Vietnam Stage Music belongs to Vietnamese Traditional Music. It is now kept and being shown in theater in many special events. These are the most common ones:

1. Hát chèo: China has Peking opera, Japan has Nogaku and Vietnam has Chèo. Hát chèo is a form of generally satirical musical theatre, often encompassing dance, traditionally performed by Vietnamese peasants in northern Vietnam. It is usually performed outdoors by semi-amateur touring groups, stereotypically in a village square or the courtyard of a public building, although it is today increasingly also performed indoors and by professional performers.

(Quan am Thi Kinh tells a story of a girl, named Thi Kinh, who gets married with a rich man Thien Sy. When her husband is sleeping, she sees a mole on his face, she takes scissors and intends to trim his hair. He suddenly wakes up and thinks that she is trying to murder him. Therefore, his mother and his family put her out of the house. Lonely, she dresses as a man and goes to live in Buddhist Pagoda where she works and prays. She is named Kinh Tam. In the village, there is another girl Thi Mau who falls in love with Kinh Tam but her love is not accepted. Crazily, she has relation with a man in the same village and gets pregnant. Kinh Tam is accused of the father of the baby and she is maltreated strongly. When the baby is born, Thi Mau gives the baby back to the pagoda. Kinh Tam compassionates the baby and goes everywhere to look for milk feeding the baby. She dies 3 years later. After all, people recognize that Kinh Tam is a woman... She is called as the Bo Tat Kinh Tam- Guanyin)

2. Tuồng: It is believed that tuồng was imported from China around the 13th century when Vietnam was warring against against the Mongol Yuan Dynasty. A famous actor named Lý Nguyên Cát was imprisoned by the Vietnamese. The imperial court asked him to spread his knowledge of Chinese theatre to the children of the elite, thus explaining how tuồng had first had its beginnings in Vietnam in the royal court. Later on, it was adapted to travelling troupes who entertained commoners and peasants. Along with Hát chèo, tuồng was one of the other highly popular art forms for commoners.



3. Cải lương: can be roughly translated as "reformed theater" or "renovated theater" in English, is a form of modern folk opera in Vietnam. It blends southern Vietnamese folk songs, classical music, hát tuồng (a classical theatre form based on Chinese opera), and modern spoken drama.It originated in Southern Vietnam in the early 20th century, and blossomed in the 1930s as a theatre of the middle class during the country's French colonial period. Cải lương is now promoted as a national theatrical form. Unlike the other folk forms, it continued to prove popular with the masses as late as the 1970s and the 1980s, although it is now in decline.



4. Bài chòi: is both traditional music and game in Central Vietnam. It is often held in Vietnamese New Year Day (Tết Nguyên Đán). It consists a group of people playing the game.



5. Vọng cổ: is a Vietnamese song and musical structure used primarily in the cải lương theater music and nhạc tài tử chamber music of southern Vietnam. It was composed sometime between 1917 and 1919 by a Mr. Cao Văn Lầu (also called Sáu Lầu or Sáu Làu), of Bạc Liêu, a province in southern Vietnam (Trainor 1975). The song achieved great popularity and eventually its structure became the basis for numerous other songs. The tune is essentially melancholy in character and is sung using Vietnamese modal inflections