WOMEN AND MUSIC IN THE CULTURAL SYSTEMS OF THE FAR EAST AND SOUTH EAST ASIA.

Scholars have lately displaying constantly growing interest in the role of the woman in music and in the specificity of women music making. These subjects are considered both in broad terms and as concrete phenomena. It seems to be expedient to try to combine the above subjects and by the example of a particular phenomenon - the Vietnamese female ca tru singing to trace some typological community with other traditions of female music making in countries of the Far East and partly South East Asia. Generally, three main levels of the «Women - Society - Music» problem could be singled out: 1. Participation of women in activities linked this way or another with music making along with men without apparent limitation; 2. Female music making separated as a special socio-cultural niche as a result of discriminatory measures reflecting that or other ideology; 3.The formation of a special layer of music (genres, styles, types, manners of performance) inside the established female music making tradition. The ca tru performance, analyzing in the article, is the result of the combination of several lines of historical development of that tradition, which came into being as far back as in the 10-11th centuries, in the period of the rise of the independent centralized state of Vietnam. Relaying our research on the information obtained during our field work in the late 1980s in Vietnam with the most prominent ca tru style singers (such as Nguyen Thi Phuc, Quach Thi Ho, Dinh Thi Ban) we are considering the performing practice which established at the turn of the 19-20th centuries and was at that time the most popular form of artistic leisure hours of educated urban circles.