. There were a lot characters in while the stories developed in much unexpected ways.
Only the epic of Dyong Du, for example, had 8 main characters and it took 7-8 nights of hoamon singing to tell about one character. The hoamon singing, thus, lasted from the beginning of corn growing to the end of the corn crop.
Context of the epic poems wasn’t limited to mountains, forests but broadened to the heaven, even the mysterious underworld or the ocean.
In his epilogue of Bahnar Kondeh Epics, Ha Giao stated, “Bahnar ethnic people are now living in remote mountainous region. Why their epics mention the oceans? The epics, hence, should be the research subjects of not only literature and music but also history, sociology and philosophy”, let alone, certainly, monography and ethnology.
It is the much unforeseen diversification and unique traits of discovery that encourage the folklorist Ha Giao to forget himself in the collection and translation of the precious folklore before it is completely fallen into oblivion.
A quiet cause of research
Your health is deteriorating and you need to take regular medicines now. What do you wish for your collection and the translation of the highland folklore?
I used to make a lot of field trips to mountainous localities of Van Canh, Vinh Thanh, Ya Hoi and An Khe to collect and translate the highland folklore.
Yet, I haven’t come to other remote highland localities like An Toan, Canh Lien although I heard that many local villagers there can sing hoamon. I am worried that the epics of those localities may be lost or not.
I wish I were strong enough to continue making the field trips. I still keep 2 manuscripts which I have already finished but have no favourable conditions for the publishing. They are 20 epics of H’re ethnic people (co-author Dinh Van Thanh) and Phuoc Ly culture (co-author Vo Ngoc An).
Few people are interested in folklore, except researchers. Even fewer people find interest in the highland folklore.
The folklorists, including Ha Giao, is often do their researches in quiet manners all their lives and enjoy a simple unshowy pleasure. But, it is really a threatening warning to vitality of a nation if there were no such the quiet researches. The biggest contentment of the folklorists is to discover and to preserve. They are almost alone but accept the aloneness in the cause of self-motivation.
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