All the oldest living quan ho singers were poor peasants and craftsmen who in their youth lived in deprived villages. In their time they have been poets as well as musicians, and represent this labouring peasantry which has always tried hard to create an independent and worthy culture. This effort to transcend one’s condition, this regard for inward nobility, recalls the poetic image of the lotus " growing in mud yet not smelling of mire ". Under the old regime, destitution and misery, bullying and insults were their common lot. Yet these people e were not less inspired with lofty feelings’: attachment to their native soil, love of their fatherland, yearning after an ever higher sensibility of heart and mind, and above all an instinctive ideal of liberty and equality which caused them to catch sight of more humane relations between men in the colonial and feudal darkness. A passion for art and traditions embodying friendship and brotherhood embellished their hard, modest existence. From this mental source they draw an ever-new impulse for their daily work and their customary activity. When peasant men and women from two hamlets gather and feel united in common delight in quan ho singing, they like to compare themselves to the bamboo, symbol of uprightness and elevation. Their regard and affection for each other seems to have defied the prejudices of their time. These feelings reflect the universe of psychical emotion which is born in them. There is a quan ho song which says:

I have travelled all over the country

No where did I meet such courteous people.

It is not only a question of courtesy but also of frankness and, delicacy of feeling. When a male quan ho singer pays a visit to a member of a womens’ quan ho group, he is given the honour of the house. The woman’s husband helps him to an infusion of the best tea, then goes to prepare the meal, and allows his wife to enjoy the conversation of her partner. Women receive the same attention when they visit their male partners. Moral propriety is preserved. Members of quan ho groups take care not to indulge in sentimental indecorum, as they are fully aware that any slips of behaviour would mean the rupture of their artistic union. This conduct proves to be a matter of moral education. Yet these men and women treat each other very lovingly, prompted as they are by the same love of art and culture. They tell one another of their joys and sorrows, like loved ones, and souvenirs exchanged between them will be faithfully taken care of all their lives. The love of quan ho will inspire poor peasant women to go and catch crabs and shrimps, or raise a few hens, in order to save some money which will allow them to entertain their fellow-singers at their spring festival.

Such are the message and the aesthetic motivation of this peasant song tradition, which is at the same time a village culture in the familiar framework of the Vietnamese countryside with its ancient dinh, its century-old banyan tree, the tiny bamboo bridge across the small placid stream. This cultural manifestation has long since outlived its spontaneous period to become an elaborate art with established conventions.

First of all, singers of one sex in a hamlet come together. The men-singers of one hamlet and the women of another then meet after determining personal and musical affinities between the two groups, and form a quan ho unit in which any one singer can partner any singer in the other group. This event is customarily an occasion for a dinner to be held in the women’s hamlet. After the meal comes a singing soiree which lasts the whole night.

Every spring there is a quan ho festival and competition which has both a conservative and a renovating character. The rules of the vocal contest are that no melody may be used on more than two occasions in the course of alternate singing. The variety of airs is more valued than quality of voice. Hence the encouragement of extemporization, the best of which will be taken up, sung, and will remain in the repertory. The free, artless execution of quan ho suggests that this form of artistic expression requires no preliminary study or special training ; but in fact it is the result of an apprenticeship and practice skilfully combined with the ordinary occupation of daily village life. One can say that an active quan ho hamlet is like a popular conservatory : the spinners and weavers, plough men and rice seedling transplanters practice together while working and the old folk teach the younger ones the secrets and subtleties of the treasury they inherited from their fathers and enriched with their own contributions. By the great pleasure they convey all the melodies become deep-rooted in the people’s mind. Thus a quan ho repertory, which is both stable and developing, will pass from one generation to another, with the best of village culture. The open-air feasts, rustic parties and concerts on the river, the artistic evenings spent in decorous yet lovely company, each time accompanied by the customary offer of a quid of betel to chew, now replaced by a cup of green tea, and the habitual use of pithy language reveal quan ho as bieng moer than just folk-songs. It is through the quan ho that the Ha Bac peasants have educated themselves, using their instinctive sociability, musical intelligence and love of culture to become more refined through the ages. They have succeeded in creating an ethical tradition which is now appreciated by the whole nation.

Alternate songs are very popular throughout Vietnam from the remotest times, first of all in the flat open country in the North and amidst the labouring peasantry. But nowhere did they experience so happy a fortune as in the Ha Bac region, the wondrous cradle of one of the first independent feudal dynasties, that of the Ly kings (1010-1225). This is the first national springtide occurring after a millenary of Chinese-imposed vassalage. Songs began to prosper in the countryside which was awakening to peaceful arts. After the removal of the capital to Thang Long (former name of Hanoi) the Ly Kings remained for a long time attached to their ancestral land of Ha Bac. They would regularly resort to the region in the various seasons of the year, to attend spring sowings and traditional festivals, and enjoy rural freshness in the hot weather of summer. They did so the more frequently as they still had many relatives living in this region, will-known for its natural beauty and for the wisdom of its men. These royal pilgrimages would give rise to actual popular rejoicing held in a spirit of artistic jubilation. The court’s officers in charge of quartering (they were dignitaries of the blood called by that time quan vie^n ho Ly) proved on such occasions to be good travel organizers as well as clever impresarios. They happily advised enhancing the reception ceremonial by the antiphonic songs of the youth (performed by alternate groups) in which the best greetings and wishes of happiness were presented to the royal visitors, in engaging vernacular melodies from various regions. These artistic receptions, impregnated, one could say, with the freshness of a first springtide, that of the Nation at the dawn of its independence, made a deep impression by their intellectual character and their sophisticated technique. The country folk would gather on both sides of the channel designedly dug for the royal journey, and take delight in these concerts marked by the stateliness of manners, subtlety of language, beauty of voices and in which the presence of contemporary elements would convey a new life to old values. Most of the airs chanted being already known, this initiative developed buy the quan vien ho ly was widely followed in the country and the members of the royal family living there readily helped to diffuse it. The customary anxiety to omit the name of the reigning dynasty (Ly) ended by crystallizing the appellation of quan ho singing whose practice would be established from that date, through the ups and downs of the feudal regimes, thanks to an ever greater conscious participation by the people themselves.

Such would be the historical, geographical and data related to the origin of quan ho, that rests with scientific research to study thoroughly . Indeed other factors intervened, more particularly the proximity of the capital, centre of cultural and political radiance, and the position of Ha Bac which for centuries was the main route of traditional communications between this country and the outside world. Yet the natural and human reality remains the immanent source accounting for the vitality and the constant renewal of this artistic and cultural manifestation imbued with a unique quality. Thus the customs of fraternity and village mutual assistance and alternate songs, much loved and appreciated in this agricultural region, whose fields are all the time flooded and where the only means of transport is the flat-plaited bamboo boat, have inspired the performance of boat-singing, a familiar and most picturesque quan ho scene in its natural area.