Vân-ánh võ's 'the odyssey' tells refugee stories past and present

Hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing their country by boat. That's Syria today. It's also Vietnam in 1979. Vân-Ánh Võ left Vietnam more than a decade after that, and under far

different circumstances: She was already an award-winning musician, bound for Carnegie Hall. But the plight of her countrymen, and that of today's refugees, has inspired her to create

a new concert piece that will be touring the country. Võ grew up in Hanoi, living with the legacy of the Vietnam war. Her family's washbasin was an old artillery shell. Her school bell

was a piece of an American B-52 bomber; she says her teacher would bang on it to signal recess. Võ left her homeland in 1995, after the United States normalized relations with Vietnam. She

wound up in Fremont, Calif., near the large Vietnamese American community in San Jose. "After having food, after having fun, we all end up talking how we came here," she says of

her friends. Võ learned that many of her friends in the United States were "boat people." When the war ended, ethnic hostilities forced hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese, most of

Chinese descent, to flee on overcrowded boats. Many died on the South China Sea. "I wonder how they can find the strength," she says, "and how they can find hope." The

more she heard about their stories, she says, the more she wanted to share them — especially after the news turned to people fleeing Syria in boats. So Võ has written _The Odyssey: From

Vietnam to America_," a 40-minute multimedia piece about the boat people. [embedded content] Võ's father played guitar in the North Vietnamese army during the war. Võ herself has

won awards for her skill with traditional instruments, like the single-stringed _dan bau_, the bamboo xylophone, and especially the Vietnamese zither, the _dan tranh_. "That's the

power and my luck and my fortune," she says, "of learning traditional music." Since arriving in the United States, Võ has made strong musical connections. She has performed

and recorded with Kronos Quartet and toured the country playing and singing her own compositions, which blend Vietnamese and Western traditions. When she was ready to tell the story of the

Vietnamese boat people, Võ didn't feel comfortable going to her friends. So she approached Asian-Americans for Community Involvement in nearby Santa Clara. The organization was founded

in 1979 to help Vietnamese refugees; president Michele Lew says the group doesn't usually work with artists, but that storytelling can be helpful. "We have found that storytelling

... is a powerful hook to talk about health and wellness issues, such as the refugee experience," she says. Lew's organization helped Võ connect with almost 60 boat people, whom

the musician then interviewed. She weaves audio and video from her conversations with them into _The Odyssey_. During the performance, a video screen shows what could be the sail of a boat,

plus Võ's group: Japanese taiko drum, electric cello, accordion, and Võ singing and playing traditional instruments. The aim is to re-create the journey of the boat people, including

the sound of the ocean carrying them from Vietnam. One person Võ interviewed for _The Odyssey_ is software engineer Mai Bui. Sitting in the living room of her Bay Area home, Bui recalls how

she and her brother spent days on a crowded boat, without food or water, until a Thai merchant ship towed them into Bangkok. They ran at night to avoid pirates. "The ocean sound is

really romantic," she says, "but at that time, it's scary." She says she still cannot look at the ocean at night without thinking of her journey. This isn't the only

memory of the Vietnam War that Võ is addressing through music this year. She's performing a new work called _My Lai_, by Jonathan Berger, with Kronos Quartet. She's also taking

_The Odyssey_ on the road for performances in places with large Vietnamese-American populations, including Washington, D.C., southern California's Orange County, and Houston, Texas. Võ

says _The Odyssey_ is a plea on behalf of all refugees, and against the wars that divide us. Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.