HÀ NỘI — The "Transplanted" band will perform at a concert of fusion music featuring different instruments from Việt Nam, Morocco, France and Australia in Hà Nội on April 7.

The band has prepared a unique repertoire for the show drawing on traditional music and its original compositions, including Borderlands that combines different musical genres. The concert will feature music and instruments from different cultures in different parts of the world.

“For us, this concert is a way of showing respect to different musical cultures and backgrounds that it draws from while creating new possibilities, new forms of music and new connections,” said Moroccan musician Amine Fikri, the band leader.

Others members of the band are Moroccan Abdeslam Ziou, French Vincent Fabre, Vietnamese Hà Đình Huy and Đàm Thái Hà and Australian David Payne.

Ziou and Huy will play a range of percussion instruments, such as bendir, doumbek, karkabou and cajon - key instruments in Morroco’s Gnawan traditional music. Fabre will perform contrabass and provide vocals, while Payne will play the guitar. Traditional musician Hà will perform tam thập lục (36-string zither) and tỳ bà (Chinese four-chord lute). 

This is the first time Vietnamese instruments will play Gnawan songs. The band will also perform a Vietnamese song, Hái Nụ Tầm Xuân (Picking Bud), which highlights the tỳ bà instrument. The Vietnamese piece is arranged with the band’s own instrumentation and influences.

The band members came up with the name "Transplanted" when they were rehearsing in a small fishing village in Morocco. They were talking about the connections between various countries and continents, such as between Việt Nam, Morocco and France or between Asia, Europe and North Africa.

“One of the connections between Morocco and Việt Nam is our historical connection with France,” Fikri said.

“When we read the essay, Tangages, by Linda Lê, a French writer of Vietnamese descent, we learnt about the transplanted characters in her novels, who move between different cultures, who are uprooted from one culture and transplanted to another, who even uproot themselves and transplant themselves.

“We thought this quite perfectly captured our own experience of moving between different places, cultures and musical forms. Which is why we selected the name ’Transplanted’,” Fikri said.

The band performed in Hà Nội, Morocco and Thailand last year. The concert will begin at 8pm at L’Espace, 24, Tràng Tiền Street. — VNS