Professor To Ngoc Thanh was born in 1934 in Hanoi, the son of artist To Ngoc Van. His hometown is Van Giang district, Hung Yen province.
Professor To Ngoc Thanh (1934-2024)
Oriented to the path of painting, Professor To Ngoc Thanh has spent his whole life attached to folk culture. Professor once told his grandmother and mother that when he was a child, if he didn’t sing lullabies, he wouldn’t sleep. Growing up, I moved to Hanoi to live with my father. No one sang lullabies for me anymore, but GS realized he liked music.
In 1956, he took the exam and was accepted into Course 1, Vietnam School of Music, graduating with honors (class 1956-1959). He studied music but played with Cheo artists, went to see the mau dong… traditional culture gradually seeped into him.
After studying music, he joined the Music Research Department of the Department of Arts and researched folk music. Folk music cannot be separated from folk culture, so he studies folk culture. At the age of 25, Professor To Ngoc Thanh backpacked to the Northwest to begin research and then spent his entire life attached to folk culture.
In 1978, he successfully defended his thesis and was awarded the degree of Associate Doctor (now Doctor) at the Bulgarian National Conservatory of Music.
In 1988, he defended his thesis excellently and was awarded the degree of Doctor of Science in Music at the Bulgarian National Conservatory of Music. He was promoted to Associate Professor in 1984 and promoted to Professor in 1991. He has effectively guided the dissertations on cultural sciences, music, etc. for many doctoral students who successfully defended their master’s and master’s degrees. Doctor degree.
In 1990, Professor To Ngoc Thanh was appointed Deputy Director of the Institute of Cultural and Arts Research. In 1996, he was appointed Director of this Institute. From 1989 to 2015, he was elected to many positions at the same time, for example for 6 consecutive terms, from term 2 (1989-1995) to term 7 (2015-2020), he was elected by the National Congress. The National Assembly of Vietnam Folk Arts elected him General Secretary and then President of the Association, and Party Secretary of the Vietnam Folk Arts Association.
From 1991 to 1999, he served as a member of the Presidium. He was elected by the Congress of the National Committee of the Vietnam Union of Literature and Arts Associations as General Secretary of the Union from 1996-2000 and as Vice President of the Association from 2010 to 2015. From 1999 to 2005, He holds the position of Member of the Standing Committee of the International Council for Traditional Music ICTM of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
In addition, he also serves as a member of the Executive Committee of the Asia-Pacific Association of Ethnomusicologists (APSE). He is credited with founding, writing textbooks, and directly teaching with very high quality in-depth the subject of Preserving Vietnamese Traditional Music (Vietnam Ethonomusicology).
Professor To Ngoc Thanh spent most of his life collecting and researching folk culture of different ethnic groups. He once shared that if he wanted to learn about a nation, he spent at least 3 years living with local people. In the first year of learning the language, if you don’t know the language, you can’t learn or research anything; Then live with them like local people, from clothing to living customs. “I spent most of my life as an insider, living with ethnic people more than at home. My father once said, “Don’t do what you don’t know, don’t stand on other people’s land.” “Up to now, I think I have lived my whole life doing what I know as my father said” – Professor To Ngoc Thanh once confided.
