ABSTRACT
This chapter situates how jazz in socialist Hanoi is caught between two worlds. On the one hand, while there is no denying that jazz is a global music, perception of the musical idiom is very much centered in the West, with the United States as its core. Playing jazz in socialist Vietnam, as the musicians discussed in this book experience, feel, and understand, is to play in the periphery of the global jazz world. On the other hand, Hanoi, Vietnam is not a place people normally associate with jazz. Entrenched in the local musical soundscape is an assemblage of genres ranging from traditional folk and ethnic music to modern revolutionary and popular songs. However, amidst this diverse soundscape, classical music, an exogenously introduced musical idiom, is treated as the definitive high art form. Vietnamese jazz musicians in Hà Nội have been engaged in relentless improvisations between worlds, namely, the global jazz world and the domestic music world, just to introduce jazz and keep the music alive within Vietnam in Hà Nội, and attempting to carve out a tiny spot for themselves to be heard on the global jazz stage.
