In an interview from her El Cerrito home, Vietnamese musician and composer Van-Anh Vanessa Vo says the city has much in common with her native land and culture.
“It is a hidden, somewhat forgotten town in the East Bay,” she says. “What we love is that we found El Cerrito and our forever home where we can be immersed in nature. The community is vibrant and diverse. People are open-minded to everything, and there are a lot of small, authentic businesses.”
Born into a family of musicians in Hanoi, the Emmy award-winning performer of the 16-string đàn tranh (a Vietnamese zither) began studying her homeland’s traditional music at age 4. Settling in the Bay Area in 2001 on the wings of a highly successful career in Vietnam, Vo continued her work as a solo artist.
Soon she established her Blood Moon Orchestra and launched into ground-breaking collaborations with the Kronos Quartet, Yo-Yo Ma, the Oakland Symphony, Flyaway Productions, Alonzo King LINES Ballet, numerous jazz artists, rap artists and others. Among her recent accolades is being named one of 25 artists honored by the Alliance for California Traditional Arts (ACTA) with a 2025 Taproot Fellowship (taproot.actaonline.org/fellow/van-anh-vanessa-vo).
The $60,000 award, a project within the ACTA’s’ Taproot Artists & Community Trust, is partly supported by The Mellon Foundation. The selected Taproot fellows represent a broad range of cultures and traditions deeply embedded in ancestral history that simultaneously demonstrate their art form’s progressive, contemporary movements. The fellowships include $10,000 that recipients allocate toward people or initiatives in their communities. Vo has wasted no time applying the Taproot funds.
“In my music, I always have to include community, share their stories, have them participate with me,” Vo says. “Their stories are told (not only) through my music but shared directly. The first project using the funds is for a concert August 2 at the (San Francisco) Yerba Buena Gardens Festival.”
The “Viet Day” show will feature about 50 people performing with Vo and the Blood Moon Orchestra (bloodmoonorchestra.org/calendar/viet-day-2025).
“We started with workshops yesterday, teaching them how to play the instruments. They will be a part of the concert with the orchestra supporting them and they will directly share their stories. I used some of the award to pay for the instruction that is provided to them free.”
Vo is having costumes created for guest artists and the “Viet Day” celebratory event showcasing music will also include authentic Vietnamese finger foods by Vietnamese-American chef, restaurateur and TV personality Chef Nikki Tran. Vo says honoring 4,000 years of Vietnamese culture through storytelling, music, dance and cuisine is indicative of her work’s overall mission.
“My training with the masters in the conservatory taught me understanding of the different music from Vietnam’s three regions — North, Central and South. But music is only music if it doesn’t reflect or relate to the people hearing it. That thought helped me to dig further to discover what different music does and is for the 54 ethnic groups in Vietnam.”
Recognizing the diverse forces influencing the materials used to make traditional instruments and the various techniques for performing on them came from studying geographic, biological and environmental elements. Vo says the explorations cause her to appreciate the similarities and contrasts within and between her own and other cultures.
Her musical practices have become like a two-directional highway, with Western audiences receiving Vietnamese music and Vo absorbing and integrating Western music traditions in her original compositions.
“I learn not only about original instruments, but I learn their purpose. I learn about communities, cultures and music that expand me. It’s fascinating.”
To make a larger version of her đàn tranh with more strings, Vo discovered finding large enough pieces of wood to be impossible.
“There are no more big trees used to make my zither,” she says. “Trees have been cut down or disappeared for reasons such as overuse — so it’s sad when that is the reason I cannot make an instrument that size.
“But it forces us to experiment with different ways of making it. It will not stop me from creating something I think should be there. It just has to be a new way and keep the authentic sound. Maybe it will take us to a new sound because many discoveries come from being forced.”
Vo says selecting a Western song to transcribe and perform on traditional Vietnamese instruments is precarious. She has to consider the song’s reputation, her own reputation as an artist and the culture of the instruments involved.
“I’m very careful. I look at if the song will give good playground so my instrument thrives. Can I make it sound native, like it’s written for my zither? Will the song allow me to embed the voice, color and characteristics of a Vietnamese musical genre?”
When composing a new piece based on a Western song, Vo says she must believe she can integrate something new into it.
“If it’s not good enough, the song will reject it and die. It’s almost like replacing a kidney. If the body rejects it, the patient will die. I must keep the song’s meaning and make the audience wonder and think, ‘This is what we’ve never heard before.’ I take that very seriously.”
She says an equally serious matter is the present era in which projects related to diversity, inclusion and less-heard voices are subject to massive cuts in federal funding.
“To be honest, I’m thinking of this time as another pandemic. It will be over in a few years, but the consequences left will have impact long after the first shocks. But we are not stuck. We might not know what to do now, but it doesn’t clip us altogether. The funding is cut all over, which is why I’m thankful for Taproot keeping me going. I appreciate the award coming in such a critical time.”
Vo’s concert tour in the Midwest was recently canceled after funding that the presenter had received from the U.S. National Endowment for the Arts after three years of applying was recalled, but Vo is ever-resilient.
“Traditional artists of many immigrant communities will find a way to survive, share our voices, do our art,” she says. “I do gardening, and a rose, for example, will survive for (some) time even if you don’t give it water or food. But if you do give it water and food, it blooms and is beautiful.”
For more information online, visit vananhvo.com/bio.
Lou Fancher is a freelance writer. Reach her at lou@johnsonandfancher.com.