RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing their country by boat. That is Syria today. It was also Vietnam in 1979. Van-Ahn Vo left Vietnam more than a decade after that, and under far different circumstances. She was already an award-winning musician who has gone on to perform in 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. Cy Musiker of member station KQED has her story.
CY MUSIKER, BYLINE: Von-Ahn Vo grew up in Hanoi, living with the legacy of the Vietnam war. Her family's washbasin was an old artillery shell, her school bell a piece of an American B-52 bomber.
VON-AHN VO: The teacher banged on it, and then we know that oh, it's recess.
MUSIKER: Vo left her homeland in 1995, after the U.S. normalized relations with Vietnam. She wound up in Fremont, Calif., near the large Vietnamese-American community in San Jose. And whenever she gets together with friends, she says -
VO: After having food, after having fun, we all end up talking about how we came here.
MUSIKER: Vo learned that many of her friends in the U.S. 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.
VO: And the more I hear about their story, the more I want to share this. Especially since middle of last year, when the boat people from Syria on news.
MUSIKER: So Vo has written "The Odyssey: From Vietnam To America," a 40-minute multimedia piece about the boat people.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
MUSIKER: Vo plays a bit in the music studio in her garage. Her father played guitar in the North Vietnamese Army during the war. She won awards for her skill with traditional instruments, like those crowding the studio - the single-stringed dan bau, the bamboo xylophone, and especially the Vietnamese zither, the dan tranh.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
VO: That's the power and my luck and my fortune of learning traditional music.
MUSIKER: Since arriving in the U.S., Vo has made strong musical connections. She's performed and recorded with Kronos Quartet and toured the country playing and singing her own compositions, which blend Vietnamese and Western traditions.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
MUSIKER: When she was ready to tell the story of the Vietnamese boat people, Vo didn't tell comfortable going to her friends, so she approached Asian-Americans for Community Involvement in nearby Santa Clara. It was founded in 1979 to help Vietnamese refugees. President Michele Lew says the group doesn't usually work with artists, but -
MICHELE LEW: We have found that storytelling is a powerful hook to talk about health and wellness issues, such as the refugee experience.
MUSIKER: Lew's organization helped Vo connect with almost 60 boat people. She weaves audio and video from the interviews with them into "The Odyssey."
(SOUNDBITE OF PERFORMANCE, "THE ODYSSEY: FROM VIETNAM TO AMERICA")
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: I was scared. I was scared.
MUSIKER: The video screen on what could be the sail of a boat, and Vo's group - Japanese Taiko drum, electric cello, accordion and Vo singing and playing traditional instruments - tries to recreate the journey of the boat people, including the sound of the ocean carrying them from Vietnam.
(SOUNDBITE OF PERFORMANCE, "THE ODYSSEY: FROM VIETNAM TO AMERICA")
MUSIKER: One of those Vo 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.
MAI BUI: The ocean sound is romantic but at that time, it's scary. It's very scary. Up to this point, I cannot look at the ocean or the sea at night. It still - you know, it bring back my memory.
MUSIKER: This isn't the only memory of the Vietnam war that Van-Ahn Von is addressing through music. She's performing a new work called "My Lai," by Jonathan Berger, with Kronos Quartet. And she's taking "The Odyssey" on the road for performances in Washington, D.C., Southern California's Orange County and Houston, Texas, places with large Vietnamese-American populations.
VO: So that we can let unheard voice like (unintelligible) to be voiced.
MUSIKER: The voiceless to be voiced.
VO: Yes, yes.
MUSIKER: Van-Ahn Von says "The Odyssey" is a plea on behalf of all refugees, and against the wars that divide us. For NPR News, I'm Cy Musiker in San Francisco.