ABSTRACT
Musicians of don ca tai tu, a genre of southern Vietnamese traditional music performed in the Mekong Delta and on the outskirts of Ho Chi Minh City, gather after work to improvise tunes on string instruments and comical lyrics about everyday life. Using humor, liquor, and long-standing historical processes of music performance, these musicians “play” (di choi) with musical materials to bring together individuals from different walks of life, even when some used to be enemies. This “playing,” however, is not innocent; it often sustains gender inequality and Vietnamese superiority over other ethnic groups. I therefore propose that play is vital to transmission and the maintenance of locality in parts of contemporary southern Vietnam, even if others continue to frown on what is transmitted.
