Preserving the Art of Quan họ Singing and Folk Theatrics amid the Fourth Industrial Revolution: A Preliminary Proposal

Quan họ folk songs and folk theatrics are two typical traditional performing arts heritages of the Vietnamese people in Northern Vietnam. They are also intangible cultural heritages that need to be prioritised for preservation and promotion in the current context of globalisation. Quan họ is an art form of male and female reciprocal singing, showcasing some typical characteristics of ancient Vietnamese folk music. It has been included in UNESCO’s list of World Intangible Cultural Heritage. Along with that, folk theatrics have been created and practiced by the Indigenous people of this region for thousands of years and are still being passed down through generations of Vietnamese people. However, this art form is at risk of disappearing from the folk cultural life of the region. Folk theatrics contain many philosophies about traditional ethics and profound humanistic thoughts and are among the important factors in shaping the traditional culture of the Vietnamese people in the North. Therefore, they need to be preserved and promoted today. For many years, numerous research works have discussed the cultural, artistic, and historical values of these heritage forms – most of which also mention the challenges of preserving and promoting them in contemporary social life. However, using digital technologies as a solution for these issues has not received much attention from scientific studies. These are two types of intangible cultural heritage with similar artistic content, allowing digital technology to be applied to digitise each of their artistic elements in detail. Based on research at the Vietnam Institute of Music, as well as surveys and fieldwork in villages, the objective of this paper is to present the key aspects of Quan họ singing and folk theatrical art. The outstanding contribution of this paper is that, for the first time, specific details of each heritage content are clearly identified from the perspective of an in-depth researcher in ethnomusicology. This provides valuable insights for digital experts to support the preservation and promotion of similar folk art heritages across different cultures. However, a limitation of this study is that it does not analyse in depth the formulas and algorithms used for digitisation activities. Highlight Compared with previously published studies, this scientific article is the first to specifically research and propose digital technologies for detailed digitalization of traditional music and folk theatric performing arts, in the case of Vietnam. The article shows that, in the process of digitizing traditional arts, there is a fundamental difference between digitizing folk music melodies and folk dances; between digitizing performance costumes and archaeological sources and knowledge of the art history of each art heritage; between the movement process of actors on folk stages and the scripts and chapters of each theatrical work; etc. This is an important scientific gap that this study discovered and studied. The research results also suggest future research directions on strengthening the coordination and interdisciplinary cooperation between technology and arts to create quality scientific products, promoting the cultural industrialization process, especially in countries with long-standing and rich cultures like Vietnam.